physicalism

Question 1

physicalism

Answer 1

• this is the view that only the physical exists
• everything there is either physical or depends on what is physical
• the physical is everything studied by physics: physical laws govern everything that exists, everything in the universe has a sufficient physical cause

Question 2

physicalist approaches to the mental

Answer 2

what are mental properties

• elimination: there are no mental properties as we usually think of them
• reduction: metal properties are identical to physical properties (e.g. mental properties are behaviours or neurons firing)
• dependent but distinct: mental properties are not identical to physical properties but do depend on them (e.g. mental properties are functional properties)

Question 3

supervenience

Answer 3

• mental properties ‘supervene’ on physical properties just in case any two things that are exactly alike in their physical properties cannot have different mental properties cannot have different mental properties
• compare: aesthetic properties - two paintings that are physically identical must be aesthetically identical - once all the physical properties are fixed, the aesthetic properties are fixed, it isn’t just that the aesthetic properties don’t change without the physical properties changing - they can’t change without the physical properties changing
• it is not possible to change something’s mental properties without changing its physical properties
• so, it is not possible for two physically identical beings to have different mental properties

Question 4

philosophical behaviourism

Answer 4

• behaviourism - the meaning of words used to describe mental states is about what is externally observable, i.e. behaviour and behavioural dispositions
• these are views that seek to analyse mental concepts in terms of behaviour
• when we use mental terns we are really talking about behaviour
• it is not the same as methodological behaviourism
• methodological behaviourism: the view that a truly scientific psychological should only deal with things that can be observed (behaviour)

Question 5

two types of behaviourism

Answer 5

• soft behaviourism: associated with Gilbert Ryle; analyses the mental in terms of behaviour and dispositions to behave
• hard behaviourism: associated with Carl Hempel; All propositions about mental states can be reduced without loss of meaning to propositions about behaviours and bodily states using the language of physics

Question 6

soft behaviourism

Answer 6

• soft behaviourism: propositions about mental states are propositions about behavioural dispositions
• Ryle criticises Descartes, not just for being wrong about what exists, but for not even understanding what our mental terms mean
• he claims that Descartes has made a category mistake in his thinking
• Ryle argues that philosophy of mind is not about doing metaphysics (asking ‘what exists’), it is about understanding the meaning of our concepts

Question 7

dualism’s ‘category mistake’

Answer 7

• category mistake: to treat a concept as belonging to a different logical category from the one it actually belongs to
• the mind is not another thing: it is not a distinct, complex, organised unit, subject to distinct relations of cause and effect (to lose your mind and lose your keys us not to lose two things); mental concepts (of ‘states’ and ‘processes’) do not operate like physical concepts
• the ‘para-mechanical hypothesis’: since physical processes can be explained in mechanical terms, mental concepts must refer to non mechanical processes, this is a category mistake

Question 8

dispositions (soft behaviourism)

Answer 8

• a disposition is how something will or is likely to behave in certain circumstances
• a simple form of behaviourism is to say that to be in mental state X is to behave in way Y
• e.g. to be in pain is to exhibit pain behaviour
• objection: what about suppressed pain (pain without pain behaviour)
• many mental states, e.g. knowing french, are dispositions, not occurrences
• so (many) mental states are dispositions of a person to behave in certain ways (in certain circumstances)
• to be in pain is to be disposed to cry out, nurse the injured part of the body, etc
• we often speak of mental states expressed in action - knowing how to play chess, reading thoughtfully; a skill is not a single action, but neither is it a non physical thing, it is a disposition
• disposition: how something will or is likely to behave under certain circumstances, e.g. solubility
• mental concepts, e.g. being proud, pick out a set of dispositions that are ‘indefinitely heterogenous’

Question 9

not categorical, not reducible

Answer 9

• whether someone has a particular disposition is a matter of whether certain statements about what they could or would do are true or not
• many of these circumstances may never arise
• psychological statements don’t describe categorical - actual, concrete, particular - states of some mental substance
• statements involving mental concepts can’t be translated or reduced to a set of hypothetical statements about behaviour
• mental concepts can be analysed in these terms, but never completely replaced - the account in terms of what a person would in circumstances X, Y, Z can’t be completed

Question 10

thinking

Answer 10

• how can an ‘internal process’ like thinking be a disposition to behaviour
• we often talk of doing things thoughtfully, this is not something separate to the behaviour, it is the way we do the behaviour
• thinking to oneself is internalised speaking: speaking is behaviour, and thinking is acquired later; the silence is inessential to the nature of thinking - you can think out loud or with a pen and paper

Question 11

physicalism and the category mistake

Answer 11

• we can extend Ryle’s criticism of substance dualism to later physicalist theories
• identity theory and eliminative materialism understand mental properties and physical properties in the same way
• identity: they are physical properties
• eliminativism: they are part of a (faulty) empirical, causal account of human behaviour
• this metaphysical approach to philosophy of mind commits the same category mistake as dualism
• nevertheless, philosophical behaviourism is a physicalist theory - we can’t talk about mental substances and properties as things that ‘exist’
• questions about what exists are questions about physical substance and properties
• mental states are analysed in terms of behaviour, which depends upon physical properties

Question 12

logical positivism

Answer 12

• a school of though in philosophy that grew out of the ‘Vienna circle’
• Vienna circle: a group of philosophers and scientists who met in Vienna during 1920s and 30s
• some key figures associated with it: Carl Hempel, A J Ayer
• key ideas: philosophy should not seek to answer questions about what reality is like (e.g. what is right and wrong), that is the job of science; the role of philosophy is to sort meaningful from meaningless questions, it is then the job of science to answer the meaningful questions; the only meaningful statements are those that are empirically verifiable or analytic

Question 13

hard behaviourism

Answer 13

• Carl Hempel is a logical positivist and therefore rejects any descriptions of a person in terms of things that are unobservable
• the mental cannot refer to non physical properties or substances since these are unobservable
• they cannot even refer to dispositions
• instead, if our mental discourse is to be meaningful, it must refer to what we can observe
• hard behaviourism says mental states analytically reduce to behaviours (and other externally observable physical facts)

Question 14

Hempel on meaning

Answer 14

• what is the meaning of a scientific statement
• to know the meaning of a statement is to know the conditions under which we would call it true and those under which we would call it false
• so, ‘the meaning of a statement is established by the conditions of its verification’ = the observations that we can make to check its truth
• first implication: if we can’t, in principle, empirically check the truth of the statement, it is meaningless
• second implication: two statements have the same meaning if they are both true or both false in the same conditions (they have the same conditions of verification)
• third, we can translate a statement into a series of statements that simply describe the conditions of verification
• translation: a statement with the same meaning, but expressed in different words or concepts
• e.g. a statement with the concept TEMPERATURE can be translated into a series of statements describing the observations we make to establish whether the first statement, using TEMPERATURE is true

Question 15

the meaning of psychological statements

Answer 15

• the meaning of ‘Riley has a toothache’ (or any other psychological claim) is its conditions of verification
• conditions of verification:
  ~ ‘Riley weeps and make gestures of such and such kinds’ (bodily behaviour)
  ~ at the question, ‘what is the matter?’, Riley utters the words ‘I have a toothache’ (physical bodily states)
  ~ ‘Riley’s blood pressure, digestive processes, the speed of his reactions, show such and such changes’ (physiological changes)
  ~ ‘closer examination reveals a decayed tooth with exposed pulp’ (physical bodily states)
  ~ ‘such and such processes occur in Riley’s central nervous system’
• so psychological statements can’t be about private states of the person
• the only have meaning if they can be publicly checked, so they must be about physical and behaviour states
• these conditions of verification give us the meaning of the psychological statement
• the conditions of verification don’t tell us only how we know, but what psychological concepts mean
• so psychological statements can be translated, without changing the meaning of what is said, into statements that only use physical concepts

Question 16

implications

Answer 16

• there is no ‘essence’ to mental states that distinguish them from what is physical
• talk of mental states just is talk of behaviour and physical bodily changes
• so there is no question of the mind body interaction
• this is not eliminativism - rather than say mental states don’t exist, Hempel says that there is no real question of whether they exist
• to say ‘pain exists’ or ‘there are beliefs’ is to say that we can make certain observations of the person’s behaviour

Question 17

behaviourist responses to dualist theories

Answer 17

1. conceivability argument
   - behaviourists say that a mind without a body is not conceivable because a mind is not a thing - it is the behaviours of a physical body, we only think we can conceive of a mind without a body because we haven’t got clear about what our mental terms mean
2. indivisibility argument
   - the reason that the mind cannot be divided is because it is not a spatial thing, the mistake Descartes makes is to think this means it is a non spatial thing
3. physical zombies
   - behaviourists deny that philosophical zombies are conceivable, our mental terms refer to behaviours and since a philosophical zombie has all the behaviours, it must have the same mental states
4. the knowledge argument
   - what Mary gains when she sees red for the first time is a new set of dispositions, she now has the disposition to identify certain objects as red

Question 18

objection: the distinctness of mental states from behaviour

Answer 18

• the behaviourist says that our mental states are just observable behaviours (and dispositions to behave)
• that means that it would not be possible to have the mental state without the corresponding behaviour
• some philosophers have argues that it is possible that a person has a mental state with no behaviour to go with it
• perfect actors: a perfect actor is some one who can produce behaviour (e.g. like they are in pain) when they do not have the mental state
• response: Ryle would say that the actor still differs in dispositions to act compared to someone with the mental state
• super spartans: Putnam described a community of super spartans, they are raised to have the ability to supress all involuntary pain behaviour, they still feel pain and say they feel pain, but without the behaviour
• response: Ryle would say that although the spartans have no actual behaviours, they still have the dispositions
• super super spartans: in response to Ryle’s response, Putnam adapts his example, super super spartans suppress all talk of pain, they pretend not to know the word or phenomena to which it refers
• response: Hempel would say that there must be at least a physiological difference in their brain state (although this sounds like min brain type identity theory)

Question 19

defining mental states in terms of behaviour

Answer 19

there are two objections that claim we cannot adequately define mental states in terms of behaviour:
1. multiple realisability
2. circularity

Question 20

objection: the multiple realisability of mental states in behaviour

Answer 20

• there is no one to one correspondence between mental states and behaviour
• the same mental state can produce different behaviours in different people (even when they are in the same circumstances)
• therefore, there is no way to analyse mental states in terms of behaviour

Question 21

objection: circular definition

Answer 21

• mental states do not result in behaviours simply on their own
• if you are in pain, your behaviour will depend on other mental states you have
• e.g. whether you also believe that someone is watching you, whether you have the attitude that it is good to express your feeling or not, etc
• we can explain the mental states without referring to other mental states, therefore the analysis is circular

Question 22

responses: multiple realisability and circularity

Answer 22

Hempel:
- these objections are especially a problem for hard behaviourism because it claims that we could translate mental terms into statements about behaviour
- he could claim that it is still possible by explaining them in terms of physiological claims about the brain
Ryle:
- Ryle denies that mental terms are reducible to behaviour statements, mental terms are higher order behavioural claims

Question 23

objection: the asymmetry between self knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states

Answer 23

• dualism thinks of mental states as ‘inner’ and defends an asymmetry of knowledge
• our mental states are inaccessible to other people, but known to us through conscious introspection
• how can behaviourism explain our superior access to our own mental life if the mental is observable

Question 24

response to: the asymmetry between self knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental states

Answer 24

• behaviourism rejects this asymmetry: we don’t have to infer that someone has a mind from their behaviour, to say that someone has certain behaviour dispositions just is to say they have a mind, so we can know other people’s mental states
• further objection: do we really only have access to our own mental states by observing our own behaviour? if they are behavioural dispositions, how could ‘introspection’ reveal them?
• Hempel approaches psychological concepts only from the scientific (third person) point of view - he says nothing about how we can talk about and understand our own mental states, he claims the objection is misguided because it refers to things that are unobservable
• Ryle: conscious introspection is a myth - we pay attention to ourselves just as we pay attention to others’ behaviour, to know what you think is just to be ready to say what you think, we just have more evidence (thinking is inner speech)

Question 25

category mistake as an argument for behaviourism

Answer 25

• mental states are distinct from their associated behaviours (as dualism claims) is to make a category mistake
• it confuses one type of concept with another
• Ryle gives the following example to illustrate why dualism makes a similar such category mistake: Suppose someone were to visit Oxford to see the university. the visitor is shown the library, the lecture theatres, the teachers, and so on. after the tour is complete, he says: ‘but where is the university?’
• the visitor has made a category mistake in thinking that the university is something other than the things he’s been shown already
• the visitor thinks the university is in the category of objects you can isolate and point to, but instead it’s more of an abstraction
• Ryle argues that dualists make the same sort of category mistake when talking about mental states
• suppose an alien were to ask what the mental state of pain is: you show the alien people stubbing their toes, being tortured, wincing, saying ‘ouch!’, etc
• after showing the alien these examples of pain it asks: ‘but what is pain?’
• Ryle is arguing that the mental state of pain is nothing more than the various behavioural dispositions associated with pain
• there is nothing you can show the alien over and above these behavioural dispositions