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Engagement Paper 3: Hilary Putnam’s The Nature of Mental States

(1) “Since I am discussing not what the concept of pain comes to, but what pain `is’, […] I shall not apologize for advancing an empirical hypothesis. Indeed, my strategy will be to argue that pain is not a brain state, not on a priori grounds, but on the grounds that another hypothesis is more suitable. […] I shall, in short, argue that pain is not a brain state, in the sense of a physical-chemical state of the brain (or even the whole nervous system), but another kind of state entirely. I propose the hypothesis that pain, or the state of being in pain, is a functional state of the whole organism.”

(2) Putnam argued against the identity theorists like Place, who believed that all mental states were brain states, that is, that neural processes were the constituting factors that made up consciousness, perception, and anything else that we might otherwise ascribe to the “mind” (as opposed to the body). However, Putnam’s arguments are not dualistic (though he himself concedes that functionalism as he puts it forth is not altogether incompatible with dualism), but they do go a step beyond identity theory. Whereas identity theorists and logical behaviorists put a strictly materialistic bent on the understanding of the mind, Putnam wants to argue that there is much more to mental states than just describing them in physicalist terms. He does, though, concede that physical descriptions are a good start, and a valid foundation for discussing the mind. The identity theorists took up functionalism as Putnam has advanced the theory, saying that if the mind does have functional states, then it’s very likely that they are describable in physical terms. Putnam wants to argue that mental states or brain states as descriptive of human experience are not as effective as descriptions of functional states of an organism. That is to say, regardless of the physical state of an organism (viz., that organism’s brain), what makes a mental state one of a particular kind is not described by the way it is constituted physically, but by the role it plays in the full system of which that mental state is a part. Thus, pain is not strictly a brain state, but rather a functional state or disposition of an entire organism.

(3) With this and articles like it, Putnam combined an Aristotelian conception of the soul with a budding interest in computers and in the idea of Turing Machines to describe human behavior and brain states. (Alan Turing, in the middle of the twentieth century, conceived of a hypothetical computer with an infinite amount of storage that could, through simple logical and mathematical operations, modify its own operating code. This computer model was a Turing machine.) Functionalism allows for beings that are not human or that don’t have brains like humans to experience, for instance, pain: pain can be multiply realized, that is, even machines or different life forms could be said to be in pain if their functional state is like that of the human (as opposed to the neural state being like that of a human). Putnam argues that functional states are also not simply behavioral dispositions, and that that argument is like arguing that heat is not molecular kinetic energy simply because people do not necessarily or normally think of molecular kinetic energy when thinking about heat. It is not necessary, he argues, to think of a given thing in a certain way in order for it to be described accurately in that way. Functionalism as a movement in psychology played an integral role along with advances in computer science in furthering artificial intelligence research. If non-human animals, or even life forms with different bases, could have mental states like pain from a functional standpoint, what would be the inhibition to making the leap from those organic life-forms to computers? Functionalism, then, as Putnam advances the theory, is a different way of thinking about the mind.

Engagement Paper 3: Hilary Putnam’s The Nature of Mental States

(1) “Since I am discussing not what the concept of pain comes to, but what pain `is’, […] I shall not apologize for advancing an empirical hypothesis. Indeed, my strategy will be to argue that pain is not a brain state, not on a priori grounds, but on the grounds that another hypothesis is more suitable. […] I shall, in short, argue that pain is not a brain state, in the sense of a physical-chemical state of the brain (or even the whole nervous system), but another kind of state entirely. I propose the hypothesis that pain, or the state of being in pain, is a functional state of the whole organism.”

(2) Putnam argued against the identity theorists like Place, who believed that all mental states were brain states, that is, that neural processes were the constituting factors that made up consciousness, perception, and anything else that we might otherwise ascribe to the “mind” (as opposed to the body). However, Putnam’s arguments are not dualistic (though he himself concedes that functionalism as he puts it forth is not altogether incompatible with dualism), but they do go a step beyond identity theory. Whereas identity theorists and logical behaviorists put a strictly materialistic bent on the understanding of the mind, Putnam wants to argue that there is much more to mental states than just describing them in physicalist terms. He does, though, concede that physical descriptions are a good start, and a valid foundation for discussing the mind. The identity theorists took up functionalism as Putnam has advanced the theory, saying that if the mind does have functional states, then it’s very likely that they are describable in physical terms. Putnam wants to argue that mental states or brain states as descriptive of human experience are not as effective as descriptions of functional states of an organism. That is to say, regardless of the physical state of an organism (viz., that organism’s brain), what makes a mental state one of a particular kind is not described by the way it is constituted physically, but by the role it plays in the full system of which that mental state is a part. Thus, pain is not strictly a brain state, but rather a functional state or disposition of an entire organism.

(3) With this and articles like it, Putnam combined an Aristotelian conception of the soul with a budding interest in computers and in the idea of Turing Machines to describe human behavior and brain states. (Alan Turing, in the middle of the twentieth century, conceived of a hypothetical computer with an infinite amount of storage that could, through simple logical and mathematical operations, modify its own operating code. This computer model was a Turing machine.) Functionalism allows for beings that are not human or that don’t have brains like humans to experience, for instance, pain: pain can be multiply realized, that is, even machines or different life forms could be said to be in pain if their functional state is like that of the human (as opposed to the neural state being like that of a human). Putnam argues that functional states are also not simply behavioral dispositions, and that that argument is like arguing that heat is not molecular kinetic energy simply because people do not necessarily or normally think of molecular kinetic energy when thinking about heat. It is not necessary, he argues, to think of a given thing in a certain way in order for it to be described accurately in that way. Functionalism as a movement in psychology played an integral role along with advances in computer science in furthering artificial intelligence research. If non-human animals, or even life forms with different bases, could have mental states like pain from a functional standpoint, what would be the inhibition to making the leap from those organic life-forms to computers? Functionalism, then, as Putnam advances the theory, is a different way of thinking about the mind.