Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a view developed in the 1930's. The specfic form of behaviorism we're going to discuss is that of Gilbert Ryle.

Attack on Descartes

Ryle completely rejects Descartes’ substance dualism, labeling it "with deliberate abusiveness" as the "dogma of the ghost in the machine.
As we discussed in class, Ryle thinks Descartes is guilty of a "category mistake".

In the end, Ryle rejects the view that mental events are private, inner experiences.
Mental events can only be made sense of if we treat them as publicly observable.
And since the relevant observable events here are physical behaviors, behaviorists tie mental states to behavior in a very specific way.

The Analysis

Behaviorists want to analyze all statements about mental states and events into statements about behavior.
More specifically, they translate all statements about mental states into statements about behavioral dispositions.

(As I described in class, dispositional facts are "iffy" facts. They are facts that are stated in "if..., then" form.
For example, the fact that salt is soluble in water is a dispositional fact. To say that salt is soluble in water means that if you put salt in water, then it will dissolve.
For the behaviorist account of mental states, the relevant dispositions are behavioral. That is, they are statements about how a person will behave in various circumstances. If conditions are such-and-such, then the person will behave so-and-so.)

So, behaviorists maintain that the statement:

"Person P is in mental state M."

simply means

"Person P is disposed to act in certain ways."

(Where the "certain ways" gets spelled out depending on what mental state is in question.)
To put it a bit more rigorously:

"Person P has behavioral dispositions B1, B2, B3,…Bn."

For example, given the statement:

"Ben believes that coffee is good"

the behaviorist would say that that simply means (somehting like) the following:

"Ben has the following behavioral dispositions:
If you ask Ben ‘Is coffee good?’ then Ben will say ‘yes’,
and if you offer Ben some coffee, then Ben will accept,
and if…"

Evaluation of Behaviorism

Notice that this is a very radical proposal! Ordinarily, we think that mental states cause behavior. But on the behaviorist picture, there is nothing more to mental states than how we are disposed to act. Behaviorists maintain that mental states are nothing more than dispositions to behave in certain ways!

Behaviorism does have its advantages. Remember, Cartesian dualism seemed doomed to the "Problem of Other Minds" and has a big problem accounting for the interaction of mind and body. As I described in class, behaviorism neatly avoids these problems.

Behaviorism is tailor-made to handle the "Problem of Other Minds". The question "Can I know that other people have beliefs and desires etc.?" simply means "Can I know that other people have certain behavioral dispositions?" and that question is easy to answer. (Yes, others are disposed to act in various ways. I can learn about your beliefs about coffee by seeing how you respond to various questions and by offering you some coffee etc.)

Similarly, there doesn't seem to be any metaphysical worry about how mind and body can interact. Mental states simply are behavioral dispositions.(There's no metaphysical divide that needs to be crossed between the immaterial ghost and the physical machine.)

However, behaviorism does have some problems of its own.