Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

David Malet Armstrong, aka D. M. Armstrong

Australian Philosopher known for his work on Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, and defense of a Factualist Ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature

"Beliefs about particular matters of fact (including beliefs whose content is an unrestricted existentially quantified proposition) are structures in the mind of the believer which represent or ‘map’ reality, including the believer’s own mind and belief-states. The fundamental representing elements and relations of the map represent the sorts of thing they represent because they spring from capacities of the believer to act selectively towards things of that sort."

"One of the great problems that must be solved in any attempt to work out a scientific world-view is that of bringing the being who puts forward the world-view within the world-view. By treating man, including his mental processes, as a purely, as a purely physical object, operating according to exactly the same laws as all other physical things, this object is achieved with the greatest possible intellectual economy. The knower differs from the world he knows only in the greater complexity of his physical organization."

"The concept of a mental state is primarily the concept of a state of the person apt for bringing about a certain sort of behavior."