The Behaviorist Theory of Mind

[@diviniaaspiras4492]

As a retired professor with little to do, I found myself attracted to philosophy. I really enjoyed listening to your content.

[@lancetschirhart7676]

You could make youtube videos. Dr James Tabor recently retired, and he has been making great videos, just talking about what he knows to whatever camera he has available. That kind of material is valuable.

[@iago110]

What did you teach? Care about making some classes like Jeffrey?

[@oswurth8774]

What an awesome thing to find interesting after an interested career!

[@armeezykunzu7763]

I am an Expressive Arts Therapy student who has just begun the study. This video lecture is such a gem! It's intriguing, clear, and has a really nice flow like a story. OMG Love it! Thanks for boosting my attention and interest. I learn a lot.

[@nataliaborys1554]

16:05 - I'd like to counter this example. Even if you were unable to tell what it is exactly that you're feeling, you're still *feeling it.* You don't sigh heavily and grit your teeth just because, you do it because there's some unpleasant feeling in your mind. You can't quite *name* the feeling, but you do know that it is there, and that it is unpleasant, and that that, even if without your conscious input, makes you display those behaviours. Someone else might be able to name your feeling and have a better idea where it came from, but nonetheless they don't have greater knowledge of your mind than you do, they are simply better educated in psychology.

[@Reienroute]

Behavioralism seems unimaginably guilty of missing the simplest point ever, which is that dispositions are still privately experienced. I can't wrap my head around how a person could ever suggest that external behaviors are a complete account of the stuff of minds without being a literal zombie.

[@calorion]

P-zombies.

[@avrilduck8326]

Are privately experienced, but not necessarily internally understood as such, but a witness may see the behaviour or state, and deduce from their own understanding (if they are observant and emotionally literate), the disposition.

[@AwesomeWholesome]

This. To frame it in the most simple way: dispositions are still non physical concepts. Brittleness--the property of being brittle is not a physical object that we can hold in our hands. Changing the term "mind" to "disposition" is just a cheap misdirection, and in doing so, behaviorists have actually reverted back to the very dualism that they had set out to critique. Dispositions are privately experienced, mental qualia. Therefore, the upgraded form is just as bad as the naive version because it fails its initial goal--it gives up physicalism.

[@greanbeen2816]

External behavior cannot tell you exactly what someone is thinking. However, external stimuli do generate any such thoughts. One of the complications is that the brain retains these stimuli, meaning that the system is only deterministic taking into account all that person’s previous memory. Still, it’s entirely true that the system as a whole is the product of outside causes

[@gab4879]

yeah, It seems they wanted to disprove Dualism with any mean they could find

[@Chris44351]

There's a joke about Behaviorism I red a view weeks ago but I just now get it. It goes something like this: What does the Behaviorist say to his wife after he made love to her? "It was cleary good for you how was it for me?"

[@j.pocket]

Well played.

[@terrorists-are-among-us]

Great, now I have to watch the video 😂

[@Forestcat433]

1) love your video's they are my consistent go to for revision and essay plan writing 2) anyone else getting major Vsauce if Vsauce was a Philosophy professor energy?

[@ajmarr5671]

The difference between a methodological and radical behaviorism comes down to one question. What is a reinforcer? For a methodological behaviorist, a reinforcer is any event virtual or real that changes any attribute of behavior, from rate to intensity to form. For a radical or biological behaviorist, a reinforcer is a positive change in a specific neurologic state that is embodied by an affective tone or feeling. The latter definition was proposed by the radical behaviorists John Donahoe and David Palmer in 1994, and was independently confirmed by the affective neuroscientist Kent Berridge in the same and following decades. Donahoe and Palmer proposed a neurologically grounded definition of reinforcement. Reinforcement reflected a discrepancy principle, when behavior is continually mediated by the activity of dopamine neurons elicited by continuous correction error between predictions and outcomes. Dopamine scales with the importance of the reinforcer, and is responsible for a feeling of energy and arousal, but not pleasure. The reinforcement principle from methodological behaviorism is still the guiding principle of present-day behaviorists or behavior analysts, but discrepancy principles are now core to incentive motivation theories in radical behaviorism as reflected by modern affective neuroscience. The difference between these two principles is stark in both principle and practice. Whereas a methodological behaviorist is concerned about the effectiveness of reinforcers, a radical behaviorist Is concerned about how reinforcement induces affect. To a teacher, parent, society, or politic, the effectiveness of reinforcement is paramount. However, for an individual, affect in reinforcement is of first importance. The latter is reflected in the recent work of Berridge, who emphasized that behavior change must be oriented to eliciting continuous positive affect, which is epitomized by an active and meaningful life. With this perspective where individual feelings are critical for motivation and positive affect or ‘happiness’, the metric for success for behaviorists is not behavioral control, but individual freedom, and a behaviorally engineered society that focuses on constructing the avenues that enrich the meaning or value of life, or an individual’s fully realized self-control in a free society. John Donahoe: Behavior Analysis and Neuroscience www.scribd.com/document/426400833/Behavior-Analysis-and-Neuroscience-1 The Joyful Mind: Kringelbach and Berridge sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/wp-content/uploads/sites/743/2019/10/Kringelbach-Berridge-2012-Joyful-mind-Sci-Am.pdf ‘A Mouse’s Tale’ Learning theory for a lay audience from the perspective of modern affective neuroscience www.scribd.com/document/495438436/A-Mouse-s-Tale-a-practical-explanation-and-handbook-of-motivation-from-the-perspective-of-a-humble-creature

[@borkabrak]

I don't know how to properly express how much I appreciate your making these videos. I have thought of education as the most fundamental way to improve on oneself and grow since I was very young. The fact that it is currently gatekept in our society is a wrong that I hope future generations improve upon. Until then, you are doing the closest thing to God's work of which I'm easily able to conceive. Thank you, Professor Kaplan.

