J. J. C. Smart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | John Jamieson Carswell Smart (1920-09-16)16 September 1920 Cambridge, England |
| Died | 6 October 2012(2012-10-06) (aged 92)[2] Melbourne, Australia |
| Nationality |
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| Other names | Jack Smart |
| Alma mater | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Institutions | |
| Academic advisors | Gilbert Ryle |
| Doctoral students | Mark Colyvan Phillip H. Wiebe |
| Other notable students | Jeff Malpas[1] Henry Krips[1] |
Main interests | |
Notable ideas | |
John Jamieson Carswell SmartAC FAHA (16 September 1920 – 6 October 2012)[2] was a British-Australian philosopher who was appointed as an Emeritus Professor by theAustralian National University. He worked in the fields ofmetaphysics,philosophy of science,philosophy of mind,philosophy of religion, andpolitical philosophy. He wrote several entries for theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[3][4]
Born inCambridge, England, of Scottish parents, Smart began his education locally, attendingThe Leys School, a leading independent boarding school. His younger brothers also became professors: Alastair (1922–1992) was Professor of Art History at Nottingham University;Ninian was a professor ofreligious studies and a pioneer in that field. Their father,William Marshall Smart, was John Couch Adams Astronomer atCambridge University and laterRegius Professor of Astronomy atGlasgow. In 1950, W. M. Smart was President of theRoyal Astronomical Society. In 1946, Jack Smart graduated from theUniversity of Glasgow with anMA, followed by a BPhil fromOxford University in 1948. He then worked as a Junior Research Fellow atCorpus Christi College, Oxford, for two years.
Smart served in theSecond World War with theBritish Army where he wascommissioned as asecond lieutenant in theRoyal Corps of Signals on 9 October 1941 and given theservice number 212091.[5][6] His war service was mainly inIndia andBurma.[6] He was demobilised in April 1946 and in 1950 was granted the honorary rank oflieutenant.[6]
He arrived in Australia in August 1950 to take up the Chair of Philosophy at theUniversity of Adelaide, which he occupied from 1950 until 1972. After twenty-two years in Adelaide, he moved toLa Trobe University where he was Reader in Philosophy from 1972 to 1976. He then moved to theAustralian National University where he was Professor of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences from 1976 until his retirement in 1985, and where the annual Jack Smart Lecture is held in his honour.[7] Following his retirement he wasEmeritus Professor atMonash University.
Smart was a Foundation Fellow of theAustralian Academy of the Humanities at its establishment in 1969.[8] In 1990 he was awarded the Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia.[9] In 1991 he was elected to become an honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in 2010, elected to become an honorary Fellow ofQueen's College, Oxford.[9]
At first Smart was abehaviourist before becoming an early proponent oftype identity theory.[10]
Smart's main contribution to metaphysics is in the area ofphilosophy of time. He has been an influential defender of theB-theory of time, and ofperdurantism.
His most important original arguments in this area concern the passage of time, which he claimed is an illusion. He argued that if time really passed, then it would make sense to ask at what rate it passes, but this requires some second time-dimension with respect to which passage of normal time can be measured. This in turn faces the same problems, and so there must be a third time-dimension, and so on.[11] This is called therate of passage argument and it was originally put forward byC. D. Broad.[12][13]
Smart changed his mind about the nature and causes of the illusion of the passage of time. In the 1950s, he held that it was due to people's use ofanthropocentric temporal language. He later came to abandon this linguistic explanation of the illusion in favour of a psychological explanation in terms of the passage of memories fromshort-term tolong-term memory.
Regarding thephilosophy of mind, Smart was aphysicalist. In the 1950s, he was also one of the originators, withUllin Place, of themind–brain identity theory, which claims that particular states of mind are identical with particular states of the brain. Initially, this view was dubbed "Australian materialism" by its detractors, in reference to the stereotype of Australians as "down-to-earth" and "unsophisticated".
Smart's identity theory dealt with some extremely long-standing objections to physicalism by comparing the mind–brain identity thesis to other identity theses well known from science, such as the thesis that lightning is an electrical discharge, or that the morning star is the evening star. Although these identity theses give rise to puzzles such asGottlob Frege'spuzzle of the Morning Star and Evening Star, in the scientific cases, some claim that it would be absurd to reject the identity theses on this ground. Since the puzzles facing physicalism are strictly analogous to the scientific identity theses, it would then also be absurd to reject physicalism on the grounds that it gives rise to these puzzles.
In ethics, Smart was a defender ofutilitarianism. Specifically, he defended "extreme", oract utilitarianism, as opposed to "restricted", orrule utilitarianism. The distinction between these two types of ethical theory is explained in his essayExtreme and Restricted Utilitarianism.[14]
Smart gave two arguments against rule utilitarianism. According to the first, rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism because there is no adequate criterion on what can count as a "rule". According to the second, even if there were such a criterion, the rule utilitarian would be committed to the untenable position of preferring to follow a rule, even if it would be better if the rule were broken, which Smart called "superstitious rule worship".[15]
Another aspect of Smart's ethical theory is his acceptance of a preference theory of well-being, which contrasts with thehedonism associated with "classical" utilitarians such asJeremy Bentham. Smart's combination of the preference theory withconsequentialism is sometimes called "preference utilitarianism".
Smart's arguments against rule utilitarianism have been very influential, contributing to a steady decline in its popularity among ethicists during the late 20th century. Worldwide, his defence of act utilitarianism and preference theory has been less prominent but has influenced philosophers who have worked or been educated in Australia, such asFrank Jackson,Philip Pettit, andPeter Singer.
One of Smart's two entries inThe Philosophical Lexicon refers to his approach to the consequences of act utilitarianism: to "outsmart" an opponent is "to embrace the conclusion of one's opponent'sreductio ad absurdum argument."[16] This move is more commonly called "biting the bullet".
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