The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/22/2015

When the famous warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune was a young boy going by the name of Ushiwaka-maru, his father, Yoshitomo, was assassinated by the Taira clan. Taira no Kiyomori, head of the Taira, allowed the child to survive on the grounds that he be exiled to the temple on Mount Kurama and become a monk. But one day in the Sojo-ga-dani Valley, Ushiwaka encountered the mountain's tengu, Sojobo. This spirit taught the boy the art of swordsmanship so that he might bring vengeance on the Taira.

Accept Everything, resistance is suffering


It revolves around the Buddhist sentiment that attachment to one’s status in life whether rich or poor, famous or infamous is the source of suffering. "But rather, following good and bad fortune or prosperity and decline as one meets them, and calming enjoying oneself in the midst of creation and change: this is the greatest happiness under heaven". So "If I'm blown by the wind, I'll tumble along following the wind. If the winds stops, I'll stop too. And won't act contrary to things. just don't fight things and be happy with what you encounter". "I just entrust my body to the Creator and don’t intrude my own willfulness while I’m here. This is knowing the general drift of the Way." because "a person who worries over something he can do nothing about is an extraordinary fool."

In one section a dying man is talking with his family priest and says: "The ten thousand things are born from emptiness and return to emptiness." No need for sorrow of passing of anything.

No-Mind


"The common man hasn't cut yet through the root of confusion of life and death. This always lies concealed and acts as a cover over his spirit. When a thought stirs even a little, what has been concealed arises, emotions, attachments and desires". "When there is something in the mind, the chi is obstructed and your body can't respond with harmony".

“When you gamble for tiles, you are skillful. When you gamble for your belt buckle, you begin to hesitate; and when you gamble for gold, you get confused. Your skill is the same, but you get cautious because you value something outside yourself. When you do this you become awkward inside."

"The moon in the water, is a metaphor for when you can move and respond with no-mind, though there is a reflection, the moon reflects itself without thought. reflected in ten thousand streams or not, this doesn't add to the moon or subtract from it".

"Technique is cultivated by means of chi and chi uses the mind as a vehicle to put form into use. As you become skillful in the technique, the chi harmonizes. And when this has completely penetrated the mind and no more doubts remain, technique and principle become one, your spirit is settled, and practical application is completely unobstructed. The technique responds to the circumstances naturally". "Simply, without thinking, without doing anything, move by following your natural perception and your movement will have no form. And when you have no form, there is nothing in heaven and earth that could be your opponent"

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تهذيب الأخلاق لابن مسكويه

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/21/2015

النفس

فإن تشوقها إلى ما ليس من طباع البدن وحرصها على معرفة حقائق الأمور الآلهية وميلها إلى الأمور التي هي أفضل من الأمور الجسمية وإيثارها لها وإنصرافها عن الأمور واللذات الجسمانية يدلنا دلالة واضحة إنها من جوهر أعلى وأكرم جدا من الأمور الجسمانية. لأنه لا يمكن في شيء من الأشياء أن يتشوق ما ليس من طباعه وطبيعته ولا أن ينصرف عما يكمل ذاته ويقوم جوهره فإذا كانت أفعال النفس إذا إنصرفت إلى ذاتها فتركت الحواس مخالفة لأفعال البدن ومضادة لها في محاولاتها وإراداتها فلا محالة إن جوهرها مفارق لجوهر البدن ومخالف له في طبعه.

وأيضا فإن النفس وإن كانت تأخذ كثيرا من مبادىء العلوم عن الحواس فلها من نفسها مباد أخر وأفعال لا تأخذها عن الحوس ألبتة وهي المبادىء الشريفة العالية التي تنبني عليها القياسات الصحيحة. وذلك إنها إذا حكمت إنه ليس بين طرفي النقيض واسطة فإنها لم تأخذ هذا الحكم من شيء آخر لم يكن أوليا. وأيضا فإن الحواس تدرك المحسوسات فقط وأما النفس فإنها تدرك أسباب الإتفاقات وأسباب الإختلافات التي من المحسوسات وهي معقولاتها التي لا تستعين عليها بشيء من الجسم ولا آثار الجسم. وكذلك إذا حكمت على الحس إنه صدق أو كذب فليست تأخذ هذا الحكم من الحس لأنه لا يضاد نفسه فيما يحكم فيه ونحن نجد النفس العاقلة فينا تستدرك شيئا كثيرا من خطأ الحواس في مبادىء أفعالها وترد عليها أحكامها. من ذلك أن البصر يخطىء فيما يراه من قرب ومن بعد أما خطأه في البعيد فبادراكه الشمس صغيرة مقدارها عرض قدم وهي مثل الأرض مائة ونيفا وستين مرة يشهد بذلك البرهان العقلي فتقبل منه وترد على الحس ما شهد به فلا يقبله. وأما خطأه في القريب فبمنزلة ضوء الشمس إذا وقع علينا من ثقب مربعات صغار كحلل الأهواز وأشباهها التي يستظل بها فإنه يدرك بها الضوء الواصل إلينا منها مستدير افترد النفس العاقلة عليه هذا الحكم وتغلطه في إدراكه وتعلم إنه ليس كما يراه وتخطأ البصر أيضا في حركة القمر والسحاب والسفينة والشاطىء ويخطأ في الأساطين المسطرة والنخيل وأشباهها حتى يراها مختلفة في أوضاعها. ويخطىء أيضا في الأشياء التي تتحرك على الإستدارة حتى يراها كالحلقة والطوق ويخطىء أيضا في الأشياء الغائصة في الماء حتى يرى أن بعضه أكبر من مقداره ويرى بعضها مكسورا وهو صحيح وبعضها معوجا وهو مستقيم وبعضها منكسرا وهومنتصب.

