Thirty Years On­ Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process1

Abstract

Abstract Thirty years ago a paper of mine titled “Is consciousness a brain process?” was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Place, 1956). This paper together with Herbert Feigl’s paper “The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical,’” which appeared in volume 2 of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Feigl, 1958), and Jack Smart’s paper “Sensations and Brain Processes,” which appeared in Philosophical Review (Smart, 1959), are generally held to be the three primary sources in recent philosophical literature for the materialist or identity view of the mind-brain relationship. There is therefore some justice in the claim that these three, and my own in particular as the first to be published, may be regarded as ancestral to the materialism that has become a widely accepted establishment view in contemporary philosophy, particularly in the United States. These days whenever the broadcasting media in the United Kingdom do a feature on the mind-body problem, it is a virtual certainty that it will be a philosopher, such as Dan Dennett or John Searle, who presents the materialist position. The only thoroughgoing dualist they seem to be able to find is the brain physiologist Sir John Eccles, with the psychologist, if there is one, sitting as usual on the fence. Truly a remarkable transformation from the situation that existed thirty years ago, when every philosopher you met was quite convinced that whatever answer to the mind-body problem, if there is one, is true, materialism must be false.