Behaviourism and Functionalism - TCE Philosophy (Tasmania)
“Behaviourism and functionalism as accounts of the mental”
Behaviourism holds that talk about mental states can be reduced to talk about behaviour and dispositions to behave, so to be in pain just is to wince and avoid the cause. Functionalism holds that mental states are defined not by what they are made of but by the causal role they play, the way they connect inputs, other mental states and behavioural outputs. You are asked to explain both, see how functionalism improves on behaviourism, and evaluate them against objections such as the inverted qualia and absent qualia problems.
What this dot point is asking
This dot point belongs to Unit 2 of the TASC Philosophy course, the mind/body problem. Behaviourism and functionalism are attempts to say what mental states are without positing Descartes' immaterial substance and without the rigidity of the type identity theory. They locate the mental in patterns rather than in a special kind of stuff.
Logical behaviourism
Behaviourism, in the philosophical form developed by Gilbert Ryle, holds that statements about the mind are really statements about behaviour and dispositions to behave in certain ways. To say someone believes it will rain is to say they are disposed to carry an umbrella, agree that rain is coming, and so on. Ryle attacked what he called the dogma of the ghost in the machine, the dualist picture of an inner private mind directing the body, arguing it rests on a category mistake. There is no hidden inner theatre; the mind is a way of describing how a person behaves and is disposed to behave.
The view that talk of mental states can be analysed into, or reduced to, talk of actual and possible behaviour, so mental terms refer to behavioural dispositions rather than to inner states or substances.
Why behaviourism struggles
Behaviourism faces serious objections. First, it seems to leave out the felt quality of experience: a person could be in agony yet, through great self-control, display no pain behaviour at all, which behaviourism cannot easily accommodate. Second, dispositions to behave cannot be specified without referring to other mental states. Whether you carry an umbrella depends not only on believing it will rain but on wanting to stay dry, so mental terms are defined by other mental terms, and the reduction to pure behaviour breaks down. These problems prepared the way for functionalism.
Functionalism keeps behaviourism's insight that mind is about patterns rather than substance, but adds inner mental states back in. A mental state is defined by its causal relations to sensory inputs, to other mental states, and to behavioural outputs, not by behaviour alone.
Functionalism
Functionalism, developed by Hilary Putnam and others, says mental states are functional states: a state counts as pain because of the role it plays, being typically caused by bodily damage, causing the belief that one is hurt and the desire to relieve it, and tending to produce avoidance behaviour. What physically realises that role can vary. This is the great strength of functionalism, since it accommodates multiple realisability: a human brain, a very different animal nervous system, or in principle a machine could all have a state filling the pain role, and so all could be in pain. The mind is likened to software that can run on different hardware.
To decide whether some state is, say, thirst on the functional account, do not ask what it is made of. Ask what causes it, typically dehydration, what other states it combines with, such as the belief that water is nearby, and what it tends to produce, drinking behaviour. If a state in any system fills that role, functionalism counts it as thirst, whatever its physical realisation.
Objections to functionalism
Functionalism faces challenges centred on conscious experience. The inverted qualia problem asks whether two people could share all the same functional states yet have systematically different colour experiences, your red being like my green, with no functional difference to mark it; if so, function does not fix experience. The absent qualia or China brain worry asks whether a system could fill all the functional roles, perhaps the population of a whole nation passing signals, yet have no conscious experience at all. These suggest that role alone may not capture the felt, qualitative side of mind. For the TASC course, present behaviourism and functionalism as progressively more sophisticated alternatives to dualism, and use the qualia objections to assess whether they fully explain consciousness.
Behaviourism reduces the mind to behaviour and leaves out inner states. Functionalism keeps inner mental states but defines them by their causal role, including their relations to other inner states, not just to outward behaviour. Treating the two as the same misses why functionalism was developed: precisely to fix behaviourism's failure to handle inner states and their interconnections.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice6 marksExplain how functionalism improves on logical behaviourism as an account of mental states.Show worked answer →
A 6 mark response needs both views and the specific improvement.
Behaviourism. Ryle holds talk of the mind reduces to actual and possible behaviour and dispositions, attacking the dualist ghost in the machine as a category mistake. But it leaves out the felt quality of experience (a person could feel agony yet show no pain behaviour) and cannot specify a disposition without referring to other mental states (carrying an umbrella depends on both believing it will rain and wanting to stay dry).
Functionalism. Putnam defines mental states by their causal role, their relations to sensory inputs, other mental states and behavioural outputs, not by behaviour alone. This restores inner states and their interconnections, fixing behaviourism's failure, and allows multiple realisability (the same role in different physical systems).
Markers reward the two behaviourist problems and a clear statement that functionalism adds inner states defined by role.
Practice16 marks"Functionalism cannot account for conscious experience." Critically evaluate this claim.Show worked answer →
A 16 mark extended argument essay should explain functionalism and weigh the qualia objections.
Exposition. State functionalism: a mental state is defined by its causal role (typical causes, relations to other states, behavioural effects), so the mind is like software that can run on different hardware (multiple realisability).
The objections. Inverted qualia: two people could share all functional states yet have systematically different colour experiences (your red like my green), with no functional difference to mark it, so function does not fix experience. Absent qualia / China brain: a system could fill all the functional roles (a whole nation passing signals) yet have no conscious experience, so role alone may not capture the felt side of mind.
Replies. A functionalist may deny that inverted or absent qualia are genuinely possible, or argue that consciousness just is a functional matter, or restrict functionalism to non-phenomenal states. Some accept the objections and move to property dualism or representationalism.
Judgement. Conclude with a defended position, for example that the qualia objections expose a real explanatory gap for functionalism about phenomenal consciousness, even if functionalism succeeds for intentional states; or that the thought experiments are inconclusive. Markers reward an accurate account of functionalism, the two qualia objections, and a reasoned conclusion.