فيستخرج العقل أسباب هذه كلها من مباد عقلية ويحكم عليها احكاما صحيحة وكذلك الحال في حاسة السمع وحاسة الذوق وحاسة الشم وحاسة اللمس. أعني حاسة الذوق تغلط في الحلو تجده مرا عند الصد أو أشبهه وحاسة الشم تغلط كثيرا في الأشياء المنتنة لا سيما في المنتفل من رائحة إلى رائحة فالعقل يرد هذه القضايا ويقف فيها ثم يستخرج أسبابها ويحكم فيها أحكاما صحيحة.

والحاكم في الشيء المزيف له أو المصحح أفضل وأعلى رتبة من المحكوم عليه وبالجملة فإن النفس إذ علمت أن الحس صدق أو كذب فليست تأخذ هذا العلم من الحس ثم إذا علمت أنها قد أدركت معقولاتها فليست تعلم هذا العلم من علم آخر لأنها لو علمت هذا العلم من علم آخر لاحتاجت في ذلك العلم أيضا إلى علم آخر وهذا يمر بلا نهاية فإذا علمها بأنها علمت ليست بمأخوذ من علم آخر البتة بل هو من ذاتها وجوهرها أعني العقل وليست تحتاج في إدراكها ذاتها إلى شيء آخر غير ذاتها ولهذا ما قيل في أواخر هذا العلم. إن العقل والعاقل والمعقول شيء واحد لاغيرية شيء يتبين في موضعه. فأما الحواس فلا تحس ذواتها ولا ما هو موافق لها كل الموافقة.

وقد تبين للناظر في أمر هذه النفس وقواها أنها تنقسم إلى ثلاثة أعني:
  1. القوة التي بها يكون الفكر والتمييز والنظر في حقائق الأمور
  2. والقوة التي بها يكون الغضب والنجدة والإقدام على الأهوال والشوق إلى التسلط والترفع وضروب الكرامات
  3. والقوة التي بها تكون الشهوة وطلب الغذاء والشوق إلى الملاذ التي في المآكل والمشارب والمناكح وضروب اللذات الخسية
وهذه الثلاث متباينة ويعلم من ذلك ان بعضها إذا قوي أضر بالآخر وربما أبطل أحدهما فعل الآخر وربما جعلت نفوسنا وربما جعلت قوى لنفس واحدة والنظر في ذلك ليس يليق بهذا الموضع وأنت تكتفي في تعلم الأخلاق بأنها قوى ثلاث متباينة تقوي إحداهما وتضعف بحسب المزاج أو العادة أوالتأدب.

  1. أما الحكمة فهي فضيلة النفس الناطقة المميزة وهي أن تعلم الموجودات كلها من حيث هي موجودة وإن شئت فقل إن تعلم الأمور الإلهية والأمور الإنسانية ويثمر علمها بذلك أن تعرف المعقولات أيها يجب ان يفعل وأيها يجب أن يغفل.
  2. واما العفة فهي فضيلة الحس الشهواني وظهور هذه الفضيلة في الإنسان يكون بأن يصرف شهواته بحسب الرأى أعني أن يوافق التمييز الصحيح حتى لا ينقاد لها ويصير بذلك حرا غير متعبد لشيء من شهواته،
  3. وأما الشجاعة فهي فضيلة النفس الغضبية وتظهر في الإنسان بحسب إنقيادها للنفس الناطقة المميزة واستعمال ما يوجبه الرأى في الأمور الهائلة أعني أن لا يخاف من الأمور المفزعة إذا كان فعلها جميلا والصبر عليها محمودا.
  4. فأما العدالة فهي فضيلة للنفس تحدث لها من إجتماع هذه الفضائل الثلاث التي عددناها وذلك عند مسالمة هذه القوى بعضها للبعض وإستسلامها للقوة المميزة حتى لا تتغالب ولا تتحرك لنحو مطلوباتها على سوم طبائعها ويحدث للإنسان بها سمة يختار بها ابدا الإنصاف من نفسه أولا ثم الإنصاف والإنتصاف من غيره وله.
الأقسام التي تحت الحكمةْ:  الذكاء. الذكر)عدم النسيان). التعقل. سرعة الفهم وقوته صفاء الذهن سهولة التعلم. وبهذه الأشياء يكون حسن الإستعداد للحكمة فأما الوقوف على جواهر هذه الأقسام فيكون من حدودها. وذلك أن العلم بالحدود يفهم جواهر الأشياء المطلوبة الموجودة دائما على حال واحد وهو العلم البرهاني الذي لا يتغير ولا يدخله الشك بوجه من الوجوه.الأقسام التي تحت الحكمةْ:  الذكاء. الذكر)عدم النسيان). التعقل. سرعة الفهم وقوته صفاء الذهن سهولة التعلم. وبهذه الأشياء يكون حسن الإستعداد للحكمة فأما الوقوف على جواهر هذه الأقسام فيكون من حدودها. وذلك أن العلم بالحدود يفهم جواهر الأشياء المطلوبة الموجودة دائما على حال واحد وهو العلم البرهاني الذي لا يتغير ولا يدخله الشك بوجه من الوجوه.

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Property Dualism

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/15/2015

Property dualism asserts that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between properties of mind and matter, and that consciousness is ontologically irreducible to neurobiology and physics. Although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance — the physical kind — there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.It asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge therefore it could be affected by any rearrangement of matter.



Epiphenomenalism

 
Whilst Cartesian dualism argues that there is a two-way interaction between mental and physical substances, not all forms of dualism agree. Epiphenomenalism argues that mental events are caused by - or are a by-product of - physical events, but that the interaction is one-way: mental events cannot affect physical ones. One of the curious side effects of this theory is that it implies that decision making is not a mental event. Apart from flying in the face of most common sense attitudes.

Biological Naturalism

Emergentism is the idea that increasingly complex structures in the world give rise to the "emergence" of new properties that are something over and above (i.e. cannot be reduced to) their more basic constituents.  Applied to the mind/body relation, emergent materialism is another way of describing the non-reductive physicalist conception of the mind that asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., organized in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge.

Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational. On the level of neurons (Micro Level), which we search, there is no emergence of consciousness, but on the scale of the whole brain (Macro Level), consciousness emerge. If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding. However, without the specific machinery required, Searle does not believe that consciousness can occur.

