Behaviorism

Many philosophers have concerned themselves with the philosophy of the mind, which largely attempts to describe the relationship between the mind and the body, if there is one at all. The word ‘mind’ in this case refers to all of our hopes, dreams, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and similar abstractions. The ‘body’ is more loosely defined – often referring to the brain, nervous system, and/or various sensory inputs located around the body: the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, possibly even including the entire epidermis for touch. However, for the purposes of this particular argument just a general understanding of each concept should suffice. For a long time the foremost debate within this subject was whether the mind and the body constitute two separate entities or are identical to one another. It seems at first empirically obvious that some sort of relationship does exist, as say simple patterns of vibration within my ear drums, what we call music, are able to move me to emotional extremes of both anguish and elation. Are there any ways we can determine how these types of interactions between the body, or in this instance my ear drums, and the mind, part of which can generally be defined by my emotional state, take place?

The subject of the mind was so important to Descartes that it became the starting point for his foundational beliefs, which were to be a set of propositions that could be proven to be universally true. Within this framework he sought to reexamine every single aspect of what he formerly took for granted as his basis of knowledge. To begin, by merely pondering the question, “Do I exist?” he claimed that he could prove his own existence, in that being able to think this thought, or any thought at all even, necessitates some form of existence by a matter not of logical deduction, but rather plain self-clarity: “I am, I exist”. Thus, he determined his existence based purely on an aspect of the mind, however loosely defined such an existence may be. Though he used this idea as the foundation for all of his further philosophy, it still has yet to tackle the topic of what exactly constitutes this apparent relationship between the mind and what we perceive to be our body.

Descartes was also the first person to have come up with a precise argument for such a relationship, positing that the mind and body are in fact made up of two distinct substances, a concept logically termed dualism. He conceded that that the body may merely be an illusion: it can be conceived of not to exist (say, in the case of an evil, powerful sorcerer deluding us in to believing such a thing), and therefore even by some infinitesimal possibility might actually not exist. However, as noted earlier, it is a logical impossibility to think of your mind not existing, as to even doubt your own existence in the face of this potential illusion requires at the very least the existence of thought. As he seemingly taunted such a devious being, “But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something.” Therefore, as a basic matter of identity, the mind and the body cannot be one in the same – as it is possible for one to exist without the other; indeed, he established this system in correspondence with widespread belief in immortality of the soul, no doubt a pleasant premise to be able to justify. Descartes’ own form of substance dualism had a further stipulation: though the mind and body are separate, they in some way interact with one another. But there is seemingly no way you can ever physically touch your thoughts, likewise, you can’t think your body into a different position in space (though we do possess the uncanny ability to convince our legs to move in that direction). It’s not at all clear how a completely intangible concept like the mind can affect a material body, or vice versa.

One response to such a valid criticism is that the mind and body are in fact identical, an idea known as substance monism. According to Ryle, substance dualism fails in that it is based on a category mistake: it attempts to give something an illogical property, one that it can’t possibly attain. For instance, it is impossible to add five to your father, as your father is not a mathematical construct that can be summed with another number. It would be another category mistake to claim that most bananas are bachelors. However true it may be that a male banana has never been observed in a serious relationship, it’s wrong to even question whether any one banana is a bachelor or not – it’s a quality that simply does not apply to bananas. It almost seems that every prepositional mistake can also be considered a category mistake, but the term is usually only applied to the most grievously illogical classifications. In the case of substance dualism, Ryle suggests that it is wrong to attempt to treat the mind as an immaterial substance as this quality can’t be applied to what actually constitutes ‘the mind’. All of our beliefs, feelings, thoughts, urges, and the ilk are actually just behaviors, or actions that can be publicly observed. What you might call the feeling of embarrassment is really just the sum of events of blushing, speaking less, and avoiding eye contact with other people, among other things. My belief that the Earth is flat is really just having lacked a proper education and my constant running around shouting nonsensically. This system of attributing every aspect of what we believe to be our mind as simply a set of outward behaviors, and furthermore dispositions towards enacting those behaviors, is called behaviorism.

To the natural scientist behaviorism makes a lot of sense. It’s incredibly hard to study the inward thoughts of a person objectively, generally relying on their rather unreliable testimony. However, behaviors can both easily and openly be observed and calculated, and so one can perform a complete study of the mind merely by observing outward action. Herein lies the problem though, for the behaviorist writes off our concept of say, pain, as a person’s moaning, wincing, or making foul exclamations (or, if they are a good actor, just their disposition towards doing these things). Is there not something more than these things to pain that the behaviorist cannot possibly object to? If you were to pinch them while they explain behaviorism to you, not only might they exhibit all of these actions, but they would also hurt! Additionally, is it always the case that pain causes these very actions? Professional actors might tend to disagree, as many have played roles where they were to exhibit varying outward degrees of pain, without actually having experienced such a thing. Can it really be said that a man who has literally been shot and an actor merely playing the part are experiencing the same thing?

There is fairly good evidence for mental states not only being a set of actions, but being the explicit cause for sets of actions. Your putting the keys into a car ignition would seem to stem from both your desire to drive the car and your belief that putting the keys in will allow this to happen, and by following this intuition it seems likely that your car will in fact start. But, if your mental state was merely the action of putting the keys into the car ignition, then there could be no relationship between these apparent desires and beliefs and their outcome – they would be one in the same. This is the major downfall of behaviorism: its assumption that mental states are behaviors disallows the possibility for mental states to ever influence behavior, even though we have a lot of evidence for this very thing occurring, and can often use these hypothetical states to predict behavior. For example, if an EMT sees someone choking and begins to wrap their arms around that person, you can predict the EMT will attempt to dislodge whatever is choking them. Because of their chosen career in which they likely have both the desire to help other people and the belief that performing the Heimlich maneuver will aid a choking person, you can use the EMT’s mental state to make such a prediction. But if the EMT’s desire and belief are exactly the act of him helping the choking person, then they cannot possibly also be used to explain the cause of it.

One preliminary response a behaviorist might offer is that these supposed deep, private mental experiences are really just the act of pretending to be in such a state. Your creating a mental image of a tree is then just you pretending to have done so, and any happiness you boast outside of your smiling, giggling, and frolicking is simply a matter of pretending to be in such a state. This feels like a pretty big cop-out, and does nothing really to counter the possibility of a mind being the cause for these things. The behaviorist might also suggest these things are merely other forms of inter-related behavior, so that your creating a mental image of a tree is being in the state of identifying trees, and your apparent inward happiness is through a complex regress merely being predisposed to further outward showings of happiness. This line of argument is intentionally circular, but still seems to break down on some level. When you begin adding these compounded behaviors together, it becomes unclear what the functional difference is between behaviorism and simply possessing a conscious entity like the mind.