Behaviourism

Question 1

What is an overview of behaviourism?

Answer 1

• Mental ‘properties’ aren’t like physical properties, ‘only different’.
• Instead, talk of the mind, of thought and consciousness, should be understood in terms of behaviour and dispositions to behave.
• Wanting to go for a drive, feeling cross, thinking about your mother- these are each a matter of being disposed to behave in certain, perhaps highly complex, ways.
• Carl Hempel- ‘Hard’ behaviourism
• Gilbert Rule- ‘Soft’ behaviourism

Question 2

What are the 4 possible types of behaviour?

Answer 2

• Physiological reactions/response- For example, perspiration, salivation, increase in pulse rate, increase in blood pressure.
• Bodily movements- For example, raising and waving a hand, opening a door, throwing a baseball.
• Actions involving bodily movements- For example, typing an invitation, greeting a friend, going shopping.
• Actions not involving bodily movements- For example, reasoning, guessing, calculating, judging, deciding.

Question 3

What is Hempels conditions of verification? What 3 conclusions can we draw from this?

Answer 3

• To know the meaning of a statement is to know the conditions under which we would call if true and those under which we would call it false. So the meaning of a statement is established by the conditions of its verification.
• These are simply the observations that we can make to check its truth.
• 3 conclusions from this:
• If we cant say what the conditions of verification are I.e. we cannot empirically check the truth of the statement, then it is meaningless.
• Two statements have the same meaning if they are both true or false under the same conditions. E.g. temperature in the room is 21 and the level on the thermometer is 21.
• This means that we can translate a statement into a series of statements that simply describe the conditions of verification. A translation is a statement with the same meaning, but expressed in different words or concepts.

Question 4

Outline Hempel: ‘Paul’s toothache example’

Answer 4

• 1. Paul weeps and makes gestures of such and such kind (bodily behaviour).
• 2. At the question ‘what is the matter?’ Paul responds ‘I have a toothache.’ (Linguistic Behaviour)
• 3. Closer examination reveals a decayed tooth with exposed pulp. (Physical bodily states)
• 4. Paul’s blood pressure, digestive processes show such and such changes. (Physiological changes).
• 5. Such and such processes occur in Paul’s central nervous system. (Brain processes).

Question 5

What are the implications of Paul’s toothache example?

Answer 5

• The first two points snow that psychological statements cannot be about private or inaccessible states of the person. They need to relate to physical and behavioural states.
• The statement ‘Paul has a toothache’ means these set of claims.
• These claims describing the conditions of verification don’t use the concept of ‘toothache’ or ‘pain’ or any other mental concept. Only physical concepts.
• We can this reach a general conclusion using Hempels reasoning:
• All psychological statements can be translated, without changing the meaning of what is said, into statements that only use physical concepts of this kind.

Question 6

Overview of Ryle’s ‘Soft’ Behaviourism.

Answer 6

• Ryle begins his argument by establishing his criticism of substance dualism, the ‘category mistake’.
• Following this reasoning, the mind is not another ‘thing’ and thus substance dualism makes a mistake.
• Ryle establishes the ‘para-mechanical hypothesis’ to understand mental states and processes as similar to physical states and processes, except they are non-spatial and non-mechanical.

Question 7

How are Ryle and Hempel similar and what are 4 fundamental differences in their viewpoints?

Answer 7

• Ryle, much like Hempl, argues that statements using mental concepts such as ‘belief’, ‘think’ or ‘pain’ can be understood in terms of behaviour.
• In face there is a significant amount of similarities in their arguments.
• 4 fundamental differences:
• 1) Ryle doesn’t make his arguments by appealing to the verification principle.
• 2) He does not claim that psychological statements can be translated or ‘reduced’ without loss of meaning into statements that refer to behaviour.
• 3) He adopts a more ‘common sense’ approach to behaviour, referring only to how a person immediately behaves including what they say.
• 4) He places an explicit emphasis on the idea of dispositions to behave.

Question 8

What does Ryle mean by dispositions of behaviour?

Answer 8

-A disposition isn’t a cause. A cause is something that occurs, something expressed in a Categorical statement.

• So ‘He made lunch because he was hungry’ shouldn’t be understood along the lines of ‘the glass broke because a stone hit it’, but along the lines of ‘the glass broke when the stone hit it because it was brittle’.
• Hunger and brittleness are both dispositions; a stone hitting a glass is an event.
• Making lunch is just the kind of thing someone who is hunger would do, in the right circumstances.
• Hunger isn’t a non-Physical cause, we are situations the action (making lunch) in relation to a number of hypothetical statements.

Question 9

Is the problem of other minds challenging for logical behaviourism?

Answer 9

• To day someone behaves in certain ways and has certain behavioural dispositions, Just is to say that they have certain mental states.
• To understand what others say and do is to understand that they have minds.

-We can know people have minds because we can know directly that they behave in certain ways! So the problem of other minds, isn’t a problem at all.

Question 10

What is Ryle’s response to the substance dualism challenge of just thinking, without acting?

Answer 10

• Ryle’s Response is that there are two different ways of thinking.
• One process of thinking is behaving (reading, driving, conversing) intelligently.
• There is also another process of thinking quietly ‘to oneself’. This is internalised speaking.

Question 11

What are 3 quickfire strengths of logical behaviourism?

Answer 11

• The problem of other minds- The problem of other minds is solved because in a sense we see their minds as we see their dispositions- so there is no need to infer.
• Hempel’s ‘hard’ behaviourism- Its reliance on the verification principle of the logical positivists means that it gives us something that is observable so that we are not confined to ‘private mental states’.
• Ryle’s ‘soft’ behaviourism- Highlighting the role of dispositions. An agent is in a certain ‘state of mind’ not only in virtue of what he is actually doing, but also in virtue of what he is disposed to do.

Question 12

What is the challenge based on logical behaviourism and causation?

Answer 12

-According to Ryle’s version of logical behaviourism there is no mental causation. To think mental states are causes is to commit the category mistake.

• We can object that dispositions are mental causation. They are part of the ‘causal story’. Stone and brittle glass example.
• This disposition, brittleness, has made a contribution to the causal chain.

-The same is true of beliefs, desires and other mental states, we may claim. When I saw ‘I went to the party because I thought you would be there’, we are citing something that is causally relevant to my action.

Question 13

What Argument does Donald Davidson put forward that supports the objection of disposition being a part of causation?

Answer 13

• Suppose I have two reasons to do something, but I only act on one of the reasons. So I want to see you and believe you’ll be at the party, and I believe the party will be fun and I want to have fun.
• Suppose I go to the party because I want to have fun, not because I want to see you. How can this be true? What makes it the cause that the second reason, and not the first, is the reason I act on?
• What makes it true that I act on the second reason and not the first, is that the second reason causes my action. So behaviourism is wrong to think there is no mental causation.

Question 14

What is the challenge can behaviourism define mental states/ multiple realisability of mental states?

Answer 14

• Behaviourists need to successfully identify the behaviour that provides the conditions of verification for saying someone has a particular mental state (Hempl) or day what behaviour the mental state disposes us toward (Ryle)
• Or more precisely; even if we don’t need to be able to actually do this, we need to think that in principle, such an analysis is possible. But is it? There are 2 reasons to think that it’s not:
• 1. The claim that there are many ways to which one and the same mental state can be expressed in behaviour.
• This is presented as an objection to the claim that mental states are reducible to behavioural dispositions.
• 2. The claim that one and the same mental states can have its function performed by different physical states.
• This is presented as an objection to the claim that mental states are identical to physical states.

Question 15

What is the challenge based on the asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states?

Answer 15

• To say someone has certain behaviour dispositions just is to say they have a mind. So we can know other people’s mental states.
• However, if mental states were dispositions to behaviour, it seems that I would have to infer what mental states I have from how I behave, or how I think I am disposed to behave.
• But we can object. I can know what I believe, want, fear, hope etc directly without inference.
• Furthermore if I am thinking to myself, I know what I am thinking in a way no one else can.

Question 16

What is a shortened version of the challenge of the asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states and Ryle’s response to this?

Answer 16

1. The analysis of mental states in terms of behavioural dispositions seems to rule out an asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states.
2. Yet it seems obvious from experience that there is such an asymmetry.
3. Therefore, logical behaviourism is false.

• Ryle’s Response is to argue that consciousness understood in this way is a myth. He argues that self-knowledge and our knowledge of other minds is on par, gained in the same way in each case, by paying attention.
• We can make reliable dispositional claims about our own or other people’s behaviour. The main difference is simply that we have more evidence available to ourselves.

Question 17

What is Ryle’s argument on consciousness?

Answer 17

• Being conscious of something is to pay attention to it. We can pay attention to what we are doing or what we have just felt/said silently to ourselves (thought).
• But we can also pay attention to what someone else is doing and what they say out loud to us.
• So the only difference between knowing our own mental State and knowing the mental state of others, because we are the audience of our own silent inner speech/ thought and others aren’t.
• So when we pay attention to what we say, we gain knowledge of the mind of whoever is talking.

Question 18

What are the 2 objections to Ryle’s understand of consciousness?

Answer 18

• The first raises the question can thinking be adequately understood in terms of inner speech, and can internalised speech form the model for mental processes generally?
• Proponents who raise this objection point to non-linguistic mental processes or changes in feeling and mood.
• Ryle’s understanding of consciousness arguably fails to account for these.
• The ‘inner’, experiential aspect of mental states and processes. This second objection lies on the ground of phenomenology.
• There is an element of consciousness that is not about knowledge or paying attention.
• Phenomenology: The distinctive quality of certain experiences (qualia).
• This raises a distinct challenge to Ryle’s theory of consciousness. Emotion or sensation can’t be understood as inner speech as Ryle suggests; we can’t always express these through audible speech!

Question 19

What is the category mistake presented by Ryle against dualism?

Answer 19

-It is thinking mental states are distinct from their associated behaviours.

• Suppose someone were to visit Oxford to see the university. The visitor is shown the library, teacher, canteen and so on. At the end he says ‘but where is the university?’
• The visitor has made a category mistake in thinking that the university is something other than the things he’s been shown already.

-We can apply this to mental states. If an alien asked what the mental state of pain was? We would show them people wincing, being tortured, punched, saying ‘ouch’ etc. There is nothing more you can show the alien then these behavioural dispositions.

Question 20

What is Hilary Putnam’s Argument of super Spartans against behaviourism? And a response from a behaviourist.

Answer 20

• It’s a development of the asymmetry argument with his example of ‘super Spartans’.
• They completely suppress any outward demonstration of pain. They don’t wince, flinch etc they have no dispositions toward pain behaviour whatsoever.
• Nevertheless we can say the super Spartans do feel pain internally. In this example pain and pain behaviour/dispositions are 2 separate things, so if they are possible, then behaviourism is false.

-The behaviourist could reply that without any sort of outward display it would be impossible to form the concept of pain. Without the concept of pain it is impossible to distinguish which behaviour they were supposed to be suppressing in the first place. So Putnams example is incoherent.

Question 21

Outline and explain the zombie argument against behaviourism.

Answer 21

• The zombie argument for property dualism can also be used to argue against behaviourism.
• A zombie is basically the exact opposite of a super Spartan: where the Spartan has qualia but not behaviour, the zombie has behaviour but no qualia. It might say “ouch!” when it gets stabbed but it doesn’t feel any pain internally.
• If zombies are possible, then it’s possible to have the behavioural dispositions associated with pain without actually being in pain. Therefore, the behavioural disposition of pain is separate from the feeling of pain. Therefore, behaviourism is false.

Question 22

Outline the issue of circularity against behaviourism. (Development of multiple realisability of mental states).

Answer 22

• It seems impossible for behaviourism to explain one mental state without assuming various other mental states. But these other mental states need a behavioural explanation too!
• The same behaviour can often be representative of two completely different mental states (multiple realisability). Likewise, the same mental state can often cause completely different behaviours in two different people or the same person at different times. For example, if a ghost jumped out at us, you might freeze with fear whereas I might run away in fear.
• So, my fear can’t simply be explained by my disposition to run away. The behaviourist will have to appeal to all sorts of other relevant information, such as the fact that I believe ghosts exist, etc.
• But a behaviourist can’t just refer to a ‘belief’ – this too must be explained in purely behavioural terms! And so on and so on.