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a simile for my brand of physicalism

I will argue that a certain type of physicalism is true for animals other than humans and try to leave the human question an open question (to be answered in an Aristotelian way).  Normally physicalism is the thesis that for every physical state there is one and only one mental state.  I agree but add that it is asymmetric inasmuch as there can be many physical states for one and the same mental state.  My evidence for this is not the sort that a functionalist might conjure up (space aliens who have the same experience but different physical states).  Rather, it is the following set of facts that we can think of the same thing while processes occur in the brain (action potentials are pulsative), and that we can think of the same thing in different ways.

The simile is from calculus.  Different independent variables can have one and the same derivative.  But not vice versa.

I'll need to add to this post later to show how appetite figures in determining how one shall act.

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