ABSTRACT
A close look at the course of modem physicalism - the history of the materialization of mind - will yield the observation that only a subtle and resourceful version of physicalism is going to be capable of giving an adequate account of what it means to have a mind and be a self. A recent criticism of classical identity theory which remains within the terms of reference of Leibniz's Law without seeming to appeal to the bogus property of introspectibility is Frank Jackson's argument from Knowledge. According to John Searle, consciousness is a higher-level or emergent property of the brain in the sense of higher-level in which solidity is a higher-level emergent property of H20 molecules when they are in a lattice structure. Armstrong is impressed by what the physical sciences have to say about the nature of mind, and he sympathizes with the view that these sciences can give a complete account of mind in purely physico-chemical terms.
