Physicalist Theories

• Hard behaviourism-

  Created by: Carl Hemple

  Argument: all talk of mental states can be reduced to physical states, any talk of mental states should be eliminated completely as it has no empirical backing
• Soft behaviourism-

  Created by: Ryle

  Argument: allows us to look at patterns of behaviour, talk of mental states can form talk of behavioural dispositions.
• Behaviourism issues+responses-

  . Issues: philosophical zombies, Super Spartains (Putnam, there is underlying symptoms to physical behaviour and we can wrongly identify emotions if we don’t take this isn’t account, someone can be in pain and not show it) . Responses: this assumes dualism is true, the fact the Spartans may talk about pain is pain behaviour
• Mind-brain identity theory- created by: Smart.

  Arguement: All mental states are identical and can be reduced to brain states. Scientific hypothesis. Metal states are types and the brain processes are tolken

  
  

  . Issues= spatial location, irreducibility of intentionality, chauvinism of type identity

  
  

  . Responses= ordinary language is just lacking to describe this,
• Eliminative materialism- . Created by: Churchlands . Arguement: We should completely eliminate all talk of the mind as brain states are ONLY mental states, mental states do not exist. Language will evolve to talk about brain states . Issues= folk phycology is the best hypothesis, it’s self-refuting (believes beliefs don’t exist but this is a belief), knowledge of our mental states overtakes all else (Descartes cogito) . Responses= folk phycology appears to be a stagnant theory (shows it’s invalid), if something lacked “vital spirit” they couldn’t argue against the notion
• Functionalism .Created by: Ned Block . Argument: All mental states serve a functional role. It’s better to describe mental states with their functional role . Machine state functionalism= humans are a complex system of inputs and outputs . VS behaviourism= takes into account mental states causal roles, overcomes circularity . VS MBIT= fixes chauvinism (as all creatures with brains have the same function capacity).
• Functionalism issues+responses-

  . Issues= functional duplicate with inverted qualia, Mary knowledge , homunculi head/china brain, . Responses= it’s not a necessary issue to consider as it doesn’t effect our function , qualia is still a functional quality (Mary should be able to aptly predict the colour red), just because it’s metaphysically possible doesn’t mean it’s true