PowerPoint Presentation The Metaphysical Problem of Mind II

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THEMETAPHYSICALPROBLEM OFMIND II
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Materialism

• The Thesis
• Minds are just matter.
• Matter can possess mental attributes, because
  mental properties are physical properties (more
  or less).
• Mental entities are physical entities.

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Behaviorism

• Three Kinds of Behaviorism
• Radical or Eliminative Behaviorism There are no
  minds or mental states or entities.
• Philosophical Behaviorism
• The Ontological Thesis Mental states are
  behavioral states and dispositions to behave.
• The Analytical Thesis Every statement containing
  mental state terms can be translated without loss
  or change of meaning into statements about
  behavior or dispositions to behave.

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Behaviorism

• Psychological Behaviorism Psychological facts
  are best understood and explained by laws that
  make no use of mentalistic terms. Such terms
  should be replaced with operational definitions.
  Psychological laws are best discovered by
  observing, and constructing hypotheses about, the
  relations between overt behavior and
  environmental stimuli.

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Behaviorism

• Motivations for Philosophical Behaviorism
• A commitment to physicalism All truths are
  reducible to truths of physics.
• A commitment to operationalism all scientific
  concepts must be definable in terms of operations
  of measurement and/or testing.

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Behaviorism

• A commitment to verificationism The meaning of
  all terms is exhausted by the conditions of
  verification of sentences containing them.
• The success of psychological behaviorism
• The success of stimulus-response psychology
• The success of behavior therapy
• The success of behavioral analyses of the work
  place.

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Behaviorism

• The Inverted Spectrum Problem
• Inverted spectra seem to be possible.
• Behaviorism implies that if there were no
  behavioral difference between a normal person and
  a person who is spectrum inverted relative to
  him, then there would be no experiential
  difference between them.
• But it seems as though there would be an
  experiential difference.

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Behaviorism

• Absent Qualia
• Tinfoil Man We could construct a tinfoil man or
  puppet that had no experiences, but which could
  be manipulated so as to accurately imitate the
  behavioral dispositions of person who had
  experiences.
• Behaviorism implies that there would be no mental
  differences between Tinfoil Man and a normal
  human being. But there would be.

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Behaviorism

• The Circularity Problem
• Mental state descriptions do not generate
  behavioral consequences in isolation from facts
  about other mental states. So, the translation
  scheme must rely upon mental state attributions
  to give the meaning of any one mental state term.