Greg Detre
@11 on Monday, January 22, 2001
Brasenose, Large lecture room
analytical behaviourism
�any statement which ascribes a mental state (or mental act or activity) to a human or animal subject turns out, on conceptual analysis, to be equivalent to a statement about that subject�s behavioural condition� - handout
logical positivism � Carnap, Hempel, Ryle, later Wittgenstein???
this is different from methodological behaviourism in psychology, which seeks to explain humans purely in terms of S-R
just because you can have mental states that aren�t (directly) manifested in behaviour doesn�t immediately rule out behaviourism
intuitive objection � can experiential mental states be captured in this way?
problem of context dependence
behaviourists suffer an infinite regress of trying to define one mental state in terms of a load of others which you need to take for granted to begin with
analytical functionalism has now replaced analytical behaviourism
bollocks to uninformed appeals to intuition against man as machine; the answer lies in a complex enough machine
what about the psych experiment of strapping a kitten to a trolley with its head kept still and being wheeled around which never developed functional visual system � clearly proprioceptive input and motor output play a vital role in the development of vision as the input to our functional system
uses an under-developed Weather Watcher example of behaviourless mental beings � is considering whether functionalists can refer to the �normal� functional organisation of the species � just because we can conceive of, doesn�t mean jack shit
difference between analytical behaviourism + analytical functionalism?
where do the two fit in with Paul Snowdon�s fourfold classification of behaviourism?
does a functionalist require behavioural output in the same way that a behaviourist does in order to be coherent? can one define mental states as being functional states within a process of input and process, but no output?
I think we normally assume that there needs to be an ultimate endpoint of processing, usually expressed as output, but if we disband the Cartesian theatre, then perhaps that view is misleading?
who did the experiment with the kitten demonstrating no motor, no vision?
isn�t he confusing the issues � surely we can imagine a neural network that could manage the requisite behavioural complexity, but we can�t imagine the corresponding experiential states arising, and that this is the issue?
what is the �knowledge argument� � Immaterial self 62-79