Ullin Place

Ullin Thomas Place (born October 24, 1924 in Northallerton , Yorkshire , England , † January 2, 2000 in Thirsk , Yorkshire) was a British philosopher and psychologist . Together with John Jamieson Carswell Smart, he is considered to be the founder of identity theory .

Place studied at Oxford University , where he learned a philosophy of mind in the tradition of Gilbert Ryle . This teaching brought him in connection with behaviorism , to which he remained connected at a critical distance. Later he defended Burrhus Frederic Skinner's Verbal Behavior as a non- behaviorist .

Nevertheless, Place, along with John Smart, became known as the founder of the position that would eventually supplant philosophical behaviorism - identity theory. In Is consciousness a brain process? (1956) Place formulated the thesis that mental states cannot be defined by behavior . Rather, they have to be identified with the neuronal states of the brain. With this thesis, Place can be seen as one of the fathers of the materialistic mainstream in the philosophy of mind of the 1960s and 1970s.

Works

• Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of UT Place (edited by George Graham & Elizabeth R. Valentine), OUP, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-516137-8 .
• Is consciousness a brain process? , in: British Journal of Psychology 47 (1956), pp. 44-50
• "Skinner's Verbal Behavior - why we need it", in: Behaviorism , 1981.