Timeline of type B physicalism

Year	Event type	Details
1956	Publication	Ullin Place publishes "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?", helping establish mind-brain identity theory, a precursor to later Type-B physicalism.
1959	Publication	J. J. C. Smart publishes "Sensations and Brain Processes", defending the identity theory while acknowledging the apparent distinctness of experience and brain states.
1965	Publication	David Armstrong publishes A Materialist Theory of the Mind, developing a sophisticated scientific materialism that would influence later Type-B approaches.
1970	Publication	David Lewis publishes "How to Define Theoretical Terms", providing a framework for psychophysical identifications through theoretical reduction.
1974	Thought experiment	Saul Kripke publishes Naming and Necessity, arguing that identities such as "pain = C-fiber firing" appear contingent, creating a major challenge for materialist theories of mind.
1978	Publication	David Lewis publishes "Mad Pain and Martian Pain", defending functionalist and physicalist approaches to mental states.
1980	Knowledge argument	Frank Jackson introduces the Mary thought experiment in "Epiphenomenal Qualia", arguing that physical knowledge may be incomplete.
1982	Publication	David Chalmers later identifies philosophers such as David Lewis and David Armstrong as exemplars of positions that would become Type-B materialism.
1983	Thought experiment	Saul Kripke's arguments against psychophysical identity gain broad influence through the publication of Naming and Necessity in book form.
1990	Publication	Brian Loar begins developing phenomenal concepts theory, a major Type-B strategy for explaining the explanatory gap.
1995	Publication	Brian Loar publishes "Phenomenal States", arguing that the explanatory gap results from special concepts rather than non-physical properties.
1996	Classification introduced	David Chalmers publishes The Conscious Mind, distinguishing Type-A, Type-B, and Type-C materialism. Type-B materialists accept an explanatory gap but deny any ontological gap.
1997	Publication	Joseph Levine develops the explanatory gap argument, posing a central challenge for Type-B physicalists.
1998–2005	Theoretical development	Phenomenal concepts strategies are developed by Brian Loar, Christopher Hill, David Papineau, and others as responses to conceivability and knowledge arguments.
2002	Publication	David Papineau publishes Thinking About Consciousness, defending a Type-B physicalist account based on phenomenal concepts.
2003	Publication	Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker publish "Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap", defending physicalism while acknowledging explanatory difficulties.
2005	Publication	David Papineau further develops the phenomenal concepts strategy in response to anti-physicalist arguments.
2007	Publication	Daniel Stoljar publishes Ignorance and Imagination, arguing that explanatory gaps do not imply dualism.
2010s	Research trend	Type-B physicalism becomes one of the dominant positions in academic philosophy of mind, especially among physicalists responding to the hard problem.
2012	Publication	David Papineau publishes The Philosophy of Consciousness, summarizing and extending contemporary Type-B physicalist arguments.
2010s–2020s	Ongoing debate	Philosophers including David Papineau, Brian Loar, Ned Block, Robert Stalnaker, Christopher Hill, and Daniel Stoljar continue refining responses to conceivability, knowledge, and explanatory-gap arguments.
2020s	Research trend	Type-B physicalism remains a leading position in consciousness studies, often combined with higher-order theories, global workspace models, and neuroscientific approaches to consciousness.