Summer 2011
Wednesday, 07/06
Mental vs. Physical Items
• Write down 3 examples of mental items
(anything that you consider to be a part of the
mind) and 3 examples of physical items
(anything that you consider to be a part of the
physical world).
Mental vs. Physical Items
Some distinctions:
• Types vs. Tokens.
• Overall Mental State (of an Individual) vs.
Specific Mental States.
• Dispositional States, Qualitative States,
Propositional Attitudes.
What is Behavior?
• Whatever people or organisms do
that is publicly observable.
Examples of Behavior
1. Physiological Reactions and Responses, e.g.
drooling, sweating, coughing, increase in
pulse rate, rising blood pressure.
2. Bodily Movements, e.g. walking, running,
raising a hand, opening a door, throwing a
baseball, a cat scratching at the door, a rat
turning left in a T-maze.
Actions that don’t count as Behavior
1. Actions involving bodily motions, e.g. greeting a
friend, writing an email, going shopping, writing
a check, attending a concert.
1. Mental acts, e.g. judging, reasoning, guessing,
calculating, deciding, intending.
•
These actions don’t count as behavior because
they involve “inner” events that are not publicly
observable. (Still, these actions may have
behavioral interpretations.)
Scientific Behaviorism
• The only way to study the mind is indirectly:
by studying behavior. Psychology = Behavioral
Science. Two restrictions: (1) on data, (2) on
terms appealed to in explanation.
• Reaction against introspective psychology.
• One (famous) cause for the downfall of
introspective psychology: “imageless thought”
controversy.
Philosophical Behaviorism
• The view that behavior is constitutive of
mentality (rather than just a sign or indication
that a mind is present).
• Having a mind just is a matter of exhibiting, or
having a propensity or capacity to exhibit,
appropriate patterns of behavior.
• This is the view we’ll focus on here (I’ll refer to
it simply as Behaviorism).
Two Behaviorist Theses
1. Logical Behaviorism: All talk about mental
events is translatable into talk about actual
or potential overt behavior. When we talk
about mental states, we mean (or “have in
mind”) patterns of behavior.
Two Behaviorist Theses
2. Ontological Behaviorism: Mental states are
(necessarily) identical to behavioral states.
Though the exact relationship between 1 and
2 is complex, we can think of Behaviorism as
the conjunction of these two claims.
Arguments for Behaviorism
1. The (Cartesian) dualist thinks of the mind as a
soul: a ghostly engine, animating the body.
But it’s mysterious how this ghostly engine
can causally affect the body. Behaviorism is a
materialist theory. So there is no mystery of
how to account for mental causation.
Arguments for Behaviorism
2. We think we know a lot about other people’s
mental lives. The dualist has trouble
explaining how this could be (e.g. “Beetle-inthe-box” case). But the behaviorist can
explain it more easily: To know what other
people are thinking or feeling, you just have
to figure out how they are disposed to
behave.
Arguments against Behaviorism
Last time we briefly looked at two arguments:
1. Infinity.
2. Circularity.
But there are others…
Arguments against Behaviorism
3. The Behaviorist can explain how we know
other people’s mental states. But he tells us
the wrong story about how we know our own
mental states. E.g. we don’t need to observe
our behavior to know that we (ourselves) are
in pain or having a “reddish” visual
experience.
Arguments against Behaviorism
4. Putnam’s Super-Spartans. Feel pain but don’t
exhibit pain-behavior. If Super-Spartans are
possible, then it is possible to have pain
without pain-behavior. So pain-behavior ≠
pain.
But: Super-Spartans still say that they are in
pain and such reports may count as behavior.
Arguments against Behaviorism
5. Putnam’s X-Worlders: Super-Spartans that
never even report that they are in pain
(though they may still think that they are in
pain).
Q: Can’t the Behaviorist account for Putnam’s
cases in the same way that she accounts for
certain cases of paralysis?
Arguments against Behaviorism
6. We normally think of our mental states as
causing behavior (and patterns of behavior).
But given that something cannot cause itself,
the behaviorist is not in a position to
accommodate this intuition.
For Tomorrow
• We’ll talk about the Mind-Brain Identity
Theory.
• Read Place’s Article “Is Consciousness a Brain
Process” (in the Blue Book).