Putnam's Arguments Against Logical Behaviorism

Logical behaviorism is a view that investigates mental states in the light of behavioral dispositions. According to behaviorists, to be in a certain mental state is equal to behave in a certain way. State- behavior relationship is not just correlation it is an equivalence. Putnam is one of the philosophers who has dissidence about this point of view. In this essay, I will talk about Putnam’s arguments against logical behaviorism with his statement “Causes are not logical constructions out of their effects.”.
First of all, logical behaviorism is like public aspect of a mind rather than an inner unobservable thing. It argues that you can understand someone else mental states by looking the way they act. Because they are the same thing according …show more content…
Even logical behaviorists are thinking in the way (cluster concept) but Putnam’s point is different. There is an example of diseases. Basically, diseases are cluster concept too. They generally defined with their symptoms. For example, if someone says polio is a presence of this and that symptoms, it means wherever these symptoms happen, there is polio. But actually, it is wrong to say because polio is caused by a virus and symptoms is just consequences of the effect the virus inflicts on the body. On the other hand, maybe sometimes there exist a virus but there are no symptoms or there are symptoms but there is no virus. Additionally, maybe there are some other symptoms of polio but not discovered yet. So, saying that “polio is such and such symptoms” is the wrong argument. But we can say “people have polio sometimes has some or all of these symptoms...” Solely, this is not declaring an identity between disease and symptom, this just gives information about some characteristics of diseases. Putnam gives the same example for multiple sclerosis as well. Hereby, “disease talk” cannot be equivalent and cannot translate “symptoms” talk. Symptoms are accurate but diseases are not. So, Causes are not logical constructions out of their …show more content…
One of these thought experiments is Super Spartans. Super Spartans is a community that suppresses their pain behaviors. I mean, they never show any behavior related to pain such as to say ouch or something like that. But when they are in pain, they know that they are in pain and they verbally explain it in a normal speaking way like “I am in pain right now.” So, behaviors not constructions of mental states like pain, it only depends on the choice to behave or not to behave. But there are some problems in this thought experiment. For instance, little children who are not conditioned to not behave like they are in pain. Also, they are still a connection between pain and behavior if we assume saying “I am in pain right now” is a verbal behavior. In order to reduce this problem, Putnam introduces X-Worlders which are super super spartans. The difference between super spartans and super super spartans is super super spartans not only behave like they are in pain but also they are not even talking about pain. They basically know they are in pain but if someone asks, they behave like they even did not hear anything about what pain is. So, pain-verbal behavior objection is no longer valid. And also imagine after million of years super spartans have children which can talk, behave like an adult and suppress their behaviors too. Then objection about children is no longer