Charles B. Martin

Charles B. Martin (1924–2008) was an Australian philosopher noted for work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.

Martin was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, and past President of the Australasian Philosophical Association. Inspired by John Locke, he was an early proponent of causal theories of perception, knowledge, and memory, and a principal architect of Australian metaphysical realism. He advocated an uncompromising materialist conception of minds as complex neurologically based propensities for the manipulation of sensory materials. The "ofness" and "aboutness" of thoughts and images arises from their dispositional realizations in the nervous system. More generally, Martin held that property instances invariably possess both dispositional and non-dispositional aspects, and that causal transactions are best regarded, not as relations between distinct events, but as the "mutual manifestations of reciprocal dispositional property partners."

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