Anomalous Monism or Eliminative Materialism or Predicate Monism


According to which there can be no strict psycho-physical laws which connect mental and physical events under their descriptions as mental and physical events. However, all mental events also have physical descriptions. It is in terms of the latter that such events can be connected in law-like relations with other physical events. Mental predicates are irreducibly different in character (rational, holistic and necessary) from physical predicates (contingent, atomic and causal). Eliminative materialists maintain that such intentional predicates as believe, desire, think, feel, etc., will eventually be eliminated from both the language of science and from ordinary language because the entities to which they refer do not exist. The only argument that Davidson gives for this point is that mental phenomena, like beliefs and desires, are subject to constraints of rationality, and rationality has “no echo in physics.”

Step 1: There are causal relations between mental phenomena and physical phenomena.
Step 2: Wherever there are events related as cause and effect they must fall under strict, deterministic causal laws.
Step 3: But there are no such strict deterministic causal laws relating the mental and the physical. In Davidson’s terms, there are no psycho-physical laws.
Step 4: Conclusion. All so-called mental events are physical events.

The first principle follows from Davidson's view of the ontology of events and the nature of the relationship of mental events (specifically propositional attitudes) with physical actions. Davidson subscribes to an ontology of events where events (as opposed to objects or states of affairs) are the fundamental, irreducible entities of the mental and physical universe. His original position, as expressed in Actions and Events, was that event-individuation must be done on the basis of causal powers. He later abandoned this view in favour of the individuation of events on the basis of spatio-temporal localization, but his principle of causal interaction seems to imply some sort of, at least, implicit commitment to causal individuation. According to this view, all events are caused by and cause other events and this is the chief, defining characteristic of what an event is.

Ted Honderich has challenged the thesis of anomalous monism, forcing, in his words, the "inventor of anomalous monism to think again". To understand Honderich's argument, it is helpful to describe the example he uses to illustrate the thesis of AM itself: the event of two pears being put on a scale causes the event of the scale's moving to the two-pound mark. But if we describe the event as "the two French and green things caused the scale to move to the two-pound mark", then while this is true, there is no lawlike relation between the greenness and Frenchness of the pears and the pointers moving to the two-pound mark.

Honderich then points out that what we are really doing when we say that there is "no lawlike relationship between two things under certain descriptions" is taking certain properties and noting that the two things are not in relation in virtue of those particular properties. But this does not mean they are not in lawlike relation in virtue of certain other properties, such as weight in the pears example. On this basis, we can formulate the generalization that Honderich calls the Nomological Character of Causally-Relevant Properties. Then we ask what the causally relevant properties of the mental events which cause physical events are.

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Dualism

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/13/2015

Dualism, is the view that that there are two separate and distinct substances that make up a human being: mind and body. In religious terms, the mind is sometimes equated with the soul.

Monism, because it describes a belief in one substance, can be used in two distinct ways:

To describe the view that only matter, or the physical body, exist (materialism).
To describe the view that only mind, or spirit, exist (idealism).

Platonic Dualism


Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls and further elaborated a hierarchical arrangement, corresponding to the distinctive functions of plants, animals and people: a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism, that all three share; a perceptive soul of pain, pleasure and desire, that only people and other animals share; and the faculty of reason, that is unique to people only. In this view, a soul is the hylomorphic form of a living organism. Thus, for Aristotle, all three souls perish when the living organism dies. For Plato however, the soul was not dependent on the physical body; he believed in metempsychosis, the migration of the soul to a new physical body

Substance Dualism


Descartes concluded that the mind was a completely distinct substance from matter because:

  1. Matter is measurable, has dimensions, can be sensed, divided, destroyed and altered. Mind, however, can almost be defined as the opposite of this, it is invisible, without dimensions, immaterial, unchanging, indivisible and without limit.
  2. Descartes cannot doubt the existence of his mind, but can doubt the existence of his body. Since what I cannot doubt cannot be identical to what I can doubt (by Leibniz's Law), mind and body are not identical and dualism is established.

Descartes’ response was to suggest that the two substances meet in a part of the brain called the pineal gland. His reasons for choosing this seem to have been that the gland in central (unlike the other parts of the brain which are bilateral – mirrored on each side) and that it does not occur in animals. This latter fact was understood by Descartes as relating to the presence of a soul in humans and not in animals, whom he considered mere machines. However, modern research has also found a similar gland in mammals and lower vertebrates.

Critiques

  1. How can conscious experiences like your pain exist in a world that is entirely composed of physical particles and how can some physical particles, presumably in your brain cause the mental experiences? (This is called the “mind-body problem.”).
  2. How can the subjective, insubstantial, nonphysical mental states of consciousness ever cause anything in the physical world? How can your intention, not a part of the physical world, ever cause the movement of your arm? (This is called the “problem of mental causation.”) 
  3. No one has ever succeeded in giving an intelligible account of the relationships between these two realms.
  4. Argument from brain damage, in instances of some sort of brain damage, it is always the case that the mental substance and/or properties of the person are significantly changed or compromised. If the mind were a completely separate substance from the brain, how could it be possible that every single time the brain is injured, the mind is also injured? Indeed, it is very frequently the case that one can even predict and explain the kind of mental or psychological deterioration or change that human beings will undergo when specific parts of their brains are damaged.
The correlation and dependence argument against dualism begins by noting that there are clear correlations between certain mental events and neural events (say, between pain and a-fiber or c-fiber stimulation). Moreover, as demonstrated in such phenomena as memory loss due to head trauma or wasting disease, the mind and its capacities seem dependent upon neural function. The simplest and best explanation of this dependence and correlation is that mental states and events are neural states and events and that pain just is c-fiber stimulation.

Searle says:
Notice that these arguments still leave dualism as a logical possibility. It is a logical possibility, though I think extremely unlikely, that when our bodies are destroyed, our souls will go marching on. I have not tried to show that this is an impossibility (indeed, I wish it were true), but rather that it is inconsistent with just about everything else we know about how the universe works and therefore it is irrational to believe in it.

