Abstract

Our states of belief and desire are no doubt supervenient on the overall pattern of our physical states. But can this minimal physicalist presumption be strengthened into a claim to the effect that our mental states are each identical with some specific corresponding physical state? A developed identity theory will need, in a sense to be made clear, a schema for specifying the physical state which is supposed to be identical with a given mental state. And there are problems in formulating such a schema. The special difficulties faced here by a type identity theory are well known, and will not be discussed further in this present paper. But equally, there are problems in constructing an identification schema for employment with a token identity theory.