Behaviourism in Disguise: The Triviality of Ramsey Sentence Functionalism
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Behaviourism in Disguise: The Triviality of Ramsey Sentence Functionalism T. S. Lowther1 Received: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Functionalism has become one of the predominant theories in the philosophy of mind, with its many merits supposedly including its capacity for precise formulation. The most common method to express this precise formulation is by means of the modified Ramsey sentence. In this article, I will apply work from the field of the philosophy of science to functionalism for the first time, examining how Newman’s objection undermines the Ramsey sentence as a means of formalising functionalism. I will also present a formal variation on Newman’s objection through mathematical induction. Together, these proofs suggest that functionalism formalised by the Ramsey sentence trivially reduces to a kind of behaviourism plus a cardinality constraint on the number of relations holding between mental-relevant behaviours. As most functionalists see functionalism as a distinct theory of mind from behaviourism, this suggests that the modified Ramsey sentence cannot form a satisfactory formalism for functionalism. Keywords Mind Functionalism Behaviourism Triviality Induction
1 Introduction Since its inceptions in the 1960s, functionalism has risen to be one of the predominant theories in the philosophy of mind (Churchland 2005, p. 33). The core thesis of functionalism is that mental states can be fully characterised as a set of functions defined by their inputs, which are both input mental states and material stimuli, and their outputs, which are output mental states and material responses (Block 1978, p. 262; Churchland 2005, p. 33), such that each function captures the causal relation holding between any one mental state and its inputs, outputs, and relations to other mental states (Lewis 1972, p. 256). The appeal of functionalism is & T. S. Lowther [email protected] 1
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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Axiomathes
grounded in its conceptual clarity, its amenability to formal representation, and its promise to reconcile the multiple realizability of mental states with token–token physicalist intuitions. Our present discussion focuses on the second of these appeals: the claimed amenability to formal representation of functionalist theories. With its express focus on functional definability and relational structure, it is clear why functionalism should be amenable to formalism: functions and relations are exactly the kind of property best captured by formal systems. Conversely, this focus on functions and relations also gives reason to doubt a functionalist theory which cannot produce a satisfactory formalism: relations and functions are the kinds of things which are typically captured by formal systems, and hence, if no such formal system can be presented, this raises serious questions over what, exactly, the claims of the functionalist thesis a
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