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Full Idea
Behaviourism can be considered as an attempt to reduce the mental to the physical via definitional bridge principles (every mental expression being given a behavioural definition).
Gist of Idea
Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles
Source
Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.217)
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.217
A Reaction
Effectively these would (if they had been discoverable) have been the elusive psycho-physical laws (which Davidson says do not exist). The objection to behaviourism is precisely that there is no fixed behaviour attached to a given mental state.
| 7434 | Behaviourism is false, but mind is definable as the cause of behaviour [Armstrong] |
| 3369 | Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim] |
| 3428 | Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim] |
| 4991 | Behaviourism seems a good theory for intentional states, but bad for phenomenal ones [Kirk,R] |
| 4994 | Behaviourism offers a good alternative to simplistic unitary accounts of mental relationships [Kirk,R] |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |