Correlation, Identity and Substance—Some Conceptual Issues

Abstract

I have stated the mind-brain problem as follows: What is the relation between mental processes, e.g., sensations, and the neural processes which occur invariably and simultaneously with them? Materialistic Identity theorists claim that what are called “sensations” are not different from neural processes but that, for some (usually unstated) reason, the neural processes can be referred to in two different terminologies, viz., that of physical science and that of subjective experience. R.J. Hirst, who holds what he calls an Identity Hypothesis, explains the existence of a dualistic terminology by reference to the radically different mode of access which an observer of someone’s ‘experience’ (neural processes) has from that of the person undergoing the experience.¹ The pain which I feel (or my feeling of pain) is one and the same thing, says Hirst, as the neural process which you could (in principle) see. However, I experience or observe it very differently from the way in which you do because my mode of access to the experience is entirely different. In other words, my relationship to my neural processes (experience of pain) is utterly different in character from your relationship (mode of access) to them. Hence both the subjective and the objective modes of speech to refer to these processes are necessary and complementary (not incompatible).