John Jamieson Carswell Smart

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Jamieson Carswell Smart , also: Jack Smart or JJC Smart , (born September 16, 1920 in Cambridge , † October 6, 2012 ) was a British-Australian philosopher.

Life

Smart's parents were of Scottish descent - his father taught astronomy at Cambridge, where the son attended Leys School. Smart then studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Glasgow . He taught as a professor at the University of Adelaide from 1950 to 1972 , from 1972 to 1976 at La Trobe University and from 1976 until his retirement in 1985 at the Australian National University . Smart finished his career as professor emeritus at Monash University . His main areas of work were the philosophy of mind , the philosophy of religion , ethics and metaphysics . In his honor, the Jack Smart Lectures were founded in 1999 at the Australian National University .

position

Smart became internationally known through the 1959 essay Sensations and Brain Processes . This essay - along with another essay by the philosopher Ullin Place - provided a materialistic answer to the mind-body problem with identity theory . The core element of the theory is the view that mental states of the mind always correspond exactly to neuronal states of the brain.

In questions of metaphysics, Smart represented a strong realism that is based on the explanatory successes of the natural sciences . According to Smart, we have to give up our everyday beliefs when they clash with the results of scientific research. With this in mind, Smart argued, for example, that we should view our experience of an absolutely advancing time as a pre-scientific illusion. In his argument, Smart refers to McTaggart's philosophy of the time and in particular to his B-series.

In ethics , Smart took an action utilitarian position and argued against rule utilitarianism . He made two main arguments against rule utilitarianism. According to the first, rule utilitarianism necessarily collapses into action utilitarianism, since no adequate criteria can be established for what counts as a rule. Following the second, a problem arises from the fact that rule utilitarians, even if criteria for rules could be established, are obliged to obey those rules when it would be better to break them. Since Smart does not rely on a hedonistic but rather on a preference-based theory of well-being, his version of consequentialism is also known as preference utilitarianism. His work on this concept has particularly influenced Australian philosophers such as Peter Singer and Phillip Pettit .

In the philosophy of religion he postulates a consistent atheism .

Works (selection)

  • The River of Time. In: Mind LVIII (1949), pp. 483-494
  • Sensations and Brain Processes. In: Philosophical Review. Volume 68, 1959
  • Philosophy and Scientific Realism. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1963, ISBN 0710072643 .
  • Problems of Space and Time. New York 1964 (editor)
  • Between Science and Philosophy. Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Random House, New York 1968
  • Utilitarianism. For and Against. With Bernard Williams , 1973
  • Ethics, Persuasion and Truth. Routledge & Kougan, London 1984
  • Essays Metaphysical and Moral. Selected Philosophical Papers. 1987
  • Our place in the universe. A Metaphysical Discussion. 1989
  • Atheism and Theism (Great Debates in Philosophy). Together with JJ Haldane, 1996
  • Time and Cause Essays. Presented to Richard Taylor. Springer, New York 2010, ISBN 978-90-481-8358-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JJC Smart: Time and Cause Essays. Presented to Richard Taylor. Springer, New York 2010, p. 7 and 11.
  2. ^ JJC Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism . Ed .: The Philosophical Quarterly. 1956, p. 344-354 , JSTOR : 2216786 .
personal data
SURNAME Smart, John Jamieson Carswell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smart, Jack
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Australian philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 2012