Identity Theory Essay

Bradey Chambers
010629819
Short Answer
1. The identity theory (reductive materialism) states that mental states are brain states. Basically each mental state/process is the same as the physical state or process(es) within the brain. What they say about the mind is that the mind is just the brain and mental states are brain states.
Functionalism is the doctrine that what makes up a particular mental state doesn’t depend on the what it’s made with or how it’s built, but the way it functions or the role it plays within its system. They say that mental states are defined by functional roles and mental kinds are functional kinds. They say that things with minds are just things put together in the right way. As long as something can play the ‘functional role’ that defines, pain for example, then that thing has pains.
What makes them similar is that they are both a certain type of physicalist (where nothing exists past the physical properties; basically only physical things exist). Identity theorists would agree with type physicalism while functionalists would agree with token physicalism. However to separate the two physicalists we would have to distinguish a difference between type and token. Where if we said “more and more and more” there would be two types of words (“more” and “and,”) while there would be five tokens (two tokens of the type “and” and three token of the type “more”). Identity theorists or type physicalists would say that brain activity and those mental processes are type identical or basically within the same category. Token physicalists, which are more event specific, would say that the mental processes are different in quality than the physical counterparts or reactions within the brain. What they’re saying is th...

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...d on their choices. I would assume that there is a cause behind these free actions specifically their character, personality etc. Without these assumptions, morality wouldn’t make sense. Although sometimes people do things that happen not from their personality, character, etc; these actions are caused by things like an external force and not specifically by the person. Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to punish or reward someone when those actions were based on things that were not of their own choosing because the purpose of the reward/punishment system is to change future behavior. But if we were to say, as a hard determinist would, that no one ever acts freely then we couldn’t morally reward or punish or place blame. And in that case there would no difference between good or bad actions and we can all accept that actions have a good or a bad basis behind them.