Occasionalism

 
Following Descartes’ death, some philosophers – such as the Frenchman, Nicholas Malebranche (1638 – 1715) – recognised this problem and tried to address it whilst still holding to the dualist view. Malebranche’s suggestion was that neither body nor mind were causally related, but were in fact connected by divine interaction. So, whenever we wish to lift an arm, for instance, God must intervene to cause the body to obey (similarly, whenever the body feels pain, God must cause that sensation to occur in the mind). But problems arise: if God is responsible for all seeming causal interactions, is he also responsible for evil deeds? This would make him the unwitting agent in murders, crimes, etc.

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Functionalism

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/12/2015

Some people said that the fact that neurons were either firing or not firing was an indication that the brain was a binary system, just like any other digital computer. Thus came the idea, mental states are computational states of the brain. But when we consider the computational operations, the manipulation of symbols in accord with formal rules, a computing machine performs, we‘abstract’ it from its underlying base, i.e whatever the hardware structure and the software operating this hardware, calculations are always the same. For example, a Function like showing a character moving from point X to Y, is realized by (Software (Windows+Game Engine) and Hardware) and Android and iPhone and so on. So in theory, same calculations (functions) can be done on whatever hardware. This is known as "multiply realizablity". So, pain, for example, is unlikely to just be C-fiber stimulation (or some other appropriate brain state), because octopuses and other such creatures can probably feel pain, despite their not having C-fiber stimulatory capacity. This led to the development of functionalism, which promised to unify physically different phenomena under the banner of causal (functional) similarity.

But what is the relation between functions (computations) and the underlying brain, neurons and synapses (software and hardware)? A functionalist prefers to say that computational processes are ‘realized’ in material systems but not dependent on them. The functionalist’s point is just that higher-level properties such as being in pain or computing the sum of 7 and 5 are not to be identified with,‘reduced to’, or mistaken for their realizers (the lower material level). Individual neurons are not conscious, but portions of the brain system composed of neurons are conscious. We may compare the brain with other organs, such as the eye. The individual parts that make up the eye all serve the function of seeing. For instance, the parts of the eye allow us to see, but the individual state of each part is not what we mean by "seeing".

Various reasons against reductive versions of physicalism have led many to accept some form of “nonreductive physicalism”, the view that despite everything being dependent on the physical, it is not the case that mental properties are identical to physical properties. Minds are not identifiable with brains; but neither are minds distinct immaterial substances mysteriously linked to bodies. Minds are functional states characterizable by their place in a structured large causal network, it has a particular role or a job description which is its function, if it responds to causal inputs (stimuli and mental states like believes and desires and other functional states) with particular kinds of output (other mental states and other functional states and external behavior), like a finite state machine.

Pains, for instance, might be characterized by reference to typical causes (tissue damage, pressure, extremes of temperature), their relations to other states of mind (they give rise to the belief that you are in pain, and a desire to rid yourself of the source of pain), and behavioral outputs (you move your body in particular ways, groan, perspire). Consider your being in pain as a result of your grasping the handle of a cast iron skillet that has been left heating on the stove. Here, you being in pain is a matter of your being in a particular state, one that stands in appropriate causal relations to sensory inputs, to output behavior, and to other states of mind. These other states of mind are themselves characterizable by reference to their causal roles. Another example is, to say that Jones believes that it is raining is to say that he has a certain state, or process going on in him that is caused by certain sorts of inputs (external stimuli—for example, he perceives that it is raining); and this phenomenon, in conjunction with certain other factors, such as his desire to stay dry, will cause a certain sort of behavior on his part, the behavior of carrying an umbrella.

But how can we know the functions of the mind, if we will abstract from its hardware? Imagine you are a scientist confronted with a computing machine deposited on Earth by an alien starship. You might want to know how the device was programmed. Finding out would involve a measure of ‘reverse engineering’. You would ‘work backwards’ by observing inputs and outputs,hypothesizing computational operations linking inputs to outputs, testing these hypotheses against new inputs and outputs, and gradually refining your understanding of the alien device’s program. It seemed to solve all issues, for example, a computing machine can‘crash’ because of a software ‘bug’, or because of a hardware defect or failure. That's why people with mind defects are either due to brain problems or a mental dis-functions like going crazy.

Now the million dollar question everyone is avoiding until now is "How are those Mind functions are realized in the Brain and the nervous system?". How these functions are realized in the underlying software and hardware of a specific type, let's say for example, humans? A functionalist would answer that this is out of his scope of study, because the Black Box's inner workings are the responsibility of the neuroscience. Functionalism made philosophy of the Mind similar to Computer engineering.

The first version of functionalism, machine functionalism, presented by Hilary Putnam in the early 1960’s, machine functionalism argues that mental states, more specifically, are states of a hypothetical machine called a Turing Machine. Turing Machines are automatons which can, in principle, compute any problem and which do so in virtue of what are called ‘system states,’ which are tied to instructions for computational steps (e.g., “If in system state S, perform computation C and then transition into system state S2, and so on). In doing this it uses a computer model which describes the mind as a “multiply realisable”, it is like the calculations and rules that make up a software program that can be run on any machine, or in our case for example, animals and humans. Furthermore, we have a test that will enable us to tell when we have actually duplicated human cognition, the Turing test. The Turing test gives us a conclusive proof of the presence of cognitive capacities. To find out whether or not we have actually invented an intelligent machine we need only apply the Turing test.

To differentiate between this model and behaviourism, this model assumes that the functional states cause (and are therefore not identical with) behaviour while acknowledging the insight (often attributed to Ryle) that the mental is importantly related to behavioural output or response (as well as to stimulus or input). The differences is that functionalism also refers to other mental states; further, these other mental states are interlinked with each other, stimuli, and behavior in a web of causal relations. This allows both an appearance of choice (“Shall I respond in this way?”) and the presence of beliefs independent of any possible behaviour.

