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David Malet Armstrong

 
Philosophy Dictionary: David Malet Armstrong
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Armstrong, David Malet (1926- ) Forth-right Australian materialist, and together with J. J. C. Smart the leading Australian philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. Armstrong defends an uncompromising scientific materialism, together with a functionalist theory of mind. However, he sees scientific laws as describing necessitation relations between universals, about which he is a realist, but of an Aristotelian rather than a Platonist persuasion. He defends the view that every true proposition requires something to make it true, a ‘truthmaker’ and therefore holds an ontology of states of affairs, reminiscent of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, especially in that it is the combinatorial properties of states of affairs that underlies the theory of necessity and possibility. Books include Perception and the Physical World (1961), A Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968), Belief, Truth and Knowledge (1973), What is a Law of Nature? (1983) and A World of States of Affairs (1997).

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David Malet Armstrong
Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy

David M. Armstrong receiving his doctor of letters (h.c.) at the Nottingham University, UK on 13th December 2007
Full name David Malet Armstrong
Born 8 July 1926
School/tradition Australian Realism, analytic philosophy
Main interests metaphysics, philosophy of mind

David Malet Armstrong (born 8 July 1926), often D. M. Armstrong, is an Australian philosopher. He is well-known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the laws of nature.

Contents

Bibliography

Books

  • Berkeley's Theory of Vision: A Critical Examination of Bishop Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1960.
  • Bodily Sensations. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1962.
  • Perception and the Physical World. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1961. [ISBN 0-7100-3603-5]
  • A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1968. [ISBN 0-415-10031-3]
  • Belief, Truth and Knowledge. London: Cambridge University Press, 1973, [ISBN 0-521-08706-6]
  • Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. [ISBN 0-521-21741-5]
  • The Nature of Mind and Other Essays. Cornell University Press (1981). [ISBN 0801413532 ]
  • What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. [ISBN 0-521-25343-8]
  • A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. [ISBN 0-521-37427-8]
  • Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. [ISBN 0-8133-0772-4]
  • A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ISBN 0-521-58064-1]
  • The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. [ISBN 0-8133-9056-7]
  • Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge University Press, 2004. [ISBN 0-521-83832-0]

Selected Articles

  • "Is Introspective Knowledge Incorrigible?" Philosophical Review 72 (1963), 417-32.
  • "Meaning and Communication". Philosophical Review 80 (1971), 427-47.
  • "Alan Ker Stout, 1900-1983". Proceedings of the Australian Academy of the Humanities 12 (1982-83): 106-109. http://www.humanities.org.au/Resources/Downloads/Publications/Proceedings/Proc1983.pdf. Retrieved 2009-02-18. 
  • (with Peter Forrest) "An Argument against David Lewis' Theory of Possible Worlds". Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984), 164-8.
  • "Classes are States of Affairs". Mind 100 (1991), 189-200.

Miscellaneous

  • "Interview". In Lee Jobling and Catherine Runcie (eds.), Matters of the Mind: Poems, Essays and Interviews in Honour of Leonie Kramer. Sydney: University of Sydney, 2001, 322-332.

Further reading

  • R.J. Bogdan (ed.), D.M. Armstrong Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984. [ISBN 90-277-1657-9]
  • John Bacon, Keith Campbell & Lloyd Reinhardt (eds.), Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays in Honour of D.M. Armstrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. [ISBN 0-521-41562-4][1]
  • J. Franklin, Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (Macleay Press, 2003), chs 9, 11, 12,
  • S. Mumford, David Armstrong. Acumen, 2007. [ISBN 1844651002]

References

  1. ^ Cambridge Catalogue -- Ontology, Causality, and Mind

External links


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