14 ideas
| 2590 | Dispositions need mental terms to define them [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2591 | Total paralysis would mean that there were mental states but no behaviour at all [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2588 | Is pain a functional state of a complete organism? [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2589 | Functionalism is compatible with dualism, as pure mind could perform the functions [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2592 | Functional states correlate with AND explain pain behaviour [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2587 | Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy, but they are two different concepts [Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 6376 | Neuroscience does not support multiple realisability, and tends to support identity [Polger on Putnam] |
| 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. |
| 2330 | If humans and molluscs both feel pain, it can't be a single biological state [Putnam, by Kim] |
| 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. |
| 20180 | A happy and joyous life must largely be a quiet life [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A happy life must to a great extent be a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
| A reaction: Most people's image of happiness is absorption in an interesting task, or relaxing in good company. The idea that happiness is wild excitement exists, but is a minority view. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 20177 | Boredom always involves not being fully occupied [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is one of the essentials of boredom that one's faculties must not be fully occupied. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
| A reaction: He gives running for your life as an example of non-boredom. I suspect that this is only the sort of boredom that troubled Russell, and not the sort of profound boredom that led the actor George Sanders to suicide (according to his last note). |
| 20178 | Life is now more interesting, but boredom is more frightening [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that the invention of the powerful mobile phone has largely banished boredom from human life, except when you are obliged to switch it off. The fear of boredom may hence be even greater now. |
| 20176 | Boredom is an increasingly strong motivating power [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Boredom has been, I believe, one of the great motive powers throughout the historical epoch, and is so at the present day more than ever. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
| A reaction: Most of his essay tells us how to avoid boredom, rather than how it motivates. |
| 20179 | Happiness involves enduring boredom, and the young should be taught this [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A certain power of enduring boredom is essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness [1930], 4) | |
| A reaction: As an example he suggests that Wordsworth would never have written 'The Prelude' is he had never been bored when young. Which suggests that Russell doesn't really get boredom, seeing it merely as a stimulus to work. |