Abstract
While Quine’s linguistic behaviorism is well-known, his Kant Lectures contain one of his most detailed discussions of behaviorism in psychology and the philosophy of mind. Quine clarifies the nature of his psychological commitments by arguing for a modest view that is against ‘excessively restrictive’ variants of behaviorism while maintaining ‘a good measure of behaviorist discipline…to keep [our mental] terms under control’. In this paper, I use Quine’s Kant Lectures to reconstruct his position. I distinguish three types of behaviorism in psychology and the philosophy of mind: ontological behaviorism, logical behaviorism, and epistemological behaviorism. I then consider Quine’s perspective on each of these views and argue that he does not fully accept any of them. By combining these perspectives we arrive at Quine’s surprisingly subtle view about behaviorism in psychology.
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- 1.
See Quine (1959, 163): “If ideas did exist we’d have to disregard them”; (1970, 4): “A language is mastered through social emulation and social feedback, and these controls ignore any idiosyncrasy in an individual’s imagery or associations that is not discovered in his behavior”; and (1999, 417): “my linguistic behaviorism […] disciplines data”. For an overview of Quine’s linguistic behaviorism, see Gibson (2004), Roth (2006), and Føllesdal (2011).
- 2.
Methodological behaviorists have offered a wide range of objections against the study of mental states, processes, and images: they have argued that introspective data is subjective, that introspective experiments cannot be replicated, that the connection between private events and verbal behavior is unreliable, and that theories based on introspective data cannot be falsified. See, for example, Guthrie (1950, 99): “what appeals to me as the outstanding aim and the requirement of science [is] its public character—its foundation in human communication, not merely in the private experience of individuals. Scientific observations must be repeatable by others—there can be no science until there are men using a common language”.
- 3.
John B. Watson, for example, defends a combination of methodological and ontological behaviorism. In “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it”, for instance, Watson argues both that introspection is unreliable and that “thought processes are really motor habits in the larynx” (1913, 177). B. F. Skinner’s “radical behaviorism”, on the other hand, combines an epistemological argument against mentalism with a functional analysis of behavior. See Zuriff (1985) and Graham (2017) for taxonomies of behaviorism that are more closely aligned with positions that have been actually defended by twentieth-century psychologists.
- 4.
Of course, Carl Hempel (and many other logical positivists) would later abandon the translationist view summarized here. See section “Radical Reduction”.
- 5.
Carnap (1936, §8) characterizes partial definitions as follows. Let Q3 be a mental predicate, let Q1 and Q4 describe experimental conditions which have to obtain in order to find out whether or not Q3 applies, and let Q2 and Q5 describe possible results of the experiments. Then Q3 can be introduced as a new predicate in one’s language by statements like R1 and R2:
$$ \left({\mathrm{R}}_1\right)\kern0.5em {\mathrm{Q}}_1\to \left({\mathrm{Q}}_2\to {\mathrm{Q}}_3\right) $$$$ \left({\mathrm{R}}_2\right)\kern0.5em {\mathrm{Q}}_4\to \left({\mathrm{Q}}_5\to \neg {\mathrm{Q}}_3\right) $$Definitions of this form are partial definitions because Q3 is only specified relative to a set of experimental conditions Q1 and Q4. See Verhaegh (2014, 2018, section 2.2).
- 6.
It is probably for this reason that both Carnap and Hempel would later also abandon partial definitions. See Hempel (1952, 32) and Carnap (1956, 68). Again, see Verhaegh (2014, 2018, section 2.2). Indeed, in a third reprint of “The Logical Analysis of Psychology”, Hempel admits that even his weakened version of logical behaviorism is too strong: “Since then, I have come to think that this conception requires still further broadening, and that the introduction and application of psychological terms and hypotheses is logically and methodologically analogous to the introduction and application of the terms and hypotheses of a physical theory” (1980, 14).
- 7.
See also Quine’s Calcutta Lectures (1983), written a few years after the Kant Lectures: “Full operational definition of terms is not […] to be demanded, even for rigorous science; but if a term is seriously deficient on that score, then it needs to justify itself by contributing theoretically to the systematic explanation of observed events. Such was the contribution of the notion of molecules in explaining the behavior of gases by the mechanics of moving particles” (item 2851, my transcription).
- 8.
In the Kant Lectures, Quine makes the same point without explicitly referring to mental terms: “Empiricism or positivism at its radical extreme would aspire to a completely operational lexicon. The reasonable line rather is one that plays two values one against the other. There is a premium on perceptual criteria: the fuller the better, other things being equal. But there is also a premium on structural simplicity and the other related qualities, whatever they are, that make for a satisfactorily explanatory scientific theory. A term that promises well in this latter way can be excused its remoteness from perceptual criteria. A judicious weighing of these two values is what is called for” (Quine, This volume, 34–35).
- 9.
This argument goes back to beginning of Quine’s philosophical career. Indeed, in the early 1950s, Quine already claimed that a “physicalist ontology has a place also for states of mind” because any “inspiration or a hallucination can […] be identified with its host for the duration” (1954, 230).
- 10.
Although Quine adopts Davidson’s label ‘anomalous monism’, the latter’s version of the thesis differs from Quine’s in some crucial respects. See Kemp (2012).
- 11.
For a comparison between verificationism, operationalism, and partial definitions, see Zuriff (1985, ch. 3). In the Immanuel Kant Lectures, Quine also characterizes logical behaviorism as a type of operationalism: “this extreme of behaviorism would be excessively restrictive. It would be as unreasonable as an unswerving insistence in scientific theory on what Bridgman called operational definition. Indeed it would be a case of that” (This volume, 23).
- 12.
See also Quine (1947, 339–340): “Frege, Carnap, Lewis, and the rest seem to derive from those shadowy entities [attributes, propositions, and meanings] the same smug illusion of clarity that Toletus did from his substantial forms, and Moli[è]re’s physician from the virtus dormitiva”.
- 13.
Quine first appeals to some such distinction in “Mind and Verbal Dispositions” (1975), although he (somewhat misleadingly) speaks about “three levels […] of reduction” there (pp. 253–254, my emphases). I thank Robert Sinclair for bringing this passage to my attention.
- 14.
After the Immanuel Kant Lectures, Quine often reused the disease analogy. See, for example, Quine (1980c, item 2999; 1983, item 2851; 1985, 1994, 1998). It is surprising, however, that Quine never credited Putnam for the metaphor. After all, Putnam often used the same analogy in arguing for his functionalist philosophy of mind. See, for example, Putnam (1957, 1963).
- 15.
These qualifications start to appear from the late 1970s onwards. This suggests that Quine changed his mind on this issue, perhaps even in preparing the Immanuel Kant Lectures. For a discussion of the development of Quine’s views on behaviorism, see Verhaegh (Forthcoming).
- 16.
An early draft of this paper was presented at the 2018 APA Central Division symposium on Quine’s Immanuel Kant Lectures. I thank Robert Sinclair, Gary Ebbs, and the audience in Chicago for their valuable comments and suggestions. This research is funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, Grant 275-20-064). My archival research at the W. V. Quine Papers was funded by a Kristeller-Popkin Travel Fellowship from the Journal of the History of Philosophy, by a Rodney G. Dennis Fellowship in the Study of Manuscripts from Houghton Library, Harvard University, and a travel grant from the Evert Willem Beth Foundation.
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Verhaegh, S. (2019). “Mental States Are Like Diseases”. In: Sinclair, R. (eds) Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04909-6_9
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