metaphysics of mind 11- philosophical behaviourism

What is the PHILOSOPHICAL BEHAVIOURISM theory?

Family of Theories that claims that we can analyse mental concepts in terms of concepts that relate to the body particularly concepts of behaviour.

Compared to other theories what does it focus on

Philosophy of language compared to focusing on whether mental properties exist independently of physical properties- the concepts and meaning of them.

What similar theories do too?

Eliminativism materialism

What is Hempel’s HARD BEHAVIOURISM

It claims that statements with mental concepts can be analytically reduced/translated into statements about behaviour and physical states with physical concepts and no mental concepts.

What is this also known as?

Analytical/logical behaviourism

What is behaviourism?

It refers to a theory of how psychology should conduct itself to achieve the status of a science.

What did methodical behaviourism state about science?

They can only investigate what is publicly accessible.

What is philosophical behaviourism’s claim about talking about mental states?

They state that when we talk about the mind and mental states, we talk about behaviours (actions and reactions)

What is the verification principle?

A statement is meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.

in behaviourism, the meaning of a statement is given by its…

conditions of verification

Give examples of how this applies to psychological statements?

“Sam has a headache” is empirically verifiable.

How do this link to Hard behaviourism?

Because this psychological statement has been reduced into a bodily behaviour statement that can be empirically verified and this is then translated into a neurophysical statement e.g., “Sam’s brain is in x neutral state”

Elaborate on psychological statements?

For any psychological statement there are many behavioural translations and therefore many neurophysical statements “Sam has a headache” would be implied from “Same holds his head” or “Sam takes a painkiller” these are behaviours

What is the formula?

Psychological statement (sam is sad) translated into behaviour (cries/ states he’s sad)  then translated into neurophysical statement (Sam’s brain is in ‘sadness’ neural state)

What is disjunctive translation?

The full list of ‘or’ statements (possible)

What are 3 conclusions to draw from Hempel’s account of meaning of scientific statements?

First: if we cannot say in what conditions a statement is true if we cannot empirically/analytically verify it otherwise it is meaningless because their meaning is established by the conditions of verification (what we can observe) Secondly: 2 statements have the same meaning if they’re true/false in the same conditions. Third: this means we can translate a statement into a series of statements that simply describe the conditions of verification because a translation is a statement with the same meaning but expressed in different ways.

Give an example.

Saying “the temperature in the room is 21 degrees” = “the level of mercury in the thermometer in the room Is at the mark 21”.

What is Hempel’s 4 conclusions in the meaning of psychological statements?

First: we use the verification principle to check psychological statements like “Paul has a headache” have meaning and this must be publicly accessible checking not private.

Second: its meaning is given by the conditions of verifications which would include disjunctive translations like “Paul takes painkillers” (bodily) “Paul says he has a headache” (linguistic behaviour).

Third: the psychological statement MEANS the disjunctive translations

Fourth the disjunctive translations/ claims that describe conditions of verification do not use the concept of “headache” or “pain” or any other MENTAL concepts only Physical ones.

So what is the overall conclusion?

All psychological terms can be translated without changing the meaning of what is said into statements that only use physical concepts.

What are 2 implications of Hempel’s hard behavioursim?

First: just as other scientific statements are just abbreviations for statements that describe their conditions for verification, this is the same for psychological statements because there is no essence to mental states (consciousness) that distinguishes them from physical states. Second: Hempel doesn’t try to prove mental states do not exist or that they do, because its existence is not a real question, to say someone is in pain does not say ‘pain exists’ but rather there can be observations made of their behaviour and physical state.

What is analytic reduction?

The meaning of a concept is the same as another concept’s meaning.