Luke
The behaviorist might grant that if there are mental states but we do not know anything about them. — Fooloso4
Luke
When I say "I remember" that does not mean that I have a particular mental process going on. — Fooloso4
That is a grammatical fiction. — Fooloso4
The grammar of "I remember" is not about some mental process. But that does not mean that the mental process of remembering is a fiction. — Fooloso4
Paine
Meaning, believing, thinking, understanding, reasoning, calculating, learning, following rules, remembering, intending, expecting, longing – there is hardly anything, traditionally thought to be emergent from, underwritten by, or reducible to, a mental process or state, that Wittgenstein has not subjected to the razor of enactivism; that is: shown to be primitively embodied or enacted rather than originating in propositions, theories of mind, or ghostly
processes.
This may sound like behaviourism, but it isn't. As Peter Hacker aptly sums up: — Wittgenstein's Razor: The Cutting Edge of Enactivism
... behaviourism was right about some matters. Logical behaviourism (e.g., Carnap and Feigl in the 1930s) was right to insist that there is an internal relation between mental attributes and behaviour. For the criteriafor ascribing mental attributes to others consist in their behaviour in the circumstances of life. Where it was wrong was to suppose that the mental is reducible to behaviour and dispositions to behave. Ontologicalbehaviourism (Watson and Skinner) was right to emphasise that language learning is based on training, and that it presupposes common behavioural reactions and responses. It was right to conceive of language learning as learning new forms of behaviour – learning how to do things with words. It was correct to conceive of understanding in terms of abilities and dispositions, rather than as a hidden mental state or process.
But the behaviourists were sorely mistaken to suppose that the mental is a fiction. One can think and feel without showing it, and one can exhibit thoughts and feelings without having them. Avowals of experience are indeed a form of behaviour, but what they avow is not behaviour — ibid. page 5
Fooloso4
I believe this would mean they were no longer a behaviorist. — Luke
Fooloso4
I believe it does. Otherwise, why would you say it? — Luke
The grammatical fiction is the assumption that the word “remember” gets its meaning from a description of the particular mental process rather than from its expression — Luke
Luke
When I say "I remember" I do not mean that I have a particular mental process going on. — Fooloso4
Fooloso4
306. ...“There has just taken place in me the mental process of remembering . . .” means nothing more than “I have just remembered . . .”
Luke
The grammatical fiction is the assumption that the word “remember” gets its meaning from a description of the particular mental process rather than from its expression
— Luke
Agreed. — Fooloso4
307. “Aren’t you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?” If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.
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