Behaviourism was the movement inspired by Pavlov's methods of observing stimuli and responses; these observations could be measured and controlled precisely. From a philosophical perspective, behaviourism bypassed Cartesian Dualism - Descartes' theory that the mind and body are two separate 'substances' that are contingently related.

The chief advocate of philosophical behaviourism was Gilbert Ryle. He wanted to show that Descartes had created a myth which divided the world up into mental and physical substances - into the inner and the outer; a two-worlds story. Ryle's alternative to dualism isn't grounded in a scientific approach to the mind; according to Ryle, dualism is a language distortion, which led to Descartes' myth. He tries to clarify the logical rules governing the use of psychological predicates in order to make their meanings explicit. As he puts it, he aims to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge that we already possess.

A Two-worlds Story

Initially, Ryle claims that Descartes is wrong to think that our outward actions or behaviour is evidence for an inner state that causes our behaviour. Take Ryle's example of attentive listening. According to dualism this would be two acts. Firstly the physical process of receiving sound, and secondly, the mental process of 'attending' which causes our listening to be attentive.

Yet, according to Ryle, in describing a person's mind we are describing the ways in which parts of his or her conduct are managed. A person is not listening as a physical action, and being attentive by a mental action, he argues that there is merely one process characterised as 'attentive listening'.

Ryle says that by using psychological predicates as reference to a private mental item, we are making a category mistake. Ryle's example of a category mistake is an analogy of a university. A visitor would see all the things that make up the university - the library, the halls of residence, the students and the lecturers - but the visitor would be mistaken in thinking there was some separate 'object' which was called 'university'. Dualism looks for a mental object that can pick out something named attentive but Ryle disagrees. Take boiling water. The boiling is not actually some hidden 'object' which is a separate thing to the water; the water is merely dispositioned to boil at 100°. Boiling is simply the behaviour of the water, not a part of it, as 'attentive' is merely the behaviour of the subject.

Language about the Mental Must Be Tied to Publicly Observable Behaviour

Ryle's contemporary, Wittgenstein¹, argued that language, by necessity, follows a set of rules. It only makes sense to think of noises and marks on paper as spoken or written language.

Hence, you couldn't follow rules privately, as you wouldn't be able to distinguish between thinking you were obeying rules and actually obeying the rules. It then follows that the rules must be testable in public, and so language referring to the mental must be about publicly observable features, otherwise we couldn't use language about the mental at all.

The Beetle in the Box

Wittgenstein argues that psychological predicates do not refer to Cartesian minds by imagining that everybody has a box, and nobody can look in anybody else's box. Whenever people are asked 'What's in your box?', the correct answer is beetle, as this is the rule. However, the thing in the box no longer plays any role at all, and it couldn't because nobody can ever look in anybody else's box. Likewise, we might think that talk about the mental must be about something private. But, if Wittgenstein is right about his 'beetle' game, then these private items have no role in the 'language game' of 'mind talk'. Mental language therefore, only makes sense to the extent that it is tied into publicly observable behaviour.

Criticisms of Ryle's Philosophical Behaviourism

Not all Mental States Are Showing in Behaviour

One criticism says that not all of our mental states are actually showing in our behaviour, and that we can hide them - it is possible to be in a mental state without that state being expressed in our behaviour. Also, some mental states - for example, having an after image - are not linked to behaviour. Nevertheless they are real, and so behaviourism can be argued to be wrong to identify the mental with behaviour.

Ryle replies by adopting a dispositional analysis to explain how we can describe people's mental states without those mental states being displayed at the time of applying the description. For example, we could say that Mary is angry, although she isn't acting angrily at this moment. A glass can be described as brittle, even if it is not shattering; and Ryle says that this is because the glass is disposed to act in a certain way (to shatter) under certain conditions, in the same way that Mary is disposed to act angrily under certain conditions.

A Criticism of Ryle's Dispositional Analysis

It isn't clear if Ryle's dispositional analysis is applicable in the case of mental; 'glass is brittle' yields a very specific prediction about the potential behaviour of the glass. However, 'Mary is angry' yields a less specific prediction.

Ryle's Psychological Predicates

Another criticism of behaviourism is that psychological attributes are supposed to explain behaviour. If we analyse psychological predicates in the way Ryle recommends them, then 'Mary is able to write lucid essays, ask interesting questions and provide imaginative examples because she is intelligent' is no more informative than 'the rubber band stretches because of its elastic properties'.

In referring to Mary's intelligence, one is hypothesising an underlying capacity that causes, and hence explains, her overt behaviour. Moreover, analysing the concept of intelligence as a hypothetical underlying cause, recognises that, when 'Mary is intelligent, but, Bob is not intelligent' is said, more than a difference simply between Bob and Mary's behaviour is pointed out.

The Break-down of Behaviourism in the First Person

Finally, Ryle challenges the Cartesian claim that I have privileged access regarding my mental states. According to Ryle, the things I want to say about myself depend upon the way I act, and the way I act is open to public view. Ryle believes that I could seek out the advice of others regarding my mental states, as their judgements about my feelings can be just as accurate, if not more accurate than my own. However, philosophical behaviourism has been criticised because it fails to acknowledge that what I know about my own mental states is radically different from the way I estimate the mental states of others; I don't need to look in a mirror in the morning to decide how I'm feeling. Another example of this breakdown is shown in a philosopher's joke - 'What did one behaviourist say to another behaviourist after they had sex?'... 'How was it for me?!'. Philosophical behaviourism seems plausible when it is about somebody else, but we immediately realise it is inadequate when we apply it to our own case.

Ryle would respond by saying that our behaviour is feeding back, so that we do estimate our mental states via our behaviour - when I smile, my facial muscles feed back into the system and inform me that I am happy.

However, this seems very implausible, and a better approach would be to acknowledge that there is a contrast between first and third person reports about the mental, but to explain the difference without referring to a Cartesian theory of privileged access - third person reports can be false, but reports in the first person cannot be false. However, this can be explained by arguing that first person reports aren't reports at all; instead they resemble expressions which cannot be true or false - for example, 'ow' or 'yum'.

It can also be argued that referring to the agent's beliefs and desires identifies actions, not the other way round as behaviourism suggests! For example, imagine I see Bob waving at me from across the street. It is possible that he is waving at me to make Mary jealous and perhaps resent the attention I was getting so that she would be driven to admit that she likes him also. This description of Bob's behaviour depends upon hypothesising beliefs and desires that inform the behaviour.

Behaviour alone is not a sufficient condition for the correct ascription of mental states - actors act as if they are in a certain mental state, but they are merely acting. A person may interpret my behaviour from the outside in a way that is completely consistent with the way that I behave, and yet they may still be wrong about my real mental state.

Qualia

Even if it is possible to interpret a person's behaviour, and therefore correctly hypothesise their mental state, descriptions of behaviour cannot capture 'what it is like' to be in a particular mental state (Qualia). Even if the identity of a particular mental state (take, for example, jealousy) is tied up with a particular kind of behaviour (acting in a jealous way), there is something that it is like to be jealous which is at best evoked by behaviour but only ever known from the inside; the conscious experience of being jealous. We can never know what it feels like to be jealous simply from observing somebody's jealous behaviour.