3.4.3 Physicalist theories - 5 markers

Question 1

Explain how soft behaviourism and hard behaviourism differ

Answer 1

Soft behaviourists reduce mental-state language to behavioural propositions, not behaviours. A behavioural disposition is a description of how someone is likely to behave in a particular circumstance, for example, “Tom is sad” is “Tom is likely to cry”. Whereas hard behaviourists reduce mental-state language to observable states of the body, for example, “Tom is sad” is “Tom is crying”. Moreover, soft behaviourists reduce mental-state-talk to “ordinary language”, not to physics. This means that it’s fine to reduce something like “Tom has a persecution complex” to something like “Tom will get defensive if criticised”. Whereas hard behaviourists are trying to integrate mental-state-talk into science.

Question 2

Explain the view that ‘hard’ behaviourists cannot satisfactorily define mental states due to the multiple realisability of mental states in behaviour

Answer 2

Hard behaviourists claim that mental state terms are identical in meaning to descriptions about observable behaviour, e.g. “Tom is hungry” can be defined as “Tom is rubbing his stomach”. If hard behaviourism is true, then for any given mental term, we should be able to fully translate it into a description of behaviour without loss of meaning. However, this is unlikely to be true because mental states are multiply realizable in behaviour. In other words, there is a near infinite list of behavioural manifestations for any given mental state, and this list will vary from person to person. This complexity makes a complete translation impossible.

Question 3

Explain the ‘super-spartan’ objection to behaviourism

Answer 3

Behaviourism is a physicalist theory of mind that claims that all propositions about mental states are actually propositions about behaviour (or their behavioural dispositions). If behaviourism is true, then if someone is not exhibiting (and is not disposed to exhibit) any relevant behaviours, then they do not have the associated mental state. However, a super spartan is a being who can feel pain but never exhibits any pain behavior whatsoever, this directly contradicts the behaviorist claim that if someone is not exhibiting (and is not disposed to exhibit) any relevant behaviours, then they do not have the associated mental state. But Super Spartans can feel pain, so, this behaviourist claim is false.

Question 4

Explain the possibility of functional duplicate with different qualia (inverted qualia)

Answer 4

If functionalism is right to identify mental states with the functional/causal roles they play, then a
functional duplicate of me (ie one for whom the same inputs lead to the same outputs) must have the
same mental states as I do. However, we can conceive of a being who is my functional duplicate but
who has different – indeed inverted – mental states from me. Mental states can therefore not be
identical to functional states/causal roles.
* Here is one way of presenting the argument (in standard form), though there are other ways it could
be presented.

P1: It is conceivable that two functionally identical beings/systems could have [systematically]
inverted qualia with respect to each other (the ‘inversion scenario’)
o This is normally thought of in terms of colour experience (where it would be a spectrum
inversion) but can be in terms of other sense modalities.
o They would always act in the same way as me – they would say all of the same sentences,
pick out all of the same objects given the same requests etc.

o P2: If something is conceivable then it is logically/metaphysically possible

o C1: Therefore, this ‘inversion scenario’ (described above) is logically/metaphysically possible.

o P3: If the ‘inversion scenario’ is logically/metaphysically possible, then phenomenal properties are
not functional properties

o C2: Therefore, phenomenal properties are not functional properties and so functionalism is not a
complete account of the mind.

Question 5

Explain the the possibility of a functional duplicate with no mentality/qualia (Ned Block’s China thought experiment)

Question 6

Explain how the ‘knowledge’/Mary argument can be applied to functional facts (no amount of facts about function suffices to explain qualia).