For tomorrow, read LB, pp' 5157 chapter 3, sections 1 and 2'

1

• For tomorrow, read LB, pp. 51-57 (chapter 3,
  sections 1 and 2).

2
Behaviorism

• On the behaviorist approach, psychologists look
  for laws of stimulus and response that can be
  expressed solely in terms of publicly accessible
  (that is, observable) quantities.
• No mental terminology should be used (on the
  replacement view on the reductionist version,
  mental terminology is used, but its meaning is
  understood in terms of dispositions to behave in
  response to stimulus).

3
Can This Be Done?

• Very difficult without
• a. using mental terminology, such as expects,
  desires, demands, is paying attention
• b. using open-ended ceteris-paribus clauses
• or
• c. doing both

4
The Muller-Lyer IllusionAre the two lines of
equal length? Yes, but most (naive) subjects
claim the blue one is longer.
5
The Telegraph Operator Experiment

• Command is given Send a message only if you see
  a line the same length as the blue line. (Various
  lines are then paraded before the subject.)
• If the effect of the arrows is to make the blue
  line look longer than it really is, then the
  subject will send a message when she thinks she
  sees a line the same length as the blue line, not
  when she actually does.

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• Moreover, the subject will follow directions only
  if she is motivated, paying attention (not
  distracted), understands the instructions, etc.
• and
• Only if there is no stronger conflicting desire
  or interest.

7
A Reductionist Behaviorist Approach

• These terms can be translated into talk of
  stimulus and response.
• Problems
• The reduction cannot be carried out. (In any
  given case, other mental terms have to be used.)
• Dispositions dont seem like causes.

8
Replacement Behaviorism

• The idea is to eliminate all mental terminology
  start from scratch referring only to measurements
  of observable stimulus and response.
• Problem
• -Failed empirical program internal
  information-bearing structures (mental
  representations) seem to play an ineliminable
  role in cognitive science (although debate goes
  on about how much these are like mental states
  normally conceived of).

9
The Materialist Alternative

• Formulate laws that treat mental states as
  physiological states.
• The idea is that
• -mental terms are needed to state psychological
  laws
• -but mental states are identical to physiological
  states
• -so we can refer to mental states in our laws
  (and explanations) without introducing any
  special problem of c.p. clauses or
  unobservability and we can find laws because
  there are neuroscientific laws.

10
LBs Objection

• Brain states have lots of properties that mental
  states do not have, and vice versa, so they cant
  be literally the same things.
• For example, mental states (beliefs, for
  instance) can be justified or true, but brain
  states cannot be.
• Similarly, brain states have shape and color,
  while mental states do not.

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Materialist Response

• The concern is small-minded
• --in lots of other cases apparent differences
  havent stopped materialist identification
  (lightning example)
• --theories of truth and justification can be (and
  have been) given for brain states.

12
Explanation and Understanding

• Science is supposed to help us understand the
  world, right?
• Shouldnt it be a demand on scientific
  explanations that they produce understanding?
• Okay, but what is understanding?

13
A Subjective State?

• Maybe scientific understanding is a feeling of
  satisfaction, familiarity, or relief.
• Problem Lots of good explanations dont produce
  these feelings, and many nonscientific
  explanations produce these feelings (for example,
  religious explanations).

14
Comparison to Simplicity

• Ill sometimes talk about the relative simplicity
  of theories, but this doesnt have anything
  directly to do with how easy it is to understand
  (in a subjective sense).
• Rather, its a measure of the number of kinds of
  forces, entities, and relations presupposed by a
  theory.

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Example

• Mind-body dualism In addition to the physical
  body, each human has a nonphysical mind (soul,
  spirit) that does the thinking, reasoning,
  deciding, etc.
• Materialism Humans are entirely physical
  creatures.

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• The first may seem more familiar, and easier to
  accept, and to make more sense.
• But materialism is simpler in the objective
  sense. Simply in terms of the number of kinds of
  entities, forces, relations, and so on, the score
  is
• Materialism n
• Dualism n1

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Objective and Subjective

• There may be perfectly legitimate objective and
  subjective senses of both explanation and
  understanding.
• But the subjective experiences vary too much from
  person to person and are not correlated highly
  enough with truth or knowledge.
• How, then, should we characterize understanding
  objectively?

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Possibilities

• 1. Understanding is the accumulation of facts.
• LB No, facts alone make up nothing more than a
  list to understand the world scientifically, one
  has to have more knowledge of relations between
  the facts or knowledge of what to do with the
  facts.

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Understanding Is Unification

• Good scientific theories represent the principles
  underlying a range of diverse phenomena.
• The Ideal Gas Laws describe regular relations
  between observable features of gases (volume,
  pressure, and temperature).
• It was an important scientific advance when these
  relations were explained in terms of general
  principles of mechanical behavior (in this case,
  of atoms and molecules of gases).

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Is That Understanding?

• LB worry that we can have a true theory that
  unifies the phenomena but not know what to do
  with the theory, not know how to use the theory
  to explain particular events.
• Two points in response
• a. Maybe unification is enough for understanding
  in the objective sense. (Besides, can we achieve
  unification without knowledge of how the general
  theory relates to actual events?)

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• Second, maybe LB place too much emphasis on the
  explanation of individual events (or states of
  affairs).
• Is this a legacy of logical empiricism? General
  scientific knowledge is often presented as
  knowledge of relations between properties or
  quantities. And the latter are often thought of
  as unobservable and abstract. Only concrete
  events are observable.
• But explanation of concrete events helps us to
  confirm general knowledge. The latter is what
  were really after in science, and we have to
  give good explanations of concrete events to
  acquire such knowledge.