Theoretical identity, reference fixing, and Boyd's defense of type materialism
Philosophia 34 (2):169-172 (2006)
| Abstract | In his Materialism without Reductionism: What Materialism Does not Entail, Richard Boyd answers Kripkeâs challenge to materialists to come up with a way to explain away the apparent contingency of mind-brain identities (such as âPain=C-fiber firingsâ). Boyd accuses Kripke of an imaginative myopia manifesting itself as a failure to realize that the more theoretical term in the identity (âC-fiber firingsâ) is fixed by contingent descriptions â descriptions that might pick out otherworldly kinds of neural events where C-fibres are absent. If this is something we can confuse in the imagination with actual C-fibre firings, then we have an explanation of the apparent contingency of the necessary identity âPain=C-fiber firings.â However, for this to succeed it must be the case that the reference of âC-fiber firingsâ is fixed by some contingent description, which is false. Boyd, I submit, has failed to answer Kripkeâs challenge after all | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesLaurence F. Mucciolo (1975). On Kripke's Argument Against the Identity Thesis. Philosophia 5 (October):499-506.
Grover Maxwell (1979). Rigid Designators and Mind-Brain Identity. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 9.
Richard Boyd (1980). Materialism Without Reductionism: What Physicalism Does Not Entail. In Ned Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology. , Vol 1.
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Olav Gjelsvik (1988). A Kripkean Objection to Kripke's Arguments Against the Identity-Theories. Inquiry 30 (December):435-50.
Terence E. Horgan & John L. Tienson (2001). Deconstructing New Wave Materialism. In Carl Gillett & Barry M. Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. Cambridge University Press.
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