Smart:
Mental states could actually be the report of a brain state. In Smart’s Sensations and Brain Processes, he analyzes the relation between mental states and brain states in the central state identity theory. He claims that the mental states are the same as brain states. Rather than being separate these two states are one and the same, and the mental state serves as the indicator of the current brain state.
In a physicalist view, the mental states and the brain states of a person’s mind are identical to one another instead of being apart or causally related. Smart argues this when he explains the central state identity theory. He claims “it is that, in so far as [the] ‘afterimage’ or ‘ache’ is a report of a process, it is a report
