David M Armstrong

Philosophy Unit 4, Area of Study 1.

Learning Intention:

To understand the historical and cultural influences on the writings of David M Armstrong.

Reading:

David Malet Armstrong was born in Melbourne in 1926. He became one of Australia’s most respected philosophers, described as having a ‘claim to being the greatest philosopher produced by the young and vast country of Australia’. Having studied at Geelong Grammar, the University of Sydney, Oxford University in England (1952-54) and being awarded a PhD from University of Melbourne in 1960, he is currently Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. His early publications were focussed on the Idealist philosophy of Bishop Berkeley, and he deserves an international reputation as a philosopher on this basis, but it is his subsequent contributions to epistemology and metaphysics for which he is most well-known.

Rigorous metaphysical philosophies were out of fashion in the early 1960s. The philosophies of Wittgenstein and particularly his focus on linguistic principles and semantics in philosophy, a movement centred on Oxford University, had overshadowed the work of Betrand Russell and others (including Armstrong’s teacher John Anderson) . Armstrong produced a series of lucid arguments for both physicalism (in the 1960s) and metaphysical universals (in the 1970s). He described laws of nature as relationships between these universals (in the 1980s) and most recently argued for physical universals as ‘truth-makers’.

Armstrong has based his metaphysics on three theses:

• Common sense – Armstrong believes that some beliefs are so securely grounded in human experience that any philosophical objection to them undermines the philosophy rather than the belief.
• Scientific Naturalism – Armstrong believes that a complete science will give a complete account of everything.
• Actualism – Armstrong rejects knowledge of things which are merely possible or dispositional.

His metaphysics then rests on the belief, perhaps the assumption, that it is possible to achieve a systematic, unified account of everything.

In 1968 Armstrong published A Materialist Theory of Mind in which he responded to Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind(1949). Where Ryle argued for behaviourism which was based on mental dispositions, Armstrong instead argued for a functionalist analysis of mental states. He claimed that neurophysiological states played causal roles in our behaviour and are therefore identical to mental states.  He argued that pain (for instance) is more than the ‘mere’ disposition to behave in certain ways, but that pain is caused by a certain pattern of nerve activity, and therefore that pain is identical to this pattern. In this way Armstrong argues that mental states are physical states.

Independently:

• Research the philosophers Bertrand Russell and John Anderson. Consider how these philosophers (Anderson directly) influenced Armstrong.
• Research Ludwig Wittgenstein, particularly his philosophy on the relationship between the world and the mind, and the influence of language on this relationship.
• Research Gilbert Ryle, particularly his concept of mind to which Armstrong responds.
• Develop definitions for (and an understanding of):
  • Disposition (as it relates to Dispositionalism)
  • Actualism (as opposed to Dispositionalism)
  • Physicalism (as it relates to philosophy of mind)
  • Behaviouralism (as it relates to philosophy of mind)

Response:

Considering the set text as a product of a certain historical time and a certain culture explain how they help us to answer the following questions:

• How important is the distinction between mental states as dispositions and mental states as physical causes?
• Is ‘common sense’ to be trusted, or was Descartes right to reject anything which can be exposed to doubt?
• What is the relationship between the body and the mind as described by Armstrong and how does this differ from Descartes’ account?

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