Mind-Brain Identity Theory: A Materialistic Foundation for the Psychophysiology of Mental Imagery

Abstract

This chapter applies identity theory to the psychophysiology of mental imagery by following an introduction to mind-brain identity theory, as it defines both the difference between mental and neural events and the identity of such events. For mind-brain identity theorists, defining the difference between a mental event and a physical event is neither easy nor trivial, in as much as philosophical psychologists have tended to reduce one event to the other. Mind-brain identity theory recognizes that, from a subjective or ‘mental’ perspective, the self is a “bundle” of sensations—plus a collection of sensationless relationships among those sensations. Also, identity theory recognizes that, from an objective or ‘physical’ perspective, the other person is a bundle of neural and bodily events—plus a collection of functional relationships among those events. Mind-brain identity theory asserts that the subjectively known mind and the objectively known brain are metaphysically identical to each other, even though they are epistemologically different from one another.