The model also differs from identity theory in that it does not matter what the physical cause of the mental state is because a causal role can be defined independently of its physical realization (that is, because functional states are multiply realizable). So, whether my brain state is always the same when I do a particular thing, or whether it is consistent with other people’s or animals when they do, is immaterial because there are any number of different ways in which such an experience might be “realised”. Rather than define pain in terms of C-fiber firing, functionalism defines pain in terms of the causal role it plays in our mental life: causing avoidance behavior, warning us of danger, etc., in response to certain environmental stimuli.

Problems

  1. Consciousness remains deeply mysterious on anyone’s view. We have no idea how to accommodate consciousness to the material world, no idea how to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Chinese Mind Argument: The philosopher Ned Block has argued that a case could be made for creating a mind - according to the functional definition -  on a grand scale where the population of China was fitted with radios which were connected up in just the same way that the neurons in the brain are connected up, and messages passed between them in the same way as between neurons. According to functionalism, this should create a mind; Functionalism relies on the idea that Functional states are “multiply realisable” – an idea which means that, not only may aliens and animals experience pain, but robots and the whole Chinese nation as well. But it is very difficult to believe that there would be a ‘Chinese consciousness’. If the Chinese system replicated the state of my brain when I feel pain, would something be in pain?
  2. We said that you being in pain is a matter of your being in a particular state, one that stands in appropriate causal relations to sensory inputs, to output behavior, and to other states of mind. But if we keep analyzing states of Mind with other states of Mind we end with infinite circular accounts. Solution: The idea is that because the identity of every state depends on relations it bears to other states, we cannot characterize mental items piecemeal, butonly ‘holistically’ – all at once.
  3. Qualia Problem. Solution:You are able to describe your experience as of a spherical red object, but it is the tomato that is spherical and red, not your experience. So the first distinction is between:
    1. Qualities of experiences (seen from third person perspective, like a scientist looking at your brain while you are seeing a tomato) 
    2. Qualities of objects experienced. (Seen from a first person perspective like you seeing a red and round tomato)
    A functionalist might contend that an experience is a matter of your representing a throbbing occurrence in your big toe but nothing in fact throbs. In the state of a tomato, nothing is red or round, only we represent it like this. These are qualities we represent objects as having, but it does not follow that anything actually has the qualities – any more than from the fact that we can represent mermaids, it follows that mermaids exist. What opponents of functionalism describe as qualities of conscious experiences – qualia – are qualities of nothing at all! They are rather qualities we mistakenly represent objects and occurrences as having. Alternatively, to say that your experience possesses such qualities is just to say that you are representing something as having them. Problem: But why do we represent them like this? And why are different conscious experiences have different qualities? And why this representation can be sensed?
  4. Chinese Room Argument: Any theory of mind that includes multiple realizability allows for the existence of strong AI. The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds. The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI". This is considered an argument for refutation of functionalism mainly. 

Chinese Room

Searle's Chinese room argument holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave. The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI". This is considered an argument for refutation of functionalism mainly.
Suppose that I ’ m locked in a room and given a large batch of Chinese writing. I know no Chinese, either written or spoken. Now suppose further that after this fi rst batch of Chinese writing I am given a second batch of Chinese script together with a set of rules for correlating the second batch with the first batch. The rules are in English, and I understand these rules. They enable me to correlate one set of formal symbols with another set of formal symbols, and all that “ formal ” means here is that I can identify the symbols entirely by their shapes. Unknown to me, the people who are giving me all of these symbols call the call the [first] batch “ questions. ” Furthermore, they call the symbols I give them back in response to the [first] batch “ answers to the questions, ” and the set of rules in English that they gave me, they call “ the program. ” Suppose also that after a while I get so good at following the instructions for manipulating the Chinese symbols and the programmers get so good at writing the programs that from the external points of view – that is, from the point of view of somebody outside the room in which I am locked – my answers to the questions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers. As regards the [claims of strong AI], it seems to me quite obvious in the example that I do not understand a word of Chinese. I have inputs and outputs that are indistinguishable from those of the native Chinese speaker, and I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing. (Searle, 417 – 18)
Any account of meaning has to recognize the distinction between the symbols, construed as purely abstract syntactical entities, and the semantics, the meanings attached to those symbols. The symbols have to be distinguished from their meanings.  For example, if I write down a sentence in German, “Es regnet,” you will see words on the page and thus see the syntactical objects, but if you do not know German, you will be aware only of the syntax, not of the semantics. A program uses syntax to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics of the symbols, unlike our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.

If Searle doesn't understand Chinese solely on the basis of running the right rules, then neither does a computer solely on the basis of running the right program. All that is ever happening is rule-based activity (which is not how humans work), so manipulating symbols according to a program is not enough by itself to guarantee cognition, perception, understanding, thinking, and so forth; that is, the creation of minds. Searle's room can pass the Turing test, but still does not have a mind, then the Turing test is not sufficient to determine if the room has a "mind".

Replies on the Chinese Room Argument


The System Reply


The basic "system reply" argues that it is the "whole system" that understands Chinese. While the man understands only English, when he is combined with the program, scratch paper, pencils and file cabinets, they form a system that can understand Chinese.

Searle responds by simplifying this list of physical objects: he asks what happens if the man memorizes the rules and keeps track of everything in his head? Then the whole system consists of just one object: the man himself. But he still would have no way to attach “any meaning to the formal symbols”. The man would now be the entire system, yet he still would not understand Chinese. For example, he would not know the meaning of the Chinese word for hamburger. Searle argues that if the man doesn't understand Chinese then the system doesn't understand Chinese either because now "the system" and "the man" both describe exactly the same object.

But what do we mean by understanding the symbols of a language? is it the link between a word and idea from the memory? Can't a computer do that? We learn rules of manipulation and when to use them, a computer can also learn them. When we hear a word, we try to recall its meaning, a computer can also do that. So it all depends on what one means by “understand”.

The Robot Reply


Some critics concede Searle's claim that just running a natural language processing program as described in the CR scenario does not create any understanding, whether by a human or a computer system. But these critics hold that a variation on the computer system could understand. The variant might be a computer embedded in a robotic body, having interaction with the physical world via sensors and motors (“The Robot Reply”).

