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PHI 575-Behaviorism Philosophy 575 Prof. Clare Batty Behaviorism 1. Recap: The Cartesian Mind According to Ryle, the Cartesian mind has the following features: a. non-material: the mind does not exist in space nor is it subject to physical laws. b. private: it is not possible to have access to the mental states of other minds. c. transparent and immediately accessible: if you are in a certain mental state, you are in a position to know it. We have unmediated access to the contents of our mind unlike our access to things in the external world, which is mediated by the senses. d. internal (but not really internal, because then it would be spatial in some important sense). e. temporal but non-spatial. 2. Rylean Problems with Substance Dualism (a) The problem of other minds: All we have contact with are the bodies of other people. How can we ever know that other minds in the world exist or know what they are like? If we only have direct access to our own minds, how do we know that other people aren’t just robots in human form? As Ryle claims: “Absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul. Only our bodies can meet” (16). (b) The problem of the acquisition of psychological language: On the Cartesian view, it remains a mystery how we could have even learned the meaning of psychological terms. After all, on the Cartesian picture, terms like ‘pain’, ‘belief’, ‘desire’ and so on refer to states of certain sorts—states to which the owner him/herself only has access. It is hard to see how psychological terms entered public language such as English given that psychological terms do not refer to states or events to which there is inter-subjective access. 3. Rylean Diagnosis of their Origin Descartes was faced with two conflicting views: i. The view that mechanical laws exist and apply to every physical object ii. The view that human beings have free will and an immortal soul. Descartes’ resolution: posit another separate realm for the mind similar to the physical world but with non- physical laws and causes, objects and events—“the same only different”. 4. Descartes’ Legacy Descartes’ Dogma of a Ghost in the Machine i. Every human being has both a body and a mind. ii. The body: In space (extended), in time, subject to physical laws, public. iii. The mind: In time but not space, not subject to physical laws, private. iv. Privileged access: Everyone has a special kind of (infallible?) access to the contents of her own mental states. So there is something that is directly Given in experience. The Legacy of the Ghost: We have fallen into the trap of assuming that our psychological language refers to events in and states of this Cartesian mind (or the Cartesian ‘Ghost in the Machine’). 1 e.g. Consider the sentence ‘Sally is in lots of pain’. When you utter this sentence, you must be referring to some inner (distinctly mental) state or event of Sally’s. Or, ‘Jake believes that is going to snow today’. When I utter this sentence, I must be referring to some inner (distinctly mental) state of Jake’s. But, according to Ryle, this rests on a mistake. Ryle: The Dogma rests on a Category Mistake Category mistake: Attributing a property P to a thing o when P not only does not apply to o, but also isn’t the right sort of property to apply to anything of of o’s kind. Example: Someone visits UK and is shown Patterson, Memorial Hall, the Student Center, Young Library,the Coliseum, Tolly Ho, etc., and then says, “okay, now show me the university”. The mistake that they’re making is in thinking that the University exists in the same way that these other things do. But it doesn’t. It’s a more abstract entity which relates all of these locations (among other things) to each other. “These illustrations of category-mistakes have a common feature which must be noticed. The mistakes were made by people who did not know how to wield the concepts: University, division and team spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items in the English vocabulary.” Someone who thinks that the mind exists in the same sense as the body (it’s just made of a different stuff) is guilty of a category mistake. These are ‘things’ in very different sense of the word ‘thing’. We know how to use the words ‘belief’, ‘pain’ and so on, but we take it that these terms refer to ‘inner’ mental episodes or states (i.e. the ‘private’ causes of our public bodily actions). But they do not. 5. Logical Behaviorism What comes after Descartes? Logical Positivism: Verification Criterion of Meaningfulness: A sentence S has meaning iff it is capable of being verified (either directly or indirectly). What about statements about seemingly private, subjective, psychological states, e.g., those of the form ‘X is in pain’, ‘X believes that Pittsburgh will win’, ‘X hopes that Arizona will win’? Next: Logical Behaviorism Behaviorism: Mental states are behavioral states, or dispositions to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. Logical Behaviorism: the very meaning of psychology sentences can be cashed out in behavioral terms. As Putnam puts it, the thesis is that “mental events are logical constructions out of actual and possible behavior events.” Example: ‘Bob is in pain’ means ‘Bob is exhibiting behaviors B1, B2, B3...’ or perhaps ‘Bob is disposed to do A1 (if he’s in conditions C1), and A2 (if he’s in conditions C2), and A3 (if he’s in conditions C3)...’ Two kinds of behavior: a. physical behavior: an instance of physical behavior is a physical change to a creature’s body, such as the rising of the creature’s arm, or the emission of certain sounds. b. agential behavior: an instance of agential behavior is something a creature does, such as raising its arm or saying that it is time for lunch. We can also define physical behavioral dispositions and agential behavioral dispositions. Dispositions are properties like fragility, solubility, elasticity. Something is fragile, for example, just in case it would break if struck or dropped. Important: something can be fragile even though it is never in fact struck or dropped. Similarly for a soluble sugar cube, or an elastic band. 2 6. Putnam: Burying Logical Behaviorism A First Argument Against Logical Behaviorism (LB): 1. LB entails that it’s not possible for there to be worlds where there is pain, but no pain behavior (or disposition to pain behavior). This should be incoherent. 2. But such worlds are possible (e.g., the Super-Spartan world or Super-Super-Spartan Xworld). There is no incoherence here. 3. So, LB is wrong. A Second Argument Against LB: A good actor could have all of the behavior and behavioral dispositions of someone in pain. On the LB view that means that the good actor is in pain. But that’s absurd. The dualist and non-behaviorist materialist will say that “although the meaning of ‘pain’ may be explained by reference to overt behaviour, what we mean by ‘pain’ is not the presence of a cluster of [actual and potential] responses, but rather the presence of an event or condition that normally cases those responses.” (47) 3 .
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