[@bilgeertan6214]

Thank you very much! I am watching you as a Master's student in philosophy from Turkey. Your content is very useful and fun :)

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Happy to hear that!

[@jeff__w]

“Behaviorism specifies some of the events or things in the physical world and says ‘Those-that’s what mental activity is, those physical events, specifically, of course, behavioral events-and by “behavior” we mean outwardly observable movements.’ ” I’m not sure where David Armstrong got his behaviorist theory from but that seems to be a description of _methodological behaviorism_ that is roughly a century out of date, roughly John B. Watson’s behaviorism of the 1910s and 1920s. It strikes me as a classic mischaracterization of what behaviorism has been for at least half a century. B.F. Skinner, who was, perhaps, the leading of exponent of behaviorism, said nothing of the sort and, in fact, said the opposite. He absolutely acknowledged “private events” and said it was simply more behavior to account for. (That was what made his _radical behaviorism_ “radical.”) Thought is _not_ “speaking and writing” 5:53-it is, , at least, to the extent it is verbal, “covert verbal behavior”-and very much “an inner process,” or, as Skinner would say, “within the skin.” Anger is not _just_ “the aggressive behavior itself”-it is whatever the internal bodily state associated with anger is. Behavior is not just “outwardly visible” 15:33-it _is_ something private that the agent knows more directly than other people.

[@eduardoborges5901]

Exactly. Thats the problem of getting a writer who clearly does not understand the proposal to be the basis for the critique :(

[@lifeisstrange418]

I love the way you just write some words on not-existing board! Great content! Thanks for my new disposition to speak about behaviorism.

[@chhavisinghraghuvanshi5183]

Bro you're such a great professor I can't

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Thanks!

[@timcanproductions3842]

I am an accountant taking a philosophy class at the moment. I was really hopeful going into this class that I would enjoy it, but I was finding it difficult at first...my brain just thinks differently I suppose. Your videos are really helpful to break it all down!

[@endigosun]

7:30 Now we know that, even when people don’t show outward expressions of their anger, their anger still expresses itself within the body, often times flipping on some genetic marker and/or manifesting as a disease.

[@princenaoma2541]

Big thanks from Germany! I'm studying philosophy and this explanation helped me a lot :)

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Glad it was helpful!

[@thecarman3693]

7:21 This argument does not destroy behaviorism, as one can watch brain activity through sensitive medical instruments to note changes in the physical brain which will be displayed on a view screen as one's mood changes.

[@davidkuehberger5132]

Growing up my male classmates and I always tried to scare each other and laugh about the reaction. i did not take long for us to teach us not to show any emotion not reaction to beeing scared. even today when there is a loud sound behind me, i stay calm (too calm even)

[@gnpahdc]

In behaviorism the activity of thinking is understood to be an internal behavior. If Descartes is wrong to say that mental content is private then my professor teaching me radical behaviorism should read my mind to give me a score for the course, rather than administer an exam.

[@danwylie-sears1134]

How is that a counterexample? Crude behaviorists say, in effect, "Let's redefine the words, so that the terms normally used for all these unobservables we don't believe in refer instead to these other things (the overt behaviors associated with them), which includes changing the set of situations they apply to, so that a person normally described as experiencing but not acting on an unobservable mental state no longer is within the scope of the word for that mental state." And the zinger is supposed to be just the final clause of their goofy suggestion, instead of the observation that their suggestion is pointlessly goofy. What's the story of this glass? Well, the glass is composed of a particular mixture of silicon, oxygen, probably a little boron or something, arranged in a particular jumbled-up way that happens when the molten material is cooled too quickly to crystallize. Dispositions have physical explanations, but the dispositions themselves aren't physical. They're abstractly-specified collections of possible physical states. And if we're going to allow that kind of thing, then we lose any impetus for behaviorism.

[@allank8497]

Imagine if someone told you a very private, very important, secret. One that you would never tell no matter what anyone could do to you (say, for example, the location of nuclear launch codes). If you were a strong willed person, and set out to keep private the secret, you would have no disposition to exhibit the exact behavior of someone who really knew the answer (namely, to tell someone the secret) yet that would not change the fact that you know it, in your mental state.

[@drsaikiranc]

knowing is the mental state right, not the secret

[@marcelomagallon]

I had to pause around 9:29 because there's something I don't understand about the objection that feeling angry without actually expressing it is a valid counterexