Publication
Title
Reincarnating the identity theory
Author
Abstract
The mind/brain identity theory is often thought to be of historical interest only, as it has allegedly been swept away by functionalism. After clarifying why and how the notion of identity implies that there is no genuine problem of explaining how the mental derives from something else, we point out that the identity theory is not necessarily a mind/brain identity theory. In fact, we propose an updated form of identity theory, or embodied identity theory, in which the identities concern not experiences and brain phenomena, but experiences and organism-environment interactions. Such an embodied identity theory retains the main ontological insight of its parent theory, and by invoking organism-environment interactions, it has powerful resources to motivate why the relevant identities hold, without posing further unsolvable problems. We argue that the classical multiple realization argument against identity theory is built on not recognizing that the main claim of the identity theory concerns the relation between experience and descriptions of experience, instead of being about relations between different descriptions of experience and we show how an embodied identity theory provides an appropriate platform for making this argument. We emphasize that the embodied identity theory we propose is not ontologically reductive, and does not disregard experience.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Frontiers in psychology. - Pully, Switzerland, 2010, currens
Publication
Pully, Switzerland : Frontiers Research Foundation , 2018
ISSN
1664-1078
DOI
10.3389/FPSYG.2018.02044
Volume/pages
9 (2018) , p. 1-9
Article Reference
2044
ISI
000448142700001
Pubmed ID
30405507
Medium
E-only publicatie
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Offline cognition.
Perceiving affordances in natural, social and moral environments. A study of the concept of affordance, and its explanatory value.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 29.10.2018
Last edited 02.10.2024
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