Could mental states be brain processes?

Abstract

In recent discussions of the relation between mental states and brain processes, a view that has received much support is the Identity Theory. Its adherents¹. allow that expressions that refer to mental states differ in their meaning from expressions that refer to brain processes, but they claim that the actual existents picked out by the former expressions turn out, as a matter of empirical fact, to be identical with those picked out by the latter expressions. I wish to examine this theory. For convenience, I shall refer to mental states, e.g. feeling pain, having an after-image, thinking about a problem, considering some proposition, etc., as C-states, and I shall refer to whatever brain process may be going on at the same time that some mental state is occurring as a B-process. My main contentions will be (I) that C-states cannot be identical with B-processes because they do not occur in the same place, (2) that there is nothing to stop us from making the Identity Theory correct by adopting a convention for locating C-states, and (3) that the question whether it would be useful to adopt such a convention depends upon empirical facts which are at present unknown.