Kim Phil Mind - 3

Front 1

Psychology

Back 1

is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and of their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like.

Front 2

J. B. Watson, who is considered the founder of the behaviorist movement: defined Psychology as:

Back 2

a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.”3 This view of psychology as an experimental study of publicly observable human and animal behavior, not of inner mental life observed through private introspection, dominated scientific psychology and associated fields until the 1960s and made “behavioral science” a preferred name for psychology.

Front 3

Philosophical behaviorism

Back 3

takes behavior as constitutive of mentality: Having a mind just is a matter of exhibiting, or having a propensity or capacity to exhibit, appropriate patterns of behavior.

Front 4

This makes it dubious whether these are legitimate inferences from behavior to inner mental states at all.

Back 4

predictions of inner mental events on behavioral evidence cannot be verified one way or the other, and not subject to correction. As a result, there is no predictive constraint on them.

Front 5

According to the behaviorist approach, how might the meanings of mental expressions, such as “pain” and “thought,” be explained?

Back 5

by reference to facts about observable behavior—how people who have pain or thoughts act and behave.

Front 6

Theories of behavior

Back 6

i. Physiological reactions and responses: for example, perspiration, salivation, coughing, increase in the pulse rate, rising blood pressure.8

ii. Bodily movements: for example, walking, running, raising a hand, opening a door, throwing a baseball, a cat scratching at the door, a rat turning left in a T-maze.

So only those behaviors under (i) and (ii) on our list—what some behaviorists called “motions and noises”—meet the behaviorist requirements. equal access for all is of the essence of behavior as conceived by the behaviorist.

Front 7

Theories not considered behavior

Back 7

iii. Actions involving bodily motions: for example, greeting a friend, writing an e-mail, going shopping, writing a check, attending a concert. (iii), although they involve bodily movements, also have clear and substantial psychological components. and this means that none of these count as behavior for the behaviorist.

iv. Actions not involving overt bodily motions: for example, judging, reasoning, guessing, calculating, deciding, intending. sometimes called “mental acts,” evidently involve “inner” events that cannot be said to be publicly observable, and behaviorists do not consider them “behavior” in their sense.

Front 8

Logical Behaviorism I.

Back 8

Any meaningful psychological statement, that is, a statement purportedly describing a mental phenomenon, can be translated, without loss of content, into a cluster of statements solely about behavioral and physical phenomena. (Kindle Locations 1485-1487).

Front 9

Logical Behaviorism II.

Back 9

Every meaningful psychological expression can be defined solely in terms of behavioral and physical expressions, that is, expressions referring to behavioral and physical phenomena.

Front 10

“the verifiability criterion of meaning,” aka logical positivism:

Back 10

The meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions that must be verified to obtain if the sentence is true (we may call these “verification conditions”).

Front 11

DIFFICULTIES WITH BEHAVIORAL DEFINITIONS 1-4

Back 11

It is difficult to think of nonverbal behavior on the basis of which we can attribute to anyone.

One must know what words mean and intend them to be understood by the hearer in order to have that meaning.

A second difficulty (this too was noted in connection with Hempel’s example): When S is asked the question “Is it the case that p?” S responds in the desired way only if S wants to tell the truth.

As a rule, beliefs alone do not produce any specific behavior unless they are combined with appropriate desires.

Front 12

DIFFICULTIES WITH BEHAVIORAL DEFINITIONS 5-7

Back 12

Desire-Belief-Action Principle (DBA). If a person desires that p and believes that doing A is an optimal way to secure that p, she will do A.

DBA underlies our “practical reasoning”—the means-ends reasoning that issues in action. It is by appeal to such a principle that we “rationalize” actions—that is, give reasons that explain why people do what they do. DBA is also useful as a predictive tool.

Defeasibility of Mental-Behavioral Entailments.. This shows that the relationship between mental states and behavior is highly complex: The moral is that mind-to-behavior connections are always defeasible—and defeasible by the occurrence of a further mental state.

Front 13

Do pains entail pain behavior?

Back 13

most behaviorists identify mentality with behavior dispositions, not actual behaviors.

Weak Behavior Entailment Thesis - For any pain-capable species20 there is a certain behavior type B such that, for that species, being in pain entails a propensity to emit behavior of type B.

Front 14

Ontological Behaviorism

Back 14

This is ontological behaviorism: Existentially, our mentality consists solely in behaviors and behavioral dispositions; there is nothing more.(Kindle Locations 1694-1695).

Compare the following two claims about pain: 1. Pain = winces and groans. 2. Pain = the cause of winces and groans. Claim (1) expresses an ontological behaviorism about pain; it tells us what pain is—it is winces and groans. There is nothing more to pain than pain behavior—if there is also some private event going on, that is not pain, or part of pain, whatever it is, and it is psychologically irrelevant. But (2) is not a form of ontological behaviorism, since the cause of winces and groans need not be, and probably isn’t, more behavior. (Kindle Locations 1699-1704). Will be on the test..

Front 15

The real relationship between pain and pain behavior

Back 15

The considerations seemed to show that though our pains may cause our pain behaviors, this causal relation is a contingent fact.

observable behavior seems to have an essential grounding role for the semantics of our psychological language and the epistemology of other minds. What we need, therefore, is a positive account of the relationship between pain and pain behavior that explains their intimate connection without making it into one of logical, or conceptual, entailment.

Front 16

Behaviorism in science can be viewed in two ways:

Back 16

First, as a precept on how psychology should be conducted as a science, it provides guidance to questions like what its proper domain should be, what conditions should be placed on admissible evidence, what its theories are supposed to accomplish, by what standards its explanations are to be evaluated, and so on.

Second, behaviorism, especially B. F. Skinner’s “radical behaviorism,” is a specific behaviorist research paradigm seeking to construct psychological theories conforming to a fairly explicit and precisely formulated pattern (for example, Skinner’s “operant conditioning”).

Front 17

methodological behaviorism: (I)

Back 17

The only admissible evidence for the science of psychology is observable behavioral data—that is, data concerning the observable physical behavior of organisms.

Front 18

stronger version of methodological behaviorism: (II)

Back 18

Psychological theories must not invoke the internal states of psychological subjects; that is, psychological explanations must not appeal to internal states of organisms, nor should references to such states occur in deriving predictions about behavior.

Front 19

a further version of behaviorism as a rule of psychological methodology: (III)

Back 19

Psychological theories must make no reference to inner mental states in formulating psychological explanations.

Front 20

Why behaviorism matters to mind

Back 20

There are three main players on the scene in discussions of mentality: mind, brain, and behavior.

behavior is the semantic and epistemological foundation of our mental and social life.