The Robot Reply concedes Searle is right about the Chinese Room scenario: it shows that a computer trapped in a computer room cannot understand language, or know what words mean. The Robot reply is responsive to the problem of knowing the meaning of the Chinese word for hamburger—Searle's example of something the room operator would not know. It seems reasonable to hold that we know what a hamburger is because we have seen one, and perhaps even made one, or tasted one, or at least heard people talk about hamburgers and understood what they are by relating them to things we do know by seeing, making, and tasting. Given this is how one might come to know what hamburgers are, the Robot Reply suggests that we put a digital computer in a robot body, with sensors, such as video cameras and microphones, and add effectors, such as wheels to move around with, and arms with which to manipulate things in the world. Such a robot—a computer with a body—could do what a child does, learn by seeing and doing. The Robot Reply holds that such a digital computer in a robot body, freed from the room, could attach meanings to symbols and actually understand natural language. 

Tim Crane discusses the Chinese Room argument in his 1991 book, The Mechanical Mind. Crane appears to end with a version of the Robot Reply: “Searle's argument itself begs the question by (in effect) just denying the central thesis of AI—that thinking is formal symbol manipulation. But Searle's assumption, none the less, seems to me correct … the proper response to Searle's argument is: sure, Searle-in-the-room, or the room alone, cannot understand Chinese. But if you let the outside world have some impact on the room, meaning or ‘semantics' might begin to get a foothold. But of course, this concedes that thinking cannot be simply symbol manipulation.”

Conclusion


The theory is obviously lacking, but In the absence of clear competitors, many theorists have opted to stick with functionalism despite what they admit are gaps and deficiencies, atleast until something better emerges. In this way, functionalism wins by default.

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Physicalism

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/11/2015

The theory states that when we experience something - e.g. pain - this is exactly reflected by a corresponding neurological state in the brain (such as the interaction of certain neurons, axons, etc.). From this point of view, your mind is your brain - they are identical. Mental events are in fact physical events. Modern technology allows us to map brain activity to specific areas of the brain. MRI  has allowed scientists to study the structure and activity of the brain in detail. It is able to track blood flow. This allows us to see which areas of the brain are active when certain prescribed activities are performed.

Type identity


Type physicalism asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain. For example, Everytime anyone is happy, there is the same corresponding brain state. It is sometimes called the “identity thesis” because it asserted an identity between mental states and brain states.

Critiques

Is it likely that the brain structures of all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and molluscs realize pain, or other mental states, in exactly the same way? Do they even have the same brain structures? Clearly not. How is it possible then that they can share the same mental states and properties? The answer had to be that these mental kinds were realized by different physical states in different species.

Can we really say that all my happy moods have something in common? If I write down the defining characteristics of all my different moods, won’t I find that some very different moods have a lot in common (fear and excitement, for instance)? So, doesn't this suggest that – even if brain states are mental states – all happy states might correspond to a range of very different brain states? And this idea was responsible for a refinement of the theory known as Token Identity Theory.

Token identity


Token identity physicalism, argues that mental events are unlikely to have "steady" or categorical biological correlates. These positions make use of the philosophical type–token distinction (e.g., having the same "type" (abstract general entities ex. car) need not mean same "token" (particular objects ex. BMW or a certain vehicle). A token of a type is a particular concrete exemplification of that abstract general type. We can see how the identity theorists were motivated to move from a type-type identity theory to a token-token identity theory. The token-token identity theorists did not require, for example, that all token pains had to exemplify exactly the same type of brain state. They might be tokens of different types of brain states even though they were all tokens of the same mental type, pain.

Critiques


The first technical objection was that the theory seemed to violate a principle of logic called “Leibnitz’s Law.” The law says that if any two things are identical, then they must have all their properties in common. So if you could show that mental states had properties that could not be attributed to brain states, and brain states had properties that could not be attributed to mental states, it looks like you would refute the identity theory. For example, for conscious states that have a location, such as pain, the pain may be in my toe, but the brain state that corresponds to that pain is not in my toe, but in my brain. So the properties of the brain state are not the same as the properties of the mental state. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Putnam


In several papers published by Hilary Putnam in the late 1960s, he argued that, contrary to the famous claim of type-identity theory, it was not true that "pain is identical to C-fibre firing." It is possible that pain corresponds to, or is at least correlated with, completely different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms and yet they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain." Putnam cited numerous examples from all over the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. Is it likely that the brain structures of all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and molluscs realize pain, or other mental states, in exactly the same way? Do they even have the same brain structures? Clearly not, if we are to believe the evidence furnished by comparative neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. How is it possible then that they can share the same mental states and properties? The answer had to be that these mental kinds were realized by different physical states in different species.
Thus, if we can find even one psychological predicate which can clearly be applied to both a mammal and an octopus (say, “ hungry ” ), but whose physical – chemical “ correlate ” is different in the two cases, the brain state theory has collapsed. It seems to me overwhelmingly probable that we can do this. (Putnam, 436) 
P1. If type - physicalism is true, then every mental property can be realized in exactly one physical way.
P2. It is empirically highly plausible that mental properties are capable of multiple realizations.
C1. It is (empirically) highly plausible that the view of type - physicalism is false ( modus tollens , P1, P2).

In addition to undermining type - physicalism, Putnam ’s argument paved the way for the functionalist view of the mind.

Qualia


Given the scientific identification of heat with the motion of molecules, there is no further explanation that needs to be given:
"our knowledge of chemistry and physics makes intelligible how it is that something like the motion of molecules could play the causal role we associate with heat…. Once we understand how this causal role is carried out there is nothing more we need to understand." (Levine 1983) 
In contrast, when we are told that pain is to be identified with some neural or functional state, while we have learned quite a bit, there is still something left unexplained. Suppose, for example, that we precisely identify the neural mechanism that accounts for pain—C-fiber firing, let's say. Still, a further question would remain: Why does our experience of pain feel the way that it does? Why does C-fiber firing feel like this, rather than like that, or rather than nothing at all? Identifying pain with C-fiber firing fails to provide us with a complete explanation along the lines of the identification of heat with the motion of molecules. Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take:
The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.
This qualitative feel is called “qualia,” of which the singular is quale. Qaulia are the contents of your subjectiive experience, how the world looks and feels to you. Examples for it include how pain feels, how red looks, how a rose smells. There is a qualitative feel to drinking juice, which is  different from the qualitative feel of listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Qaulia cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience. For example colors, could you describe how a color looks to a blind person? you can only explain it to someone who already knows it. All materialist theories like functionalism deny their existence, so they are false. A full look on their types may include:
  1. Perceptual experiences, for example,experiences of the sort involved in seeing green, hearing loud trumpets smelling the sea air, running one's fingers over sandpaper. 
  2. Bodily sensations, for example, feeling a twinge of pain, feeling an itch, feeling hungry, having a stomach ache, feeling hot, feeling dizzy. Think here also of experiences such as those present during orgasm or while running flat-out. 
  3. Felt reactions or passions , for example, feeling delight, lust, fear, love, feeling grief, jealousy, regret. 
  4. Felt moods, for example, feeling happy, depressed, calm, bored, tense, miserable.
Qualia can’t be analysed in terms of functional role; so functionalism can’t explain it, it would leave out the subjective, qualitative, first-person, experiential phenomena. Consciousness involves a ‘point of view’, and there is something it is like, for a conscious creature, to be that creatures. Feeling pain causes you to cry out or withdraw your hand from the fire. But the feeling of the pain isn’t just these causal relations.

Mary's room


Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘ red ’ , ‘ blue ’ , and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘ The sky is blue ’ .What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will earn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all physical knowledge. Ergo there is more to have than that, and physicalism is false. (Jackson “ Epiphenomenal Qualia, ” 130)

The point of the argument is that there exist real phenomena that are necessarily left out of the scope of their knowledge, as long as their knowledge is only of objective, third-person, physical facts. The real phenomena are color experiences and the bat’s feelings, respectively; and these are subjective, first-person, conscious phenomena. The problem in Mary’s case is not just that she lacks information about some other phenomenon; rather, there is a certain type of experience that she has not yet had. And that experience, a first-person subjective phenomenon, cannot be identical with the third-person, objective neuronal and functional correlates.

Zombie Argument 


Many philosophers, including Chalmers in his book "The Conscious Mind", have recently claimed that we can coherently imagine the existence of zombies. This claim is taken to imply the possibility of zombies, a claim that in turn is taken to imply the falsity of physicalism. The zombies are by definition exactly like us physically. But if two creatures alike physically can differ with respect to consciousness, then it seems to show that consciousness is something over and above the physical. This argument says it is conceivable that my body could exist and be exactly as it is, but without my mind, therefore my mind is not identical with my body, or any part of, or any functioning of my body. It is sometimes suggested that God could have created a zombie world, if he had so chosen. From here, it is inferred that consciousness must be nonphysical. If there is a metaphysically possible universe that is physically identical to ours but that lacks consciousness, then consciousness must be a further, nonphysical component of our universe. If God could have created a zombie world, then (as Kripke puts it) after creating the physical processes in our world, he had to do more work to ensure that it contained consciousness.

Zombie-like, non-conscious creatures that do not possess “qualia”. Such creatures, whilst fitting the Functionalist criteria for possessing a mind, could not – non-functionalists argue – be said to be human in the full sense (thereby implying that the Functionalist view is inadequate). For example, when Zack and Zombie Zack each take a bite of chocolate cake, they each have the same reaction—they smile, exclaim how good it is, lick their lips, and reach for another forkful. But whereas Zack, a phenomenally conscious being, is having a distinctive (and delightful) qualitative experience while tasting the chocolate cake, Zombie Zack is experiencing nothing at all. This suggests that Zack's consciousness is a further fact about him, over and above all the physical facts about him (since all those physical facts are true of Zombie Zack as well). Consciousness, that is, must be nonphysical.

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Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/10/2015

Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and a rejection of the theory that mental states are separable from physical states. In this book Ryle refers to the idea of a fundamental distinction between mind and matter as "the ghost in the machine". According to Ryle, "Cartesian dualism", makes a basic "category-mistake".
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine'. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth.
A category mistake is a semantic error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category or that a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. For example:
"You are free to execute your laws and your citizens as you see fit." (William Riker, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
"[They] covered themselves with dust and glory." (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
"Eggs and oaths are soon broken." (English proverb)
"A house they call the rising sun, where love and money are made." (Dolly Parton's rendition of House of the Rising Sun)
The first example Ryle gives is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired “But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" or some such thing, rather than the category "institutions", say, which are far more abstract and complex conglomerations of buildings, people, procedures, and so on, all what he have seen.
A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But' where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if `the University' stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.
Cartesian dualism attempts to analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of the same logical category, it speaks of mind and body as a substance, which is of course wrong. So it mistakenly assumes that a mental act could be and is distinct from a physical act, or even that a mental world could be and is distinct from the physical world. For example Thomas Szasz argued that minds are not the sort of things that can be said to be diseased or ill because they belong to the wrong category and that "illness" is a term that can only be ascribed to things like the body. This theory of the separability of mind and body is described by Ryle as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine". For him, there is no entity called "Mind" inside a mechanical apparatus called "the body". Then, dualist doctrines are mythic in an analytical sense.
Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. 'I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself.' I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase 'there occur mental processes' does not mean the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two.
Ryle asserted that the workings of the mind are not distinct from the actions of the body. They are one and the same. Mental vocabulary is, he insists, merely a different manner of describing action. He also claimed that the nature of a person's motives is defined by that person's dispositions to act in certain situations. Mental events reduce to bodily events or statements about the body. Knowledge, memory, imagination, and other abilities or dispositions do not reside "within" the mind as if the mind were a space in which these dispositions could be placed or located.
When we describe people as exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes of which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves.
Ryle admits that his approach to the theory of mind is behavioristic in being opposed to the theory that there are hidden mental processes that are distinct from observable behaviors. His approach is based on the view that actions such as thinking, remembering, feeling, and willing are revealed by modes of behavior or by dispositions to modes of behavior. At the same time, however, he criticizes both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory for being overly mechanistic. While Cartesian theory may insist that hidden mental events produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual, behaviorism may insist that stimulus-response mechanisms produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual. Ryle concludes that both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory may be too rigid and mechanistic to provide us with an adequate understanding of the concept of mind.
It will also follow that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The 'reduction' of the material world to mental states and processes, as well as the 'reduction' of mental states and processes to physical states and processes, presuppose  the legitimacy of the disjunction 'Either there exist minds or there exist bodies (but not both)'. It would be like saying, 'Either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both)'.

Ryle's regress

The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution of which can be more or less intelligent, less or more stupid. But if, for any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior theoretical operation had first to be performed and performed intelligently, it would be a logical impossibility for anyone ever to break into the circle.

Variants of Ryle's regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist theories. For instance, in order to explain the behavior of rats, Edward Tolman suggested that the rats were constructing a "cognitive map" that helped them locate reinforcers, and he used intentional terms (e.g., expectancies, purposes, meanings) to describe their behavior. To interpret this Cognitive map, we need a set of cognitive rules and to interpret those cognitive rules, we need another set of rules and so on.

Kant's response to Ryle's regress
But of reason one cannot say that before the state in which it determines the power of choice, another state precedes in which this state itself is determined. For since reason itself is not an appearance and is not subject at all to any conditions of sensibility, no temporal sequence takes place in it even as to its causality, and thus the dynamical law of nature, which determines the temporal sequence according to rules, cannot be applied to it.
In essence, Kant is saying that Reason is outside of the causative elements of the natural world and as such is not subject to the law of cause and effect. Hence, for Kant, Reason needs no prior explanation for any of its choices or volitions. Ryle's assumption is that all volitions are physicalistic processes and thus subject to cause and effect. If such is the case, then Ryle would be correct in his regress. However, if some volitions are not subject to cause and effect, per Kant, then Ryle's regress fails. The same as Wittgenstein's solution in saying "Logic Takes care of itself" or in "The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it".

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Behaviourism

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 5/10/2015

Behaviour is the range of actions that act as a response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs.

The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds. John B. Watson put the emphasis on external behavior of people and their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people. In his opinion, the analysis of behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to get insight in the human actions. The mind just is the behavior of the body. For instance, if I say, "I am happy", this may be translated into a description of my physical state - increased heart rate, smiling, etc.Behaviorists acknowledged the existence of thinking, but identified it as a behavior. Cognitivists argued that the way people think impacts their behavior and therefore cannot be a behavior in and of itself.

The most famous example of a behaviourist experiment is the one conducted by the Russian scientist Pavlov . In the experiment, Pavlov fed some dogs whilst simultaneously ringing a bell. Eventually, the dogs came to associate the bell ringing with being fed and began to salivate. In this way, one stimulus (the food) could be replaced with another which otherwise had no connection with it (the bell) in order to produce the same reaction (salivation).

Another famous expirement is the superstitious pigeon. Skinner placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon "at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior." He discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with whatever chance actions they had been performing as it was delivered, and that they subsequently continued to perform these same actions. One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food.

Logical behaviorism says that when we attribute a belief to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead we are observing his behavioral dispositions or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. Since all that we can know about another person's state of mind is through their behaviour, there is nothing else. In this way logical behaviourism is picking up where logical positivism left off. For logical positivism, the meaning of a statement is established by its method of verification. So, if there is no possible method of verification, then the statement is not a factual one and possibly meaningless. In a similar way, mental statements that cannot be translated into a statement about some actual or possible form of behaviour are considered to be meaningless. Logical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76)

Critiques

  1. Chomsky claimed that the idea that when we study psychology we are studying behavior is as unintelligent as the idea that when we study physics we are studying meter readings. Of course we use behavior as evidence in psychology, just as we use meter readings as evidence in physics, but it is a mistake to confuse the evidence that we have about a subject matter for the subject matter itself.
  2. Behaviorists would analyze Jones’s belief that it is going to rain into sets of statements about his rain-avoidance behavior, for example carrying an umbrella. But the difficulty with that is that we can only begin to make such a reduction on the assumption that Jones desires to stay dry. We did not really reduce the belief to behavior; we reduced it to behavior plus desire, which still leaves us with a mental state that needs to be analyzed.
  3. The logical behaviorists had argued that mental states consisted in nothing but behavior and dispositions to behavior, but this runs against our common sense intuition that there is a causal relation between our inner mental states and our outward behavior.
  4. Two people can watch the same film and react in opposite ways: one might hate it, the other one love it. So if we cannot predict how someone will react in a certain situation, then how can we be certain that they are just responding to stimuli and not actually thinking and choosing with a private self?
  5. Another problem is related to the idea of Zombies or robots. In such imaginary cases, the behaviourist view would not give us any criteria for distinguishing them from “normal” humans.
  6. Different behaviours can result from the same stimulus. Imagine that you hear the doorbell - how do you react? Perhaps you run to answer it because you are expecting an important visitor; perhaps you ignore it; etc. In other words, there is no one response that can be linked to the same stimulus. So, if this is the case, what causes us to behave differently? The non-behaviourist would answer that it is our beliefs. However, this is a problem for the behaviourist in that it presupposes something that cannot be explained simply in terms of actual or possible behaviour.
  7. Different stimuli can produce the same response. As with the previous example, it is also difficult to say that there is a definite relationship between a certain type of stimulus and a certain response. For example, someone might laugh at someone falling over, seeing a photograph or from hearing a story - whilst someone else might not laugh at any of those things. In other words, there is no certain, one-to-one relationship between a stimulus and a response. If this is so, must we again say that beliefs are responsible for this?

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