Ullin Thomas Place (24 October 1924 – 2 January 2000), usually cited as U. T. Place, was a British philosopher and psychologist. Along with
J. J. C. Smart
John Jamieson Carswell Smart (16 September 1920 – 6 October 2012), was a British-Australian philosopher and was appointed as an Emeritus Professor by the Australian National University. He worked in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of sc ...
, he developed the
identity theory of mind
Type physicalism (also known as reductive materialism, type identity theory, mind–brain identity theory and identity theory of mind) is a physicalist theory in the philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, a ...
. After several years at the
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...
, he taught for some years in the Department of Philosophy in the
University of Leeds.
Life
Place was born in
Northallerton
Northallerton ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Hambleton District of North Yorkshire, England. It lies in the Vale of Mowbray and at the northern end of the Vale of York. It had a population of 16,832 in the 2011 census, an increase ...
,
Yorkshire. He was educated at
Rugby School
Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England.
Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. ...
and
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12t ...
. He studied under and was strongly influenced by
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." He was a representative of the generation of British ord ...
at
Oxford University. There, he became acquainted with
philosophy of mind in the
logical behaviorist tradition, of which Ryle was a major exponent. Although he would later abandon logical behaviorism as a theory of the mind in favor of the type-identity theory, Place nevertheless continued to harbor sympathies toward the behavioristic approach to psychology in general. He even went so far as to defend the ''radical behaviorist'' theses of
B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
C ...
, as expressed in ''Verbal Behavior'', from the criticisms of
Noam Chomsky and the growing movement of
cognitive psychology. Place died in
Thirsk, Yorkshire.
Place, as well as J. J. C. Smart, nevertheless established his place in the annals of
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
by founding the theory which would eventually help to dethrone and displace ''philosophical behaviorism'' - the identity theory. In ''Is Consciousness a Brain Process?'', Place formulated the thesis that mental processes were not to be defined in terms of behavior; rather, one must identify them with neural states. With this bold thesis, Place became one of the fathers of the current materialistic mainstream of the philosophy of mind.
His sister,
Dorothy E. Smith, is a prominent Canadian sociologist and the founder of the field of
institutional ethnography Institutional ethnography (IE) is an alternative approach of studying and understanding the social. IE has been described as an alternative philosophical paradigm, sociology, or (qualitative) research method. IE explores the social relations that st ...
, and his brother,
Milner Place
Milner Place (25 January 1930 – 28 May 2020) was an English writer most well known for his poetry. He was born in Thirsk, North Yorkshire to Dorothy F. Place and Tom Place. He had three siblings, Ullin, Dorothy and David. His brother Ullin Plac ...
, is one of England's leading poets.
Place's identity theory vs. that of Feigl and Smart
There are actually subtle but interesting differences between the three most widely credited formulations of the type identity thesis, those of Place, Feigl and Smart which were published in several articles in the late 1950s. Place's notion of the ''identity'' involved in the identity thesis is derived from
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
's distinction among several types of ''is'' statements: the ''is'' of
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...
, the ''is'' of equality and the ''is'' of predication. Place's version of the relation of identity in the so-called ''identity thesis'' is more accurately described as an asymmetric relation of composition. For Place, higher-level mental events are composed out of lower-level physical events and will eventually be analytically reduced to these. To the objection that "sensations" do not mean the same thing as "brain processes", Place could simply reply with the example that "lightning" does not mean the same thing as "electrical discharge" since we determine that something is lightning by looking and seeing it, whereas we determine that something is an electrical discharge through experimentation and testing. Nevertheless, "lightning is an electrical discharge" is true since the one is ''composed'' of the other. Similarly, "clouds are water vapor" means that "clouds are composed of droplets of water vapor" but not vice versa.
For
Feigl and
Smart
Smart or SMART may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Smart'' (Hey! Say! JUMP album), 2014
* Smart (Hotels.com), former mascot of Hotels.com
* ''Smart'' (Sleeper album), 1995 debut album by Sleeper
* '' SMart'', a children's television se ...
, on the other hand, the identity was to be interpreted as the identity between the referents of two descriptions (senses) which referred to the same thing, as in "the morning star" and "the evening star" both referring to Venus. So to the objection about the lack of equality of meaning between "sensation" and "brain process", their response was to invoke this Fregean distinction: "sensations" and "brain" processes do indeed ''mean'' different things but they refer to the same physical phenomenon. Moreover, "sensations are brain processes" is a contingent, not a necessary, identity.
Works
* ''Identifying the mind. Selected papers'', OUP, Oxford 2004,
* "Is consciousness a brain process?" in: ''British Journal of Psychology'' 47 (1956), pp. 44–50
* "Skinner's Verbal Behavior - why we need it" in: ''Behaviorism'', 1981.
Notes
References
* J. Franklin, ''Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia'', 2003, ch. 9.
* D.C. Palmer, ''In memoriam Ullin place: 1924–2000'', BEHAV ANALYST (2000) 23: 95
External links
Ullin Thomas Place (1924-2000). Philosopher and psychologist. The intellectual legacy of a radical empiricist complete bibliography with download links, compiled and edited by Thomas Place.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Place, Ullin
20th-century British philosophers
Philosophers of mind
English philosophers
1924 births
2000 deaths
Analytic philosophers
People educated at Rugby School
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford