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Additional resources for The Inner Life of a Rational Agent: In Defence of Philosophical Behaviourism

Sample text

In relativity theory the notion of the mass of an object is exchanged for the notion of the mass of an object at a certain velocity. So the equation that now introduces the notion of force is Force ϭ Mass at velocity v ϫ Acceleration. If the notion of rest mass were employed instead the equivalent equation would be Force ϭ Rest Mass ϫ Acceleration / ͱ(1 Ϫ v2/c2). If the meaning of the term were a function of its exact role in current theory, then the term ‘force’ would have changed its meaning.

The idea here is that we should not require a sentence-by-sentence reduction of the mental to the physical, but a reduction at the level of the whole theory. We might have a theory of Mr A’s behaviour that includes sentences like ‘Mr A is excited’. The content of the theory as a whole is determined by the set of observation sentences that may be deduced from it, even though there may be no specific set of observation sentences that may be deduced from ‘Mr A is excited’ in isolation. The reductive behaviourism of logical positivists like Schlick, Hempel and the early Carnap in the 1930s is a peculiar manifestation of philosophical behaviourism, having little in common with the sort of approach that was developing in Britain (Frank Ramsey, Richard Braithwaite and Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge and Gilbert Ryle in Oxford), or in America with the descendents of the American pragmatists.

For example, it is wrong to describe someone as intending to go to the cinema if the person exhibits no inclination to go to the cinema even when the opportunity is presented to him or her at no cost. It is right to describe yourself as believing that Henry VIII had six wives if you are disposed to assent to the proposition that Henry VIII had six wives. Such practices within which states of mind are attributed relate the use of mental terms to behavioural dispositions. So this kind of pragmatism supports some sort of behaviourist approach to the concept of mind.

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