1. Philosophy of Mind Lecture II: Mind&behavior. Behaviorism
in philosophy of mind

2. On mental states
Behaviorism a stance explaing the mind not in terms of internal mechanisms responsible for our behavior, but as something constituted by such behavior.
Behavior could be understood twofold:
physical behavior
agential behaviour
Broad and narrow conception and their consequences for philosophical stances

3. Psychological “roots”
1913 Watson:
Psychology as an objective science
Aim: prediction and control of behavior
Consciousness has no special role (in explanations)
Continuity between non-human creatures and human beings (similar mechanisms)
Mechanisms responsible for behavior decomposable into simpler ones (finally: S-R)
Consciousness: an epiphenomenon at best

4. Some doubts...
CNS and brain have no distinguished role in explanation of behavior
Description of stimuli and reactions: mentalist or physicalist description?
Attitude to the mental:
elimination,
mental states are irrelevant (unimportant)
Mental terms are translatable into physical ones

5. Philosophical behaviorism
Interested in:
meanings of psychological terms
the problem of ascription of states of mind
John is thinking of London
What is it about John that makes it true that he is thinking of London?

6. Eliminativist behaviorism
...rejects (repudiate) all or most of our commonsense psychological ontology: beliefs, conscious states, sensations, and so on.
Folk psychology, (our tacit theory of the behavior of others) suffers various deficiencies and should be replaced
the replacement theory is to be couched in the vocabulary of physical behavior ( terminology of kinematics, fragment of English); the vocabulary should not contain mentally loaded terms.
W.v.O. Quine:
belief and desire talk resists regimentation in first order logic
the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation

7. Logical (analytical) behaviorism
All psychological statements which are meaningful (which are in principle verifiable) are translatable into propositions which do not involve psychological concepts, but only concepts of physics
[C.G. Hempel]
Inspirations:
Verificationism as the theory of meaning
Our behavior is the evidence for ascribing mental states
What is the content of psychological claims?

8. Privileged access Immaterial states vs observable states
The problem of “inner feeling/inner access”
(A to B): You're in pain.
(B): I am in pain!
Putnam: logical behaviorism wants to show that mental events are logical constructions out of actual or possible behavior.
Brain events have nothing in common with meanings of utterances;
Commonsense utterances have nothing in common with “thinking substance”

9. Logical behaviorism according to Putnam
Theses:
There exist entailments between mind-statements and behavior-statements [analytic entailments]
These entailments may not provide and actual translation of 'mind talk' into 'behavior talk'
Cluster concepts – the application is controlled by a whole cluster of criteria (cf. pain, polio)
Thought experiment: community of 'super-spartans'
States of mind (e.g. pain) are responsible for particular behavior, but only in a context.

10. Fragility of a goblet is its state
What are dispositions?
We may consider dispositions as states:
Fragility of a goblet is its state
1. thoughts are dispositions
2. dispositions are states
3. conseq: thoughts are states
The logical problem with defining dispositions:
M(x)≡[D(x)→N(x)]

11. Contemporary behaviorism
P. Geach: atomistic version of behaviorism leads to a dead end
Roots:
Analitical functionalism (Armstrong, Lewis)
Rejection of the idea that a mind need internal, causal organization to have beliefs (vs. functionalism)
Wittgenstein's attack on the possibility of a “private language” (meaning must be manifestable in behavior)

12. Contemporary behaviorism: theses
Behavior-as-necessary: necessarily, anything that has no physical behavioral dispositions of a certain kind and complexity does not have a mental life.
Behavior-as-sufficient: necessarily, anything that has physical behavioral dispositions of a certain kind and complexity has a mental life (cf. Dennett, intentional stance)
Supervenient behaviorism: psychological facts supervene on physical behavioral dispositions: necessarily, if x and y differ with respect to types of mental states, then they differ with respect to types of behavioral dispositions

13. Most important: Mind as constituted by behavior (or dispositions)
Physical and agential behavior
Psychological behaviorism
Behaviorism and the mental
Eliminative behaviorism
Logical behaviorism
Verificationism as a theory of meaning
Translatability of mental terms into physical
Common-sense psychology
Privileged access
Dispositions
Putnam's arguments against behaviorism
3 theses of contemporary behaviorism
Arguments against above theses