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Full Idea
The chief difficulty with the behaviour-disposition account is the virtual impossibility of specifying a disposition except as a 'disposition of x to behave as though x were in pain'.
Gist of Idea
Dispositions need mental terms to define them
Source
Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.57)
Book Ref
'The Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Beakley,B /Ludlow P [MIT 1992], p.57
A Reaction
This has become the best-known objection to behaviourism - that you can't specify a piece of behaviour clearly unless you mention the mental state which it is expressing. The defence is to go on endlessly mentioning further behaviour.
| 2388 | Behaviour depends on desires as well as beliefs [Chalmers on Ryle] |
| 3354 | You can't explain mind as dispositions, if they aren't real [Benardete,JA on Ryle] |
| 2567 | You can't define real mental states in terms of behaviour that never happens [Geach] |
| 2590 | Dispositions need mental terms to define them [Putnam] |
| 7436 | The manifestations of a disposition need never actually exist [Armstrong] |
| 4561 | Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE] |
| 3076 | Defining dispositions is circular [Harman] |
| 3380 | Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation? [Kim] |
| 7435 | Dispositions are second-order properties, the property of having some property [Jackson/Pargetter/Prior, by Armstrong] |
| 2574 | Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block] |
| 4992 | In 'holistic' behaviourism we say a mental state is a complex of many dispositions [Kirk,R] |
| 4614 | Disposition is a fundamental feature of reality, since basic particles are capable of endless possible interactions [Heil] |
| 7325 | Dispositions say what we will do, not what we ought to do, so can't explain normativity [Miller,A] |