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Single Idea 3428
[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 1. Behaviourism
]
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.
The
67 ideas
from 'Philosophy of Mind'
3359
|
Cartesian dualism fails because it can't explain mental causation
[Kim]
|
3360
|
Are pains pure qualia, or do they motivate?
[Kim]
|
3362
|
Supervenience says all souls are identical, being physically indiscernible
[Kim]
|
3363
|
We often can't decide what emotion, or even sensation, we are experiencing
[Kim]
|
3366
|
Pain has no reference or content
[Kim]
|
3365
|
Intentionality involves both reference and content
[Kim]
|
3367
|
Both thought and language have intentionality
[Kim]
|
3368
|
Mind is basically qualities and intentionality, but how do they connect?
[Kim]
|
3369
|
Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural
[Kim]
|
3370
|
What behaviour goes with mathematical beliefs?
[Kim]
|
3371
|
Behaviour depends on lots of mental states together
[Kim]
|
3372
|
Behaviour is determined by society as well as mental states
[Kim]
|
3373
|
Snakes have different pain behaviour from us
[Kim]
|
3374
|
Token physicalism isn't reductive; it just says all mental events have some physical properties
[Kim]
|
3375
|
If an orange image is a brain state, are some parts of the brain orange?
[Kim]
|
3376
|
We can't assess evidence about mind without acknowledging phenomenal properties
[Kim]
|
3377
|
Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation
[Kim]
|
3379
|
Neurons seem to be very similar and interchangeable
[Kim]
|
3380
|
Are dispositions real, or just a type of explanation?
[Kim]
|
3382
|
A machine with a mind might still fail the Turing Test
[Kim]
|
3383
|
The Turing Test is too specifically human in its requirements
[Kim]
|
3384
|
The person couldn't run Searle's Chinese Room without understanding Chinese
[Kim]
|
3386
|
Folk psychology has been remarkably durable
[Kim]
|
3387
|
A culture without our folk psychology would be quite baffling
[Kim]
|
3388
|
Machine functionalism requires a Turing machine, causal-theoretical version doesn't
[Kim]
|
3389
|
Inverted qualia and zombies suggest experience isn't just functional
[Kim]
|
3391
|
Crosswiring would show that pain and its function are separate
[Kim, by PG]
|
3390
|
Are inverted or absent qualia coherent ideas?
[Kim]
|
3392
|
Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers
[Kim]
|
3393
|
How do functional states give rise to mental causation?
[Kim]
|
3394
|
Maybe folk psychology is a simulation, not a theory
[Kim]
|
3397
|
Beliefs cause other beliefs
[Kim]
|
3396
|
Experiment requires mental causation
[Kim]
|
3399
|
If epiphenomenalism were true, we couldn't report consciousness
[Kim]
|
3401
|
A common view is that causal connections must be instances of a law
[Kim]
|
3402
|
If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction
[Kim]
|
3403
|
We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs
[Kim]
|
3406
|
Counterfactuals are either based on laws, or on nearby possible worlds
[Kim, by PG]
|
3407
|
Laws are either 'strict', or they involve a 'ceteris paribus' clause
[Kim]
|
3408
|
Two identical brain states could have different contents in different worlds
[Kim]
|
3409
|
Mental substance causation makes physics incomplete
[Kim]
|
3410
|
Folk psychology has adapted to Freudianism
[Kim]
|
3412
|
How do we distinguish our anger from embarrassment?
[Kim]
|
3411
|
How do we distinguish our attitudes from one another?
[Kim]
|
3414
|
What could demonstrate that zombies and inversion are impossible?
[Kim]
|
3413
|
Zombies and inversion suggest non-reducible supervenience
[Kim]
|
3416
|
Content may match several things in the environment
[Kim]
|
3417
|
Content depends on other content as well as the facts
[Kim]
|
3418
|
'Arthritis in my thigh' requires a social context for its content to be meaningful
[Kim]
|
3419
|
Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external
[Kim]
|
3421
|
Content is best thought of as truth conditions
[Kim]
|
3420
|
Two types of water are irrelevant to accounts of behaviour
[Kim]
|
3422
|
Externalism about content makes introspection depend on external evidence
[Kim]
|
3424
|
Most modern physicalists are non-reductive property dualists
[Kim]
|
3426
|
If one theory is reduced to another, we make fewer independent assumptions about the world
[Kim]
|
3427
|
Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical
[Kim]
|
3428
|
Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles
[Kim]
|
3430
|
Resemblance or similarity is the core of our concept of a property
[Kim]
|
3431
|
Supervenience suggest dependence without reduction (e.g. beauty)
[Kim]
|
3432
|
Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property?
[Kim]
|
3434
|
Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things
[Kim]
|
3433
|
The core of the puzzle is the bridge laws between mind and brain
[Kim]
|
3436
|
Should properties be individuated by their causal powers?
[Kim]
|
3437
|
'Physical facts determine all the facts' is the physicalists' slogan
[Kim]
|
3438
|
Reductionists deny new causal powers at the higher level
[Kim]
|
3439
|
Reductionism gets stuck with qualia
[Kim]
|
3440
|
Without reductionism, mental causation is baffling
[Kim]
|