Heusser                                                                                 Philosophy 100                                                                       SG #11b

                                                                                                                               

Churchland and the Mind-Body Problem II

 

Philosophical Behaviorism:

To say that Rachel wants an ice cream cone (operational definition of wants ice cream cone) is to say:

1)      If asked if that is what she wants, she would answer yes.

2)      If given the choice between liver and ice cream, she would choose it.

3)      If given ice cream, she would eat it.

 

But what if she is secretive (or bored) about his dislike of ice cream?

I can fix this with a conditional:

  1. Rachel is being honest.
  2. Rachel is not bored with dessert.
  3. Rachel does not think the dog urinated on it.

 

To repair each conditional by adding the relevant qualification would be to reintroduce a series of mental elements into the definition and we would no longer be defining the mental in terms of publicly observable behavior.

 

Reductive Materialism (the identity theory)

Possibly against: Leibniz’ Law: 2 items are numerically identical if and only if any property had by one of them is also had by the other.

 

Key point: If we can find one true of mental but not of brain then identity is false.

 

1st attempt to refute Identity Theory:

1)      My mental states are introspectively known as states of my conscious self.

2)      My brain states are not introspectively known.

3)      Thus, my mental states are not identical with my brain states.

 

This commits the epistemological fallacy (an error in reasoning)

 

2nd attempt to refute Identity Theory:

1)      My mental states are knowable by introspection.

2)      My brain states are not knowable by introspection.

3)      Thus, my mental states are not identical with my brain states.

 

Equivocation of know:

1)      neuroscientist: has mastered the relevant set of neuroscientific propositions.

2)      Missing (according to the dualist): has a prelinguisitic representation of redness in her mechanisms

 

Identity theorist can admit of duality of types of knowledge but not types of things known

Thus, sensations are not beyond the reach of physical science. It just means the brain uses more modes of representation than the mere storage of sentences and these other modes will also yield to neuroscientific explanation.