J.J.C. Smart

Dzieła

• 1959Sensations and Brain Processes (Wrażenia i procesy mózgowe)

  Wrażenia są procesami mózgowymi: tożsamość jest przygodna i odkrywana przez naukę, jak tożsamość błyskawicy i wyładowania elektrycznego.

• 1973Utylitaryzm: za i przeciw

  Smart broni utylitaryzmu czynów, Williams go atakuje – na przykładach chemika George’a i Jima, od którego żąda się, by zastrzelił jednego z dwudziestu jeńców, aby pozostałych dziewiętnastu wyszło na wolność.

Stanowisko

At Adelaide Smart defended a Rylean, behaviourist account of the mind until discussions with his colleague U. T. Place convinced him otherwise. “Sensations and Brain Processes” (1959) argued that sensations are brain processes. The identity is contingent, discovered by science rather than by analysing meanings, just as lightning turned out to be an electrical discharge; so it is no objection that “I have a pain” does not mean “a certain brain process is going on”. To answer the worry that sensations have special properties, he proposed “topic-neutral” translations: a report of an after-image says that something is going on in me like what goes on when I see an orange. Simplicity and Occam’s razor speak for the identity. The theory became known as Australian materialism; Putnam’s argument that the same mental state can be realised in different physical systems was its main challenge. In ethics Smart defended act utilitarianism: the right act is the one with the best consequences, and sticking to a rule when breaking it would be better is “superstitious rule worship”. Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973) paired his defence with Bernard Williams’s attack. In metaphysics he held a tenseless, four-dimensional view of time in which the passage of time is an illusion.

Życie i kontekst

John Jamieson Carswell Smart was born in 1920 in Cambridge, England, to Scottish parents; his father was the astronomer W. M. Smart, and his brother Ninian became a scholar of religion. He studied at Glasgow, served in the British Army in India and Burma during the Second World War and then took the BPhil at Oxford. In 1950 he became professor of philosophy at the University of Adelaide, where he remained until 1972, before moving to La Trobe University and in 1976 to the Australian National University in Canberra. He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1990 and died in Melbourne in 2012.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism (1956)
• An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics (1961)
• Philosophy and Scientific Realism (1963)
• Utilitarianism: For and Against (with Bernard Williams, 1973)
• Our Place in the Universe (1989)

Pojawia się w

• Debata „Czym jest świadomość?”