Maslin - Chapter 4.docx

Analytical behaviourism  4.1 Introduction  Statements about the mind and mental states turn out, after analysis, to be equivalent to statements that describe a person’s actual and potential public behaviour  Only patterns of behaviour exhibited  Three strengths:  Avoidance of the Mind/Body Interaction Problem  The mind does cause behaviour it is behaviour  The Non-mysteriousness of The Mental  No speculation about how non-physical properties can emerge from underlying physical processes is rendered redundant  Dissolving The Problem of Other Minds  Able to witness others behaviour, their mind in action  Animals are included  4.2 Analytical contrasted with methodological behaviourism  Distinguish from psychological behaviourism  4.3 Analytical behaviourism  Statements describing mental or psychological states can be translated without loss of meaning, into ones describing possible and actual behaviour  Terms comprising the analysis must not contain or presuppose any of the mental vocabulary that is being analysed or the argument will be circular  A causes B, not: A causes B and B happens because of A – circular  Cannot logically conclude an effect from its cause, or a cause from its effect  The analysis of a phenomenon cannot contain the phenomenon to be analysed  Challenge to use behavioural description alone  4.4 Hempel’s ‘hard’ behaviourism  Verification principle – unless a statement could be verified empirically (the non- empirical analytic truths o logic and mathematics having been set to one die), it would have to be rejected as devoid of meaning, as literally empty of any significance  Only had to be verified in principle, not practice  Difference between (a) ‘Martin raised his arm.’ and (b) ‘Martin’s arm went up.’  A entails b, but b does not entail a  Two distinct modes of behavioural description:  1) descriptions of what people do – agential descriptions  2)characterizes what occurs in terms of bodily movements will only respond in the way does, if he wants to tell truth  4.5 Specifying patterns of behaviour  Indefinite variety of things can do to count as behavioural expressions (of pain feels)  To be a successful analysis it must mention all types of behaviour, and only those that are capable of constituting Paul’s expression of pain  Indefinite ways for people to express the belief about the intractability of providing an account of consciousness  There are things we can say by means of a mentalistic vocabulary that we cannot with a purely putative Physicalist translation of it  Analysis relies upon an indispensable reference to a mentalistic item for its execution, all reference to such items was excluded from the analysis  4.6 Circulatory and infinite regression  Actions we perform result from combination of mental states  2 circularities: large and small one  Large – no behavioural analysis may be allowed to contain unanalysed mental terms, and the problem is that ha residue of unanalyzed mental items will be left for behavioural analysis, unending process  Small – behavioural analysis of a desire has to use the unanalysed notion of a belief and the behaviour analysis of a belief to make use of the unanalysed notion of a desire  Solution – Ramsey sentence:  4.7 Ryle’s ‘soft’ behaviourism  Determine logical cross-bearings of concepts of the mental, to enable people who can already talk sense with these concepts to be able, in addition, to talk sense about them, after the manner of the logical of philosophical map-maker who seeks to gain a synoptic view of the concepts by making clear their interrelations and the regulations governing their uses  Analogy of the university  It is the totality of the university that makes it not an individual building  Same for the mind  Workings of a person’s mind are identical with public performances  Not worried about circularity, does not reduce mental states to purely physical descriptions after the manned of logical positivists  Why is labelled soft compared to