Ideas from 'The Nature of Mental States' by Hilary Putnam [1968], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Mind Language and Reality: Papers vol 2' by Putnam,Hilary [CUP 1975,0-521-10668-5]].

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17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Dispositions need mental terms to define them
                        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'.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], 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.
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 4. Behaviourism Critique
Total paralysis would mean that there were mental states but no behaviour at all
                        Full Idea: Two animals with all motor nerves cut will have the same actual and potential behaviour (i.e. none), but if only one has uncut pain fibres, it will feel pain where the other won't.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.57)
                        A reaction: This is a splendidly literal and practical argument against behaviourism - if you prevent all the behaviour, you don't thereby prevent the experience. Clearly we have to say something about what is inside the 'black box' of the mind.
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 1. Functionalism
Is pain a functional state of a complete organism?
                        Full Idea: I propose the hypothesis that pain, or the state of being in pain, is a functional state of a whole organism.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.54)
                        A reaction: This sounds wrong right from the start. Pain hurts. The fact that it leads to avoidance behaviour etc. seems much more like a by-product of pain than its essence.
Functionalism is compatible with dualism, as pure mind could perform the functions
                        Full Idea: The functional-state hypothesis is not incompatible with dualism, as a system consisting of a body and a soul could meet the required conditions.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.55)
                        A reaction: He doesn't really believe this, of course. This claim led to all the weak objections to functionalism involving silly implementations of minds. A brain is the only plausible way to implement our mental functions.
Functional states correlate with AND explain pain behaviour
                        Full Idea: The presence of a certain functional state is not merely 'correlated with' but actually explains the pain behaviour on the part of the organism.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.58)
                        A reaction: Does it offer any further explanation beyond saying that it is the brain state that causes the behaviour? The pain is just a link between damage and avoidance. I wish that is all that pain was.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 3. Property Dualism
Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy, but they are two different concepts
                        Full Idea: The concept of temperature is not the same as the concept of mean molecular kinetic energy. But temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy.
                        From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.52)
                        A reaction: This is the standard analogy for mind-brain identity, and it seems fair enough to me. The mind is the activity of the brain. It is rather unhelpful to think of weather in terms of chemistry, but it is actions of chemicals.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Neuroscience does not support multiple realisability, and tends to support identity
                        Full Idea: Putnam was too quick to assert neuroscientific support for multiple realizability; current evidence does not reveal it, and there is some reason to think the enterprises of neuroscience are premised on the hypothesis of brain-state identity.
                        From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968]) by Thomas W. Polger - Natural Minds Ch.1.4
                        A reaction: I have always been suspicious of the glib claim that mental states were multiply realisable. I see no reason to think that octupi see colours as we do, or experience fear as we do, even though their behaviour has to be similar, for survival.
If humans and molluscs both feel pain, it can't be a single biological state
                        Full Idea: Mental states have vastly diverse physical/biological realizations in different species and structures (e.g. pain in humans and in molluscs), so no mental state can be identified with any single physical/biological state.
                        From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - Mind in a Physical World n p.120
                        A reaction: But maybe mollusc and human nervous systems ARE the same in the respects that matter. We don't know enough about pain to deny that possibility.