Hard and Soft Behaviourism Criticisms

On your whiteboard: 1. What is hard behaviourism? 2. What are its strengths? 3. What are its two main weaknesses? 4. What is soft behaviourism? 5. What is meant by the term behavioural dispositions ? Challenge Questions: Is soft behaviourism any better than hard? Has Ryle solved anything?

Assessing Behaviourism Objectives: Recap our knowledge of behaviourism Understand four criticisms of soft behaviourism Begin to assess the weight of these criticisms

Problem 1 multiple realisability and circularity We have seen that hard behaviourism suffers from the problem of multiple realisability. To remedy this, Ryle introduces the idea of behavioural dispositions and points out that the list of dispositions must remain open . However, this then leads Ryle into the problem of circularity: Suppose I am afraid of dangerous snakes. Does this dispose me to run away when I see one? That depends on my other mental states, eg. My belief that this snake is a dangerous one, my desire not to die, my knowledge of dangerous snake behaviour etc. We would then need to analyse these mental states in terms of behavioural dispositions.

Problem 2 - Conceivability Descartes said we can conceive of the mind existing without a body. If this is true, then behaviourism can t be true. (why not?) A disposition can t exist independently, there must be a physical substance to have that disposition. How can Ryle respond? We cannot conceive of the mind without the body. The mind is not a separate thing - this is committing a category mistake. (remember what that is?)

Problem 3 Mental states without behaviour Thought experiment from Putnam: Let us now engage in a little science fiction. Let us try to describe some worlds in which pains are related to responses (and also to causes) in quite a different way than they are in our world. ... Imagine a community of super-spartans a community in which the adults have the ability to successfully suppress all voluntary pain behaviour. They may, on occasion, admit that they feel pain, but always in pleasant well-modulated voices ...They do not wince, scream, flinch, sob, grit their teeth, clench their fists, exhibit beads of sweat, or otherwise act like people in pain ...However, they do feel pain, and they dislike it (just as we do)., They even admit that it takes a great effort of will to behave as they do. Challenge Task: How could Ryle reply?

Problem 3 Mental states without behaviour ...let us undertake the task of trying to imagine a world in which there are not even pain reports. I will call this world the X-world . In the X-world we have to deal with super- super-spartans. These have been super-spartans for so long, that they have begun to suppress even talk of pain. Of course, each individual X-worlder may have his private way of thinking about pain. He may even have the word pain (as before, I assume that these beings are born fully acculturated). He may think to himself: This pain is intolerable. If it goes on one minute longer I shall scream. Oh No! I mustn t do that! That would disgrace my whole family ... But X-worlders do not even admit to having pains. They pretend not to know either the word or the phenomenon to which it refers. In short, if pains are logical constructions out of behaviour , then our X-worlders behave so as not to have pains! Only, of course, they do have pains, and they know perfectly well that they have pains. If this last fantasy is not, in some disguised way, self-contradictory, then logical behaviourism is simply a mistake. Putnam argues that Challenge Task: Are the X-Worlders conceivable? If so, has Putnam disproved behaviourism?

Problem 4 Self-knowledge It may be conceivable that we can reduce talk of other people s mental states to talk about their behaviour (or behavioural dispositions). But it causes problems as soon as we think about our own mental states. Why? We seem to have access to our own mental states independently from our behaviour. We don t notice that we re grimacing and then conclude that we must be in pain. We can be wrong about other people s mental states, but we seem to have infallible access to our own.

Summary Tasks 1. On your tables, take one problem each to explain to the group. Anything they miss out, the others can add. 2. In your notes, rank the four problems in order of seriousness for the behaviourist. 3. Choose an adjective to describe the weight of each criticism. Essay booster question 4. Plan this essay: Assess the claim that talk of mental states can be reduced to talk of behaviour (25 marks)