3.4.3 - Philosophical behaviourism

Problem And Physicalism

The problem is simple to state and hard to solve: when someone is in pain, frightened, amused or hopeful, what makes that mental-state claim true?

A dualist answer says mental states are not identical with anything wholly physical. A physicalist answer says everything that exists is physical or depends on the physical. In this topic, physicalism includes properties, events, objects and any substance that exists. To say the mental supervenes on the physical is to say that there cannot be a mental difference without some physical difference.

Philosophical behaviourism is a physicalist theory because it tries to understand mental states through behaviour, bodily movement, and behavioural dispositions rather than through an immaterial mind.

Brittle glass need not be breaking now; it is disposed to break if struck. On a behaviourist account, a person in pain need not be crying out now; they may be disposed to wince, withdraw, report pain, seek help, protect the injured part, or behave in other pain-related ways under suitable conditions.

The central behaviourist thought is this:

Claim at issue: mental-state propositions can be analysed in terms of behaviour or behavioural dispositions.

1. P1: Mental-state language is meaningful only if it is connected to public criteria for its correct use.
2. P2: Behaviour and bodily movement provide public criteria for applying mental-state language.
3. P3: If a mental-state proposition can be analysed in terms of those public criteria, it does not require a private non-physical object or event.
4. Therefore, C: Mental-state propositions should be understood through behaviour or behavioural dispositions, not through Cartesian inner objects.

Hidden assumption: public criteria can capture what the mental-state proposition means.
Inference type: conceptual analysis, with physicalist motivation.
Main pressure point: whether public behavioural criteria are enough for the mental state itself.

This is not the same as psychological behaviourism in experimental psychology. AQA's concern is philosophical or analytic behaviourism: a theory about the meaning and nature of mental-state propositions.

Hard And Soft Behaviourism

AQA separates hard behaviourism and soft behaviourism. The distinction matters because the hard version aims for a stricter reduction than the soft version.

A reduction explains one kind of thing in terms of another. A behaviourist reduction says that talk about pain, belief or fear can be unpacked into talk about behaviour, bodily movement or dispositions to behave.

Hard behaviourism is the more ambitious claim:

Claim at issue: mental-state propositions are reducible to physical-language propositions about bodily states and movements.

1. P1: A meaningful psychological proposition must have public empirical content.
2. P2: Public empirical content can be captured in physical descriptions of bodily states and movements.
3. P3: If two propositions have the same content, one can be reduced to the other without loss of meaning.
4. Therefore, C: Propositions about mental states can be reduced to physical-language propositions about bodily states and movements.

Hidden assumption: the whole meaning of a mental-state proposition is exhausted by public physical verification conditions.
Inference type: conceptual and verificationist reduction.
Main pressure point: whether physical descriptions of movement preserve the meaning of mental-state terms.

Soft behaviourism is less like a physics translation project. Ryle's view is better understood as an ordinary-language, dispositional account. To say that someone is vain, intelligent, angry or in pain is not always to report a hidden inner episode. Often it is to locate the person within a pattern of abilities, tendencies, reactions and circumstances.

Claim at issue: mental-state propositions are propositions about behavioural dispositions.

1. P1: Ordinary mental concepts often classify how people are disposed to act, react, learn, avoid, explain, persist, report and correct themselves.
2. P2: These dispositions are public enough to explain how mental-state language is learned and applied.
3. P3: We do not need to posit a private non-physical object in addition to those patterns.
4. Therefore, C: Mental-state propositions are best understood as propositions about behavioural dispositions.

Hidden assumption: a dispositional analysis can be rich enough to capture the mental concept.
Inference type: conceptual analysis from ordinary language.
Main pressure point: whether dispositions can be specified without smuggling mental states back in.

Behaviourism's Initial Promise

Behaviourism is initially attractive because it offers a physicalist account of the mind without asking us to identify pain with a specific brain state. That is important in the AQA sequence: type identity theory is a separate physicalist theory, so behaviourism should not be collapsed into it.

Behaviourism also seems to help with problems that face dualism:

But dualist arguments can be applied against behaviourism. A dualist need not only say that mind and body are different substances. They can argue that mental states and behaviour are distinct because one can be present without the other.

The adapted dualist argument is:

Claim at issue: mental states are distinct from behaviour.

1. P1: If behaviourism is correct, mental states are not distinct from behaviour or behavioural dispositions.
2. P2: It is conceivable that a mental state occurs without its usual behaviour.
3. P3: It is conceivable that the usual behaviour occurs without the mental state.
4. P4: If these cases are genuinely possible, behaviour or behavioural disposition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the mental state.
5. Therefore, C: Behaviourism does not give the correct account of mental states.

Hidden assumption: conceivability here is a reliable guide to conceptual possibility.
Inference type: conceptual counterexample argument.
Main pressure point: whether the imagined cases are genuinely possible and whether they target actual behaviour or dispositions.

This argument does not automatically prove dualism. It may only show that behaviourism is too crude. A physicalist could reject behaviourism and move to another physicalist theory. For this lesson, the important point is narrower: dualist-style distinctness arguments put pressure on the behaviourist analysis.

Putnam's Cases

Hilary Putnam's Super-Spartans and the related perfect actor case attack the claim that mental states can be captured by behaviour.

The Super-Spartan case imagines people who feel pain but are trained or committed to suppressing ordinary pain behaviour. In the stronger version, they may even suppress ordinary pain reports. The case aims to show that pain can exist without pain-behaviour. If that is possible, pain-behaviour is not necessary for pain.

The perfect actor case moves in the opposite direction. Imagine someone who gives all the outward signs of pain but feels no pain. The case aims to show that pain-behaviour can exist without pain. If that is possible, pain-behaviour is not sufficient for pain.

Together, the cases make this objection:

Claim at issue: pain is distinct from pain-behaviour.

1. P1: If behaviourism is correct, the correct behavioural analysis of pain must give conditions that are necessary and sufficient for being in pain.
2. P2: Super-Spartans are possible: they have pain but lack the usual pain-behaviour.
3. P3: Perfect actors are possible: they show the usual pain-behaviour but lack pain.
4. Therefore, C1: Usual pain-behaviour is neither necessary nor sufficient for pain.
5. Therefore, C2: Behaviourism fails as an analysis of pain.

Hidden assumption: a successful behaviourist analysis must handle unusual but conceptually possible cases.
Inference type: conceptual counterexample argument.
Main pressure point: whether the behaviourist can appeal to dispositions, normal conditions or wider behavioural patterns.

The immediate behaviourist reply is to distinguish actual behaviour from dispositions. A Super-Spartan may not cry out, but perhaps they are still disposed to cry out if their training, ideology or self-control were absent. A perfect actor may act like they are in pain, but perhaps they lack the full pattern of dispositions that belongs to real pain across a wider range of circumstances.

That reply improves the theory, but it creates a new problem. If the behaviourist says someone would cry out if they lacked the desire to suppress pain, or if they believed it was safe to complain, the analysis now uses other mental states: desire, belief, effort, intention, embarrassment, courage. That leads directly to circularity.