David Armstrong's Materialist Theory of the Mind: A Philosophical Interrogation

Résumé

The Mind-body problem became more explicit and complex in modern times with Descartes' mind-body theory of interactionism. Within the materialist approach, Gilbert Ryle criticized Descartes' mind-body interactionism thesis and proposed analytical behaviourism as an alternative that viewed mental states in terms of behaviours. However, this theory failed to adequately explain mental states like consciousness and sensation, consequently, U.T Place and J.J.C. Smart introduced the Central State Theory to identify these mental states with brain processes. Armstrong was however, dissatisfied with their version of Central State Theory because they restricted their theories to mental states related to conscious experiences and sensations. In deviation, Armstrong was of the opinion that all mental states could be reduced to the central state of the nervous system. To achieve this, Armstrong blended Descartes' idea of an inner state with a redefined Rylean concept of dispositions. This position of Armstrong has been commended mainly because it provides an elegant explanation for mental causation and its consistency with scientific evidence from neuroscience. Nevertheless, it has been criticized, amongst other things, for its failure to account for qualia and also because it faces the problem of multiple realizability. Despite these criticisms, the findings of this article suggests that Armstrong's theory continues to be of significant relevance in contemporary society, mainly because of its potential utility in fields such as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and mental psychotherapy. His theory has also created new insights into the mind-body problem and the various approaches to resolving the agelong problem. The analytic approach has been adopted for this paper.