2.       Behaviourism and Beyond

Analytical Behaviourism

Behaviourism: mental states are behavioural dispositions

Analytical Behaviourism: the concept of any particular mental state is the concept of the appropriate behavioural disposition

Behaviourism and physicalism

Behaviourists don’t have to be materialists, but the only reason to be a B-ist is if you are a M-ist

B-ism tells us what about the physical world determines mentality.

The Case for Behaviourism

Behaviour as the essence of mind

Our attribution of mental states is linked to our observation of relevant behaviours.

The Belief-Desire psychology we use to understand people relies upon this connection: it is the essence of mental states to show up in behvaiour of the appropriate kind.

The connection can be explained by assuming that a mental state just is the relevant behavioural disposition.

Behaviourism and the existence of mental states

Two ways of stating this B-ism:

1.                    There are no mental states: mental terms are merely abbreviations of descriptions of behavioural dispositions

2.                    There are mental states; but they are identical to dispositions

The supervenience argument for behaviourism

Surely it’s true that there’s no difference in mental states without a difference in behavioural dispositions, so M states supervene on B dispositions.

Methodological and Revisionary Behaviourism

Methodological B-ism: The way to study the mind is through behaviour and behavioural dispositions.

Note that MB follows from the assumption of AB.

The fact that MB is more productive than introspective methods is taken as evidence for AB. (An example of inference to best explanation?)

Revisionary B-ism: Mental terms aren’t – but should be revised to be  - reducible to descriptions of BD.

Problems for Behaviourism

The first person objection

B-ism doesn’t seem convincing from the 1^st-person point of view.

1.             Don’t we know our own mind better than we know others’? Yet we don’t necessarily know our own behaviour better than others’.

Yes, but the B-ist can allow that we know our own dispositions better than those of others.

2.             We do seem to have direct access to occurrent internal states that don’t seem to be just dispositions

                                Yes. It is hard for B-ists to say anything sensible about this.

The analyses are never delivered

So MS are abbreviations of BD descriptions? Let’s see one? It never happens – and there’s a reason for this.

The causal objection

According to B-ism mental states don’t cause behaviour.

Diagnosis of the behaviourists’ error

Two factors made B-ism take the form it did:

1.                    Rejecting unobservables as theoretical posits.

But we go beyond observables all the time. Electrons, Big Bang, Julius Caesar, etc.

2.                    Influence of Verificationism.

But V-ism was incoherent.

Causal connection and conceptual connection

A further factor:

3.             If mental states are internal states causing behaviour, then they are brain states. If so then they are only contingently connected to behaviours – whereas MS should be conceptually (necessarily) connected.

The poison example

But we may allow that MS cause behaviours, as well as saying that what they cause is what makes it right that they are called the MS that they are. So both intuitions are respected.

The matchup problem

A final objection: there is no one-to-one mapping from MS to BD; there are only maps between total systems of MSs and BDs. NB : there is no default behaviour that will follow a MS w/o interference.

The Path to Functionalism via a Causal Theory

Mental states as causes of behaviour

Causal objection indicates that MS are internal causes of behaviour; and if its causal role is part of what makes an MS the MS that it is, then mind and behaviour are still linked.

Note it is pain – together with other mental states – that causes behaviour.

History makes behaviour appropriate

Note that the behaviour has to have the right causal history. Desire for beer doesn’t cause me to walk towards beer unless I believe beer is there. And my beliefs about beer have to be properly caused by the presence or absence of beer. (Very rough statement.)

The Causal Theory of Mind

Mental states and paralysis

Given the above, propose a causal theory of mind: MS are internal states with typical causes and effects.

They can be typical causes even if in some particular cases – of paralytics, for example – can’t show the behavioural effects.

This sort of causal theory is a functionalist theory: in which an MS is defined in terms of its relations with environmental inputs, other mental states, and behavioural outputs.