Ullin Place

Ullin Thomas Place (24 October 1924 – 2 January 2000), usually cited as U. T. Place, was a British philosopher and psychologist. Along with J. J. C. Smart, he developed the identity theory of mind. After several years at the University of Adelaide, he taught for some years in the Department of Philosophy in the University of Leeds. Place was born in Northallerton, Yorkshire. He was educated at Rugby School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He studied under and was strongly influenced by Gilbert Ryle at Oxford University. There, he became acquainted with philosophy of mind in the logical behaviorist tradition, of which Ryle was a major exponent. Although he would later abandon logical behaviorism as a theory of the mind in favor of the type-identity theory, Place nevertheless continued to harbor sympathies toward the behavioristic approach to psychology in general. He even went so far as to defend the radical behaviorist theses of B.F. Skinner, as expressed in Verbal Behavior, from the criticisms of Noam Chomsky and the growing movement of cognitive psychology. Place died in Thirsk, Yorkshire. Place, as well as J. J. C. Smart, nevertheless established his place in the annals of analytic philosophy by founding the theory which would eventually help to dethrone and displace philosophical behaviorism - the identity theory. In Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, Place formulated the thesis that mental processes were not to be defined in terms of behavior; rather, one must identify them with neural states. With this bold thesis, Place became one of the fathers of the current materialistic mainstream of the philosophy of mind. His sister, Dorothy E. Smith, was a prominent Canadian sociologist and the founder of the field of institutional ethnography, and his brother, Milner Place, was one of England's leading poets.