J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor

Abstract

In his 'Comments on the Papers' gathered together by C. F. Presley in a volume entitled The Identity Theory of Mind,1 J. J. C. Smart indicates that he considers Occam's razor to be one of the principal reasons for his acceptance of or belief in (and presumably one of the principal reasons why others should accept or believe in) what he variously calls 'materialism' (p. 84), 'physicalism' (p. 90), and 'the physicalist thesis' (p. 93). Thus he says near the beginning of his comments: 'These [referring to Occam's razor and a distaste for nomological danglers] surely constitute our main reasons for believing in materialism' (p. 84) [italics mine]; and again at the end: ' . . . in view of the attractiveness, from the point of view of Occam's razor and the unity of science, of the physicalist thesis, any arguments against it will have to be, so far as I am concerned at least, far more persuasive than any that have so far been produced' (p. 93). Consistently with, though presumably not as a consequence solely of, the physicalist thesis, or materialism,2 Smart also accepts what he calls 'the brain process thesis' (p. 84), and (at least in part) for the same reason that he believes in materialism. Thus he says (p. 84):