3.4.3 Philosophical behaviourism Flashcards
Define physicalism
Everything is physical or supervenes upon the physical (this includes properties, events, objects
and any substance(s) that exist).
What is philosophical behaviourism?
Philosophical behaviourism claims that we can analyse mental concepts in terms of concepts that relate to the body, and in particular, the concept of ‘behaviour’.
What are the two types of behavioursim?
- hard behaviousim
- soft behaviourism
Define hard behaviourism
all propositions about mental states can be completely reduced to propositions about observable bodily states/movements.
Which philosopher championed hard behaviourism?
Carl Hempel
What philosophical group was Carl Hempel part of?
and what philosophical movement were they founders of?
The Vienna circle
founders of the logical positivist movement
What account of meaning did Hempel believe in?
The verificationist account of meaning,
according to which all meaningful propositions are either analytic or provable by reference to observable statements.
What is the only way for Hempel and hard behaviourists for mental language to have meaning?
In order to be scientific, and therefore meaningful, Hempel resolved to devise a philosophy of the mind which reduced all understandings of the mind to physical behaviours which we can empirically verify.
Why is hard behaviourism sometimes referred to as analytic behaviourism?
Because it involves taking something apart and defining it in terms of its constituent parts.
Mother = female parent
which is an analytic reduction
Give an example of a translation from mental state language into behavioural language:
Kitty loves Oasis
becomes
- Kitty has ‘supersonic’ tattooed on her arm
- Kitty listens to Oasis for three hours a day (despite Mr OCs disapproval)
- Kitty says things like ‘ABBA is a pile of leaves and Oasis is a log.’
What are the two problems for hard behaviourism?
- circularity
- multiple realisability
Explain the circularity problem?
analysing mental states in terms of behaviour (and behavioural dispositions) makes implicit reference to human agency
human agency involves intent, which is an aspect of a mental state
therefore: the definition (of mental states in terms of behaviour) is circular because the term we want to define (mental states) appears in the definition.
How might behaviourists try to avoid the problem of circularity and what new problem does that create?
would have to define behaviour (eg Lily paints a picture) purely in terms of bodily movements: ‘Lily raises her right arm to the canvas and moves it from left to right)
the new statement is completely void of the original meaning –> multiple realisability
Explain the (2 way) multiple realisability problem
There are many different ways a mental state might be expressed in behaviour.
eg: Person A and person B see a lion, person A runs person B freezes (same mental state- fear, causes two differnt behaviours)
A behaviour may be the result of more than one particular mental state.
eg: Person C and D s ankle both make contact with a stick, person C intented to kick it, person D tripped over it
reminder (dualist criticism)
What did Ryle say about Descartes’ substance dualism?
That it made a ‘category mistake’
when we look at the meaning of words the mind body problem goes away
Define soft behaviourism
and which philosopher
Ryle rejected hard behaviourism and argued it is impossible to complete;your reduce mental states to actual and current behaviour
instead he proposed we should anaylse mental states in terms of something’s disposition to behave in a certain way.
Give an example of how Ryle says we should analyse mental state language :
Ben loves swimming in the sea becomes:
- when at the beach it is likely that Ben will jump into the sea straight away
Issues
What are the two Dualist arguements against behaviourism?
- Behaviourism involves denying Qualia
- Dualist critique from interaction/mental causation
Explain the dualist critique that Behaviourism involves denying Qualia
To have pain does not seem to just be a mtter of inclination to moan and whince, pains also have an intrinsic qualitative nature that is revealed in intropection (qualia)
Any theory of mind that ignores qualia fails to do justice to our own knowledge of our own mental life.
issues
Explain the dualist critique from interaction/mental causation
Behaviourists can’t explain why we do anything because they don’t accept mental causes like ‘I want to go because I want to have fun’
accepting the mental cause would lead to dualism.
issues
Explain the criticism: The assymetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of others people’s mental states
give an example to illustrate the issue
According to behaviourism, mental states can be reduced to concretly observable behaviour.
What we observe, is other people’s behaviour
So according to behaviourism, other people are better able to verify the truth of mental state language to do with ourselves that we are.
For example: concert with a freind, after you say, I know you had fun, how was it for me?
one might say this is why we go to therapy but really in 99.9% of cases yoy know your own mental state better, and even in the 0.1% the other person cannot be 100% sure - we are capable of lying
issues
Explain the criticism: there is an assymetry between the knowledge of my mind and knowledge of other minds
Behaviourism is the theory that we can completely reduce mental states to observable behaviour.
This means our own mental states may be reduced down to the** same behaviour** as **another persons mental state **- so according to behaviourism there is no difference between the origins of that behaviour (because nothing mental on its own holds any real meaning because its not empirically observable)
so there is no difference between our minds and other minds
but there is…(an assymetry)
our minds:
- accessible
- certain
- incorrigable
- infalible
- complete
other minds:
- inaccessible
- uncertain
- corrigable
- falible
-incomplete
Therefore philosophical beaviourism is false
issues
Explain the criticism: The distinctness of mental states from behaviour (super- spartans)
Hilary Putnam
Imagine a community of ‘Super-Spartans’ in which adults have the ability to successfully supress all voluntary pain behaviour . They do not wince, scream or even flinch. But they do feel pain.
This is inexplicable according to behaviourism
According to them it seems that they don’t feel pain at all since they do not display the behaviour for it.
What is Ryle’s response to the super spartans critique?
Super spartans may not display any actual pain behaviour but they remain disposed to display the behaviour were it not for the fact that they have ‘important ideological reasons’ for not doing so.
Putnams’s response to Ryle’s Super spartan defence
SUPER DUPER SPARTANS
in this world people have been super spartans for so long that people no longer talk about pain, there isn’t even a word for it, people pretend to not know what it is…. so they aren’t even disposed to show it
What does Putnam think about behaviourism?
+ what’s the example he uses to demonstrate what we means
It confuses the evidence we use to ascribe to mental states with the mental states themselves.
For example: People used to think that polio, the disease, was it’s symptoms: stiffness of limbs, fever, vommitting etc, but now we know polio is a virus.
In the same way we can identify people’s pain by the symptoms- the pain behaviour.
But this doesn’t mean the pain behaviour is the pain itself, they are not equivalent. That is why it is possible to be in pain without exhibiting pain beahviour.
