Get Smarter

In J.J.C Smart’s “Sensations and Brain Processes,” he explains that there’s no difference between mental states and brain processes in terms of what we experience. Neither have non-physical properties, only physical ones. However, they aren’t necessarily the same thing. A brain process might be what happens in the body that results in the actual feeling of a sensation. A mental state would be the sensation itself like a pain in your arm or hearing a concerto. The difference lies in the scientific connection within the body that might explain our anatomy like a kind of mechanical instrument. Something physical happens to the body, which causes the nervous system to bring about a mental sensation. It’s difficult to describe such a feeling, however, making them harder to classify. This is where I became lost. Smart wants to say that since we cannot exactly say what these feelings are, they can’t be non-physical properties. Since they have properties that appear to be similar to physical properties, Smart concludes that these sensations must be purely physical. I suppose that the amount of time it takes for you to have a brain process and then a mental sensation is so small that they are essentially the same things for all intents and purposes. The after image example he brings up is interesting because it is one of the very few sensations that we can actually witness for ourselves and describe it in terms of color, something we use to describe physical things all the time. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean those after images are real physical things, it only means the sensation we are having at the time is real.