The readings for this week are closely related. Tuesday's assignment consists of a short paper and a short selection from a long one. Both papers were written about the same time and present similar views. Smart, who you will read for Thursday, defends a similar view and cites both of these papers as background for his.

• In his discussion of the "phenomenological fallacy," U. T. Place presents an attack on dualism that is analogous to Ryle's. However, he does not (as did Ryle later in the book from which you read the first chapter) support the view that mental language is a way of talking about behavior. The alternative to dualism that Place does describe rests on two related distinctions--one between two uses of "is" and another between two sorts of independence--and on two examples, clouds and lightening. We will probably devote much of our time to discussing these four ideas.
• Feigl's focus in the section of his paper that you are reading is a precise description of his own position and an account of its difference from a couple other views. His view is similar to the one Place presents but probably not identical, so one question to ask is how far apart they are. Don't expect this to be easy to answer though.

  One difficulty may a simple one of vocabulary, and perhaps the greatest value of Feigl's paper will be as an occasion to sort out some terminology, much of which will appear also in other things you'll read. Feigl often provides lists of examples and some of these will help to explain what he means by unfamiliar terms. Also make use of Chalmers's introduction; in this case, the most helpful material is probably that on pp. 1 and 3. Finally, the following brief glossary for some of Feigl's technical vocabulary may be of help, too.

  • Molar (as opposed to molecular) behavior is larger scale action as distinct from such things as the individual movements that may compose it. Different ones of the behaviorist theories in psychology that were current at the time Feigl wrote focused on one or the other of these two sorts of behavior.
  • The terms intentional act and intentionality do not concern intentions specifically but refer more generally to mental content. One characterization you will run into later is that they concern relations one of whose terms need not exist: I may expect Santa Claus to come even if there is no real future arrival of Santa Claus to serve as the thing I expect.
  • Feigl doesn't intend psychophysical parallelism as a synonym for epiphenomenalism even though his first use of the term might suggest that he does (see Chalmer's introduction for the latter term). What Feigl means by parallelism is different also from what some others might mean by the term; he uses it specifically for the view he also calls "Spinozistic," so look for his descriptions of that view (on p. 69 cc. 1-2 and p. 70 c. 2).
  • The term intersubjective is used for things that are not (necessarily) part of the objective world but are still shared in a way that subjective things are not.
  • Extensional equivalences or implications are equivalences or implications that are matters of fact rather than due to meanings, so extensionally equivalent expressions can have the logical independence Place speaks of. The opposite of extensional is intensional (spelled with an s rather than a second t); the extension of a term is what it refers to while its intension is its meaning. Here is a standard example that will play a role in Smart's paper for Thursday: "the Morning Star" and "the Evening Star" have the same extension since both refer to Venus, but they have different intensions since they describe Venus in differently.