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Physicalism and functionalism - Coggle Diagram
Physicalism and functionalism
Philosophical behaviourism
Analytical Reduction - reduces mental to our physical behaviours eg. 'I feel sad' is the same as 'I cry and move my hand towards my eyes to wipe the tears'
Analytic reduction - that talk about one phenomena like mental can be translated to talk of another kind of phenomena like behaviour or potential behaviour
A hard behaviourist (hempel) wants to analytically reduce all talk of mental into talk of active behaviours. - reduce all mental sates to only occurring behaviour or reduce psychological language to colourless physical movements
Although this may be circular because it is hard to give fully physical accounts of body movements like 'Paul has a toothache' = 'Paul is weeping and makes gestures of injury' - weeping and gestures implies an agent - a mind. so you need to reintroduce mental states to give an account of physical behaviour
Soft behaviourism (Ryle) - Doesn't attempt to eliminate all talk to the mental - you can still use psychological language in everyday conversation (arm and leg behaviourist)
But Ryle includes possible behaviour in his analysis. So 'Paul has a toothache' can be reduced to both Pauls physical and dispositions for behaviours. So even if Paul hides his pain he still has the disposition to show pain gestures.
Substance dualism argument: You can C+D conceive of thigs without bodies like angels and Gods - however these disembodied minds could not exhibit behaviour so to behaviourist its impossible we could conceive of this but we can.
Dualist:P zombie - Behaviourism is false - more to consciousness than behaviour or being disposed to behaviour - shows qualia = spectate to body - we can conceive of P.Zombie existing
Logical cpossibility/physical realist - just because were able to conceive of it don'ts mean its metaphysically possible - we should conceive of quasi or mind being separate but it doesn't mean this actually exist simply because its not a logical contradiction.
Jackson knowledge experiment - Mary knows behavioural facts of 'colour' - we are still inclined to think she learns something new when she sees colour - suggests there's something 'that it is like' to our experience - something other than behaviours.
There are different types of 'knowledge' gained - or not gaining knowledge - Mary might not have gained any propositional knowledge - but may have gained acquaintance knowledge - or she hasn't actually learnt anything.
Mental states relaised through many different behaviours - mental states like fear may present itself in multiple ways - some may run and some may fight. - Infinite ways a fearful person may behave - If mental sates reducible to behaviours then what makes these radically different behaviours representative of the same mental state.
People with the same mental states behave in the same way - on the hole people with same mental states behave similarly - even if there are some differences eg. people in fear often say 'yes' if you ask them 'are you in fear'.
Difference between my self knowledge and knowledge of others' mental states - self knowledge gained through introspection is immediate - because based on our own experience - knowledge of other minds is gained through inference - we can only know by observing verbal and non-verbal behaviour - but how can you know your own mental sate before having to observe your behaviour?
There s no real difference between my self knowledge and knowledge of others' mental Staes. - Self knowledge = knowledge of other mental states is gained in some way - paying attention - we have more evidence available about our own mental states so that's why we can have more knowledge.
Not all mental Staes is linked to observable behaviour - many mental states = processes have inner but not observable aspects - a perfect actor may be able to hide their pain - pain = behaviour of pain cannot be identical as pain can exist independently of behaviour.
But perfect actors are still disposed to pain behaviour so soft behaviourist would not fall to this as under different circumstances the actor would have pain behaviour
in a world with super-spartans they would never exhibit pain - and f pain is behaviour they don't feel pain.
Mind brain - type identity theory
Reduces mental sates to physical states of the brain eg. pain is identical with particular types of physical staes, they d not reduce mental language to talk to brain Staes.
'I'm in pain' = 'There are C-fibres firing'
Ontological reduction - so what mental sates really are (ontology is study of beings that exist in reality) are particular types of brain states.
BUT we cannot reduce talk of mental states to talk of physical states. Not an analytical reduction. So if we say 'I'm in pain' it doesn't mean were actually saying 'My c-fibres are firing' same way if we say 'this room is hot' we don't actually mean 'there is a lot of kinetic energy in this room' it only refers to those things like 'I am in pain' is referring to the brain state of C-fibres firing.
Any mental state is identical to a specific type of mental states (one type of mental state). Anxiety is a specific type of activity from amygdala that we can pinpoint in the brain. Like water will always be a specific combination of molecules
Strengths:
neural causation -
neuroscience can explain how brain states interact and how they produce behaviours.
Problem of other minds
- we can see other people have minds through brain scanning.
Economical
- it explains wide range of mental states and has simple explanation with little extra components. (Occam's razor)
Scientific:
provides scientific account of the mind.
Substance dualism: If mind and body are identical it would be impossible to conceive of non-physical minds - but we can make sense of and conceive of angels and gods - MBTIT cannot account for this.
When we conceive of Gods or angels we have to imagine some sort of body - they are not conceivable without anthropomorphising.
Chalmers P.Zombies argument: Qualia must exist because we can conceive of world where P.Zombies exist - must be something to brain that is not apart of purely functional brain. This raw feel is not explained by MBTIT
MBTIT does account for qualia but just says it must supervene on physical - or it has a physical explanation we haven't found yet.
Jackson knowledge experiment: Another proof for qualia MBTIT cannot account for.
She's learning a different kind of knowledge like acquaintance, or skill or just conceptualising in a new way.
Location problem - Leibniz law - for two things to be identical thy need to have same properties - brain sates are spatially located like neural activity - we can observe it - mental states like fear are not spatially located - you cannot fine 'fear' in a brain.
Its odd but not wrong to spatially locate mental sates - you could say your belief is behind your ear but it is not wrong if you hold a MBTIT position. The criticism already assumes that mental states are not brain states to prove it - this is circular.
Issues providing type identities (multiple realisability) in different brains the same mental states are produced by different areas of the brain - the brain is plastic so one part can take over role of another and in an alien species its mind could produce same mental sates using opposite brain sates to us. So not one mental sate can have one specific type of brain state.
mental staes like pain could be identified with complex, disjunctive physical states/properties. Disjunction = eother/or. A disjunctive physical state will be made up to two or more physical realisers. Like you either have a) blue eyes b) green eyes etc, perhaps mental state like pain is the complex disjunctive property of either c-fibres excitation (in humans) or d-fibres excitation (mollusks). So specific mental state is a brain state which is a type of disjunctive property which can be realised by different physical states In different creatures.
Everything that exists is (or supervenes) on the physical - there is no non-physical properties of consciousness like irreducible phenomenal; properties (Qualia)
Eliminative materialism
Some or all common-sense (“folk-psychological”) mental states/properties do not exist and our common-sense understanding is radically mistaken (as defended by Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland). Does not attempt to reduce mind to anything else - instead attempts to eliminate talk of mental states all together. Instead of talking about 'being in love' we should talk about 'strong surges of testosterone and serotonin' - mind is a fiction - mental sates don't exist.
Stronger - reject all talk of mental including beleifs
weaker - partial elimination - simply rejevct existence of some psychological phenomena - we should reconfigure and modify our language - we shouldn't deny existence of dreams and beleifs and desires, but a persisting 'self' doesn't exist.
Folk psychology terms like 'desire' and belief are used to predict and explain behaviour but eliminative materialist believe it should be eliminated from our vocabulary - as terms like desire, happiness
don't refer to anything
in reality. Just as we realised there's no dragons or sound particles there's also no beleifs or desires. Neuroscience has found love is just surge of serotonin and beliefs just works synapsing neurones.
Eg. Memory - we thru history understood memory is one entity - single ability to remember like you either had a 'good memory' or a bad one - but through neuroscience we realised memory is a collection of different components like LTM and STM - to refer to memory as most of us do is misleading so folk-psychology langue should be rejected in favour of discussion of brain states and functions.
The intuitive certainty of the existence of my mind - eliminates is counter intuitive - it seems directly obvious I have beleifs - Descartes took his 'I think' to be his first certainty - No arguments is strong enough to justify giving up such beliefs.
We are only certain that some phenomena are occurring. Chruchland doesn't deny some phenomena need to be explained - whatever our 'beleif' is, is occurring BUT 'beleif' is not the best account of what is happening.
Folk-psychologt has good predictive and explanatory power. Folk-psychology is succesful at explaining why a person is jumping up and down - because they are 'excited' - neuroscience would struggle to explain something like this with ease.
There are aspects of mental life folk psychology cannot explain - folk psychology is a limited approach in explaining stuff like mental illness and intelligence levels coherently. 'feeling low' can be replaced by 'low dopamine and serotonin levels' and these explanations are actually useful.
The articulation of eliminative materialism as a theory is self-recruiting - the eliminative materialist has to believe their position is true and neuroscience provides a better account for mental states - however how can they have these beleifs if beleifs don't exist.
The eliminate materialist does not have to beleve their position is true - that position illustrates what the materialist is trying to eliminate - the eliminate materialist may claim neuroscience provides a better account of mental states but this does not mean they need to commit to a beleif.
Functionalism
all mental states can be characterised in terms of functional roles which can be multiply realised.
Ontologically reduce mental sates to functional states - reduces mental Staes to the role they play - converting outputs into in puts - pain = converting input (tissue damage) into an output (groaning behaviour)
Multiple realisability and mental sates - human artefacts have functional roles eg. knife function is to cut - this can be multiply realised (a sharp stone may perform the same function) similarly mental sates can also be multiply realised such as in Martin brain nd android brain - if they convert input (sensory information) to output (some sort of physical behaviour) it is a mind
some supporters are non-reductive functionalists - DO NOT ATTEMPT to reduce mental language to behavioural language - mental rates supervene on physical states but are distinct - same way the colour of a cake supervenes on the ingredients - no change in mental sate without change in physical state.
Advantage over behavioursim: Recognises mental sates are internal causes - you can't deny existence of internal mental sates - this is our common understanding of the nature of the mind - pain causes other mental sates like beleif I am In pain and desire to remove my leg from pain.
Advantage over MBTIT - problem with the multiple realisability of mental sates - functionalism holds anything can be mind if it has function to convert sensory input into behavioural output.
Block's China brain though experiment - Functionalist argument leaves out quail - suppose nation of China functioned like a brain which each person being a neurone that communicate two ways which each other through radios. A sensory input is given to the 'china body' people communicate to convert that input into a behavioural output for the China Body - Functionalist would say that the nation has a consciousness but this is absurd - it misses out quail (body never feels quail)
China brain would process quail - A functional duplicate of a human brain would have quail - Blocks conclusion is mere prejudice because it doesn't look like a brain doesn't mean it would lack qualia
Inverted Qualia - if mental sates are purely functional (same input should make same output) but this isn't the case with inverted quail - its conceivable people would have different qualia (your red might not be my red) So must be a variation in something - Quail so there is more to Mental states more than converting input to output
Quaia exist but are unimportant but they are causally impotent - Qualia are relatively unimportant - they have no causal power - are simply epiphenomena so have no role in converting input to output so do not need to be discussed.
Can also use Mary knowledge experiment to criticise functionalism because it's demonstrating quail which fucntionalism doesn't account for.