Phi 269 F04, reading guide

Reading guide for 9/14: Hilary Putnam, Brains and Behavior
(Chalmers, pp. 45-54)

This is the first of three pieces by Putnam that we will read this semester; we'll read the second for Thursday. This paper develops a criticism of behaviorism and the second puts forth an alternative position. (The third paper will come much later in the semester and address a different range of issues.) In this paper, Putnam criticizes "logical behaviorism." Ryle is someone who held such a view, but he didn't present it in the chapter you read. Chalmers says a little what logical behaviorism is in his introduction (p. 3), and the short paper by Carnap (pp. 39-44) is just the sort of thing Putnam has in mind when he speaks of "the Vienna positivists" (p. 45) since Carnap was one of the most prominent members of the positivist club known as the Vienna Circle.

Try to sort out in your own mind the three positions Putnam labels "dualism," "classical materialism," and "logical behaviorism." The fourth alternative that Putnam mentions in his note 3 is usually called "functionalism"; it is the view he will present in the paper we will read for Thursday.
Putnam begins the section "Logical Behaviorism" by describing what he calls "cluster concepts," using the example of medical terms. Some vocabulary may help in following this preliminary discussion:
- you can regard intension as a synonym for 'meaning' (there's a little more about it on the reading guide for Feigl);
- Putnam's item 1 (p. 46 c. 1) explained the term analytic: it concerns things that can be seen to be true by analysis of meaning; his example, "All bachelors are unmarried," is a standard one, and Place, in effect, offered "Red is a color" as another example (p. 56);
- synthetic is the opposite of analytic: a synthetic statement goes beyond an account of meaning to make a substantive factual claim; Place claimed, in effect, that "His table is an old packing-case" is synthetic.
Putnam uses the idea of cluster concepts as the basis for his actual attack on logical behaviorism. This argument begins at the end of p. 47 and continues through his examples of "super-spartans" and eventually "X-worlders." Try to formulate for yourself the significance he attaches to each of this imaginary examples.
His final section looks at responses logical behaviorists might offer to his arguments. Think about all of these but also pick the one you'd most like to discuss further.