| Arguments in Favor | Responses | |
| The methodological thesis (Kim: scientific behaviorism, methodological behaviorism, esp. version (III), p. 85; also called psychological behaviorism) Psychology should not make use of hypotheses about "inner" mental events |
Positivist argument:
1. We must be able to conclusively verify any scientific hypothesis 2. We can't conclusively verify hypotheses about inner states Therefore, 3. Scientific psychology can't refer to inner states. |
we don't conclusively verify scientific hypotheses; we employ "inference to the best explanation," or hypothetico-deductive justification. So premise 1 is mistaken. |
| "Middle link" argument: 1. Mental states just mediate between perceptual stimuli and behavioral responses. Therefore, 2. We can ignore them and predict responses directly on the basis of stimuli. |
Compare: a computer's program just mediates between input and output, so we can predict output directly on the basis of input. The premise is true, in a sense, but the conclusion doesn't follow. | |
| The linguistic thesis
(Kim: Logical Behaviorism, pp. 68-78):
Sentences about mental events are translatable into sentences about behavior (or about behavioral dispositions). |
Argument from language learning: 1. We learn the meaning of sentences about mental events by learning to associate them with observable phenomena (behavior or behavioral dispositions, in the case of terms for mental states). 2. Sentences are about the phenomena we learn to associate them with. Therefore, 3. Sentences are about observable phenomena (behavior or behavioral dispositions, in the case of terms for mental states). |
Premise 2 is false. Words do not necessarily refer to whatever we learn to associate them with, because in many cases we learn to associate them with verification conditions, not truth conditions (see below). |
| Argument from verificationism: 1. The meaning of any sentence is given by its verification conditions (i.e. by the observation sentences that would confirm it). 2. We verify sentences about mental events by means of observations about behavior. Therefore, 3. Sentences about mental events have the same meaning as the sentences about behavioral states that would confirm them. |
we need to distinguish between (a) truth conditions and (b) verification conditions. Our evidence for most scientific phenomena is not directly the phenomenon itself, but rather other things that are caused by the phenomenon in question. (For example, our evidence for the existence of dinosaurs is dinosaur fossils, but it would be a mistake to infer that dinosaurs are nothing more than their fossils! It is a similar mistake to think that mental states are nothing more than behavior.) | |
| The metaphysical thesis (Kim: Ontological Behaviorism, pp. 78-82): mental states are identical with behaviors (or at least with sets of behaviors, or dispositions to behave, or something similar) |
The main argument for the metaphysical thesis has been some version of the linguistic arguments above. | it seems possible to have a mental state without exhibiting any of the behavior
associated with that state (consider Dennett's example about using curare plus an amnestic
drug during surgery). Further, it seems possible to have a mental state without being disposed to exhibit the behavior we think of as characteristic of the state. (Consider Putnam's X-Worlders.)
(Also, it seems possible to behave as though one is in a mental state even though one isn't: consider very good actors.) |
References:
References to Kim: Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Third Edition (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2011).
Dennett curare example: Daniel C. Dennett, "Why You Can't Make a Computer that Feels Pain," in Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books, 1978), at pp. 209ff.
Putnam on X-Worlders: Hilary Putnam, "Brains and Behavior," in R. Butler,
ed., Analytical Philosophy: Second Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968),
1-19; reprinted in many places, including David Chalmers, ed., Philosophy of
Mind: Classical and Contemporary Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002).