Abstract

The Materialist who interests me is the one who identifies such things as thoughts with what he speaks of with a degree of grand unspecificity [[sic]] infuriating to the physiologist as "brain processes" or "brain-states." The casual vagueness with which he invokes the brain happens not to affect the logic of his position, and it will prove more useful than to confront him with a physiologist demanding details to face him instead with a philosophical opponent, even if we must resurrect one for the purpose. Let us, then, summon an Idealist from the shadows. His view, expressed equally grosso modo, is that all brain-states are thoughts. As the "is" of either position is the one of identity, the positions sound at this stage dangerously like mere commutations of one another, so in order to forestall the ignominy of saying the same thing while meaning to sound different, the opponents make sly countermoves. The Materialist says that there are brain-states—or even more unspecifically, that there are "material objects"—which are not thoughts ; and the Idealist, that there are thoughts which are not brain-states. These detrivialize [[sic]] the contest, but they equally disguise the contest’s comical ambiguities. It will appear upon analysis of the main strategies of logical offense that these traditional antagonists have been addressing themselves to different matters all along, and are saying different but quite compatible things. My chief reason for exhuming the contest is to illuminate features of Materialism which hardly can be discerned in the context of current preoccupation with predicates and language-games. Allowing myself the privileges of gross discourse which I have accorded my contestants, I shall say: the Idealist has been speaking of the content of thought, the Materialist about thoughts themselves. Let us now aim for a fraction of precision.