J. J. C. Smart

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

Smart studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and was a professor from 1950 to 1972 at the University of Adelaide, 1972-1976 at La Trobe University from 1976 until his retirement in 1985 at the Australian National University. He ended his career as a professor emeritus at Monash University. Smarts main areas of work were the philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, ethics and metaphysics. In his honor, were established at the Australian National University, the Jack Smart Lectures 1999.

Philosophy

Smart was known by the 1959 essay published Sensations and Brain Processes internationally. This paper provided, together with another of the philosopher Ullin Place, with the identity theory, a materialist answer to the mind-body problem. Core element of the theory is the view that mental states of mind always correspond exactly neural states of the brain.

In questions of metaphysics Smart took a strong realism, which is based on the Declaration successes of the natural sciences. According to Smart, we must give up our everyday beliefs when they collide with the results of scientific research. In this sense, Smart argued about, that we should consider our experience of an absolute progressing time as pre-scientific illusion.

In ethics Smart took a utilitarian position in the philosophy of religion, the one consistent atheism.

Works (selection)

• Sensations and Brain Processes in Philosophical Review, 1959
• Philosophy and Scientific Realism, 1963
• Problems of Space and Time, New York, 1964 ( editor)
• Utilitarianism: For and Against Bernard Williams, 1973
• Essays Metaphysical and Moral: Selected Philosophical Papers, 1987
• Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion, 1989
• Atheism and Theism ( Great Debates in Philosophy), with JJ Haldane, 1996