Abstract

The theory is inconsistent, because it advances two incompatible theses on mental images. It argues, on the one hand, that mental images are "perceptual" events, while on the other hand, that they are "perceptions without belief." ;Armstrong's theory of introspection also transforms Hume's claim that mental images are weak ideas into the claim that they are "weak" causes--causes that would bring about behavior under certain contrary-to-fact conditions. I attempt to show that the argument advanced in support of this claim--the poison-taster parable--is unpersuasive. I conclude the dissertation by showing how Armstrong's Humian thesis that mental images resemble perception can be philosophically redeemed with an argument from science, not introspection. ;In this dissertation, I argue that this theory of introspection is implausible and, at times, inconsistent. It is implausible because there is a set of "experiential" introspective mental states which can best be accounted for in either phenomenological terms or in informational terms, not in causal or doxastic terms. Armstrong rejects the phenomenological analysis of after-images--one of these "experiential" states--because he wrongly believes that it commits proponents of the analysis to the quantification of mental objects. I propose that an "as if" account of after-images will allow us to do justice to the phenomenology of the perceptual situation with minimal ontological commitments and without offending the intuitions of commonsense. ;D. M. Armstrong's Central-state Materialist version of the Identity thesis argues that mental states are nothing but a subset of physical states of the brain. It acknowledges that although we are not aware of our mental states as states of the brain, a topic-neutral or ontology-free account of these states can be provided which is compatible with the truth of its reductive materialist assumption. This conceptual thesis defines mental states as states of the person apt to bring about idiosyncratic behavior. Perception, it argues, is a causal state in which we acquire true or false beliefs, or inclinations to believe. ;Introspection, according to Armstrong, is a form of perception--a noninferential perceptual awareness of the happenings in our mind wholly accountable in causal and doxastic terms. Armstrong argues that the model of pressure provides the parallel capable of explaining the essential features of introspection. When we feel pressure, all we are aware of sometimes is that there is something pressing which is apt to make us move. Likewise, when we introspect, all we are aware of is that there is something inside us that is apt to make us behave