Physicalism content Flashcards
Explain the difference between an analytic reduction and an ontological reduction of mental states
- Analytic reduction concerns concepts and language
- WHEREAS ontological reduction concerns the nature of beings/ existence.
- Analytic reduction: aim to show language of one term can be reduced or broken down into the language of another term without loss of meaning.
- e.g. the term bachelor can be reduced to unmarried man without any loss of meaning (and so they are analytically reducible to each other)
- You cannot argue they aren’t the same without logical contradiction.
- Ontological reduction: aim to show entities of another kind in concept, are entities of one kind in reality.
- Thus they are numerically identical and share the same spatial and time qualities.
- e.g. although the morning star and evening star refer to two different concepts, they are the same entity – the same star.
Leibniz law
If X=Y, then everything true of X is true of Y, and vice versa (every property of X is a property of Y and vice versa).
> If they don’t share even one property they cannot be the same thing.
Physicalism
Everything that exists - including the mind and mental states - is either a physical thing or supervenes on physical things.
(the universe is made of just one kind of thing: physical properties)
3 physicalist theories
Behaviourism, eliminative materialism and functionalism.
Hard Behaviourism
CARL HEMPELL
All propositions about mental states can be reduced without loss of meaning to propositions about bodily states/movements (behaviours).
Soft Behaviourism
GILBERT RYLE
All propositions about mental states are propositions about behavioural dispositions.
What is a behavioural disposition?
A disposition is how something will or is likely to behave in a certain circumstance.
For example: a wine glass has a disposition to break when dropped on a hard surface
LIKEWISE: someone in the mental state of pain will have a disposition to say “ouch!” - even if they don’t actually do so in every instance.
How does soft behaviourism fix the issue of multiple realisability?
- You can have a mental state but not display any behaviour. For example, you can be in pain but hide the behaviour (super-spartans). - OR pretend to be in pain when you’re not actually feeling anything (like when a player dives in football).
- However, you will always have the disposition to be in pain (super-spartan), or to not feel pain (footballer)
Functionalism
- Functionalism characterises mental states as functional states that precede behaviour in between an output and input.
- e.g. pain is the functional state between stubbing your toe and moving your foot away/wincing (behaviour)
- these mental states are multiply realised
Machine state functionalism
The inner workings of the brain are akin to the information processing of a computer.
Eliminative materialism
PAUL AND PATRICIA CHURCHLAND
- Some or all of common-sense (folk-psychology) mental states/properties do not exist and our common sense understanding is radically mistaken.
- Therefore we should eliminate all talk of mental states and replace is with neurophysiological language instead
- For example, talk of pain doesn’t discuss anything and we should instead talk of c-fibres firing.
Folk psychology
Our “common sense psychology”
our everyday way of understanding, or rationalising behaviours in mentalistic terms.
e. g.
- He ran away because he was scared.
- She got a drink because she was thirsty.
Phlogiston comparison
- Obsolete scientific theory - doesn’t apply to reality as the entities it describes doesn’t exist.
- Phlogiston is a substance supposed by 18th-century chemists to exist in all combustible bodies, and to be released in combustion.
- CHURCHLAND SUGGESTED:
- Folk Psychology is not significantly different from Phlogiston.
- Therefore it is possible that folk psychology is false and that the entitles it describes don’t exist.
- Therefore we shouldn’t use it in science or philosophy of mind.
Churchland believes that folk psychology isn’t just something we assume, its a..
scientific theory like any other and the nature of scientific progress requires bad theories to be replaced by better ones.
What should we replace folk psychology with after its been eliminated?
A more rigorous scientific theory with specific descriptions of the mechanics of the brain = e.g. neuroscience.
- It may useful to use folk psychology as shorthand, we shouldn’t take it to be literally true.
- Churchland isn’t saying ordinary people should stop using words like ‘belief’ and ‘pain’.
- However, he is saying that when we’re doing science or philosophy of mind we shouldn’t use folk psychology terms because they’re not technically accurate.
- We should look to eliminate them in favour of the correct explanations.
