Lecture � Mind II, revision class

Greg Detre

@14 on Tuesday, 01 May, 2001

Dr J Hymans, Queens

 

Last week

missed week I

Quick recap

parts/wholes in substances vs attributes

dribbling is a part of being able to play football, but you can't think of being able to play football without being able to dribble in the same way that you can think of a body without a leg

 

Mental states

is going to ignore eliminativism

Behaviourism

developed as a methodological precept of empirical psychology

phil of mind is most interested in analytical behaviourism � never quite flourished � most attractive during the heyday of verificationism

the evidence for other minds consists of their behaviour � cannot be inductive, since inductive is based on separately-evidenced correlations

Concept of Mind (1949), written year before, same year as 1984

Cartesian dualism = category mistake

Advantages of behaviourism

avoids the principle defects of Cartesian dualism

what makes this mind experiencing itching the same as the mind which is having these thoughts, and those thoughts a week ago

�I used to argue that itches are just thwarted impulses to scratch�

 

Central state materialism - Identity theories

first popular alternative to behaviourism

originally proposed only to perceptions and sense experiences, after behaviourism had disposed of motives etc., but later extended to include intentional states as well

Difficulties

Leibniz law � for all x and for all y, if x = y, f(x) iff f(y)

an experience can be green + octagonal, but a brain state cannot be green + octagonal (or at least, not one you�re likely to survive)

genuine duration of states

gerund � verbal nouns, which have the form of a participle (end in �ing�)

C J F Williams � What is Identity � chapter on Identity of events, definite descriptions etc.

multiple realisability � what do all thoughts about a given subject (or whatever) have in common?

Type/token identity

Davidson

������ mental events + physical events are causally connected

������ so can be consumed under strict law

������ no strict psycho-physical laws

is probably thinking of the prodn of belief by phys objects in our environment

John McDowell in LaPore & McLaughlin (A & E)

creatures that have beliefs + desire = approx. rational

metonymical???

Functionalism

states defined in terms of causal relations