Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Behaviourism
- Definition
- Any psychological statement can be
translated, without loss of content, into a
cluster of statements that are solely about
the behavioral phenomenon.
- Support
- Conforms to Ockham's razor
- Avoids suffering from the private language argument
- Problems
- Multiple realisability of mental states
- (i) Different people express mental states in different behaviors in the same situation
- (ii) It seems that mental states cannot be clearly categorized of behavioral dispositions
- (iii)This therefore makes it unnecessary to have any disposition in order to have a mental state
- Dispositions depend not just on the
behavior in one circumstance but also
certain hypothetical statements in
other situations are true
- An example would be if i ran away from something
doesn't mean that i am sacred of it. It also depends
if another situation causes me to be scared i would
run away from that aswell
- Problem of circularity
- (i) There is no stand-alone definition of a mental state
- (ii) In order to do this we must refer to other mental states
- (iiI) This shows that mental states are dependent on each other
- (iv) This shows a dispositional analysis of mental
states is near impossible with no definition to base
it off
- The conceivability of mental states without
associated behavior (Super-spartans)
- (i) Super spartians are people who have evolved to
completely supress all pain behaviors
- (ii) However, it is conceivable that they still
experience pain
- (iii) This shows that pain can be understood without
behavioral dispositions
- In order for spartans to surpress all pain
behaviours they would have to know about
behavioral dispositions
- Putnam argues that spartans are fully encultured meaning they from
birth they would know they are in pain without expressing pain
behaviors
- The asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other
people's mental states
- (i) There seems to be asymmetry between self-knowledge
and knowledge of other people's mental states
- (ii)Behaviorism rules out an asymmetry
between self-knowledge and knowledge of
other people's mental states
- (iii) Therefore behaviorism is false