Abstract
The antimentalists’ war against mentalism has not vanquished it. To examine why, we focus on two theses—mind as causal and internal—and three standard attacks against mentalism as defined by both theses: 1) mentalism implies dualism; 2) mind is unobservable, which hinders its scientific study; and 3) mentalism is impractical. These salients fail because: 1) if the mind is causal and internal, it must be material; 2) the observable/unobservable distinction is too problematic, with antimentalists equivocal about where to draw that line, with some even embracing publicly unobservable behavior as causally relevant; and 3) mentalism has not been demonstrated to be less practical than antimentalism. For the war on mentalism to succeed, stronger attacks must be devised, both scientific and philosophical. We contemplate some possibilities, while expressing doubts as to the wisdom of continuing the war. Peace may be better than war, and the resulting intellectual commerce may be good for both sides.
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Notes
Uttal suggests that no side of the “war between mentalism and behaviorism” can ever claim victory because both are deeply mistaken in their attacks and defenses on one key issue: the scientific tractability of the mind, which the author sees as an epistemological issue. The scientific tractability of the mind will be part of our analysis later on, but in a different direction.
Antimentalists might worry that this noun forces viewing mind as “substance” (technical philosophical lingo for “thing”) and therefore takes us too close to substance dualism. Substance dualists do use the noun in that way, but many others, like us, use it only as a convenient shorthand to refer to “minding” as a process consisting of (perhaps causally connected) states and events. In most current ontologies of mind, the noun is used in this way. This is similar to the observation that the rotation (or “rotating”) of a wheel is not the same as the wheel (a thing), but a process of the wheel. Descartes used the analogy to weight—it is not a thing added to a body, but rather a property of the body. We use “mind” as a harmless reification of “minding,” just as behavior analysts use “behavior” as a harmless reification of “behaving.”
Some antimentalists may still view us as mentalists because we hypothesize processes measured in different dimensions than behavior, or because of other things we have said. Evaluate our work on its own merits, which is fairer than dismissing it by branding us turncoats.
We use these two terms and “nonmaterial” interchangeably in Descartes’s sense, to refer to the lack of all spatial dimensions (“length, breadth, and height,” as he often put it). Such things are said to “lack extension” or “be unextended.” This use echoes those in some of the above quotations.
We also use these two terms equivalently, also following Descartes, to refer to things extended in Euclidean space, in the sense of having all three spatial dimensions. All everyday-life medium-sized entities, as well as most entities scientists study (including human bodies), are material or physical in this sense. It is arguable whether entities such as singularities, quarks, and bosons satisfy this criterion. The criterion is therefore imperfect, like all category boundaries.
Some have argued that Descartes was not a Cartesian (e.g., Baker & Morris, 1996; Christofidou, 2001, 2016). They argue that Cartesian dualism is a misinterpretation of Descartes’s view by one of his contemporaries (Antoine Arnauld’s so-called “Argument from Doubt”). We will not get into this discussion here. We will speak just of “Cartesian dualism,” a standard label, acknowledging the possibility that it is a misnomer and that Descartes may not have held such position.
Much hinges on what causation is, but we cannot delve into this vast topic here, as mentalism does not entail any particular view of causation. Nor does any current view of causation propound nonphysical causation.
Obviously, this makes sense if pain is different from pain behavior, as all ontologies of mind propose, except for a mind-behavior identity theory according to which “[p]ain is pain overt behavior” (Rachlin, 2014, p. 56). In this theory, there cannot be pain without pain behavior. Therefore, there cannot be zombies, because if they exhibit pain behavior, pace Rachlin, they experience pain. We are not defending the possibility of zombies here. We only mention it to illustrate how causation is incompatible with a contemporary defense of property dualism that calls up the undead as arguments. The impossibility of zombies, as implied by a mind-behavior identity, does not invalidate our pedagogical use of them here. Causation also implies their impossibility, again supporting our point. A mind-behavior identity theory (denying feelings absent overt feeling behavior), then, is not the only way to kill zombies. Embracing mental causation is another.
This use also applies to “inside” and “inner.” Often, these terms are interchangeable with “in” (e.g., “My mind is in my head”). We are not concerned with other uses of “in” (e.g., ones that describe a state of the organism: “I am in love,” “I am in good health”) that are not interchangeable with the standard one we adopt here, legitimate though they might be. Such other uses of “in” are not at work in assertions that the mind is internal or inner to, or inside, the body.
Nor can ordinary mentalistic language be dualistic either, as Ryle (1949) famously argued. This argument allows antimentalists to indulge in ordinary mentalistic talk without committing to mentalism.
To be fair to Uttal, he never denied the existence of the mind; just its accessibility to scientific treatment. See (Killeen, 2017) for an appreciation of his work and life.
Peirce (1901/1958) anticipated this by noting that scientists regularly cycle through abductive, deductive, and inductive inferences (in that order), viewing the three as equally integral to science. During the first half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science dismissed this methodological pluralism in favor of a methodological reductionism where one side (the Carnapian logical positivists) defended the primacy of the inductive method and the other side (Popperian falsificationists) did the same for the hypothetico-deductive method. Not anymore. After the demise of logical positivism, philosophers of science have leaned towards Peirce’s methodological pluralism (not without controversy and further elaboration of Peirce’s initial ideas).
Popper (1963) said: “A false theory may be as great an achievement as a true one. And many false theories have been more helpful in our search for truth than some less interesting theories which are still accepted. For false theories can be helpful in many ways; they may for example suggest some more or less radical modifications, and they may stimulate criticism” (p. 190). In fact, Popper (1974) never said that a theory should be abandoned as soon as it is falsified: “. . . I have used the terms ‘elimination’, and even ‘rejection’ when discussing ‘refutation.’ But it is clear . . . . that these terms mean, when applied to a scientific theory, that it is eliminated as a contender for the truth—that is, refuted, but not necessarily abandoned. . . . I have often pointed out that any such refutation is fallible. . . . I do not conflate even admitted falsity with the need to abandon a theory. . .” (p. 1009).
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Burgos, J.E., Killeen, P.R. Suing for Peace in the War Against Mentalism. Perspect Behav Sci 42, 241–266 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-018-0169-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-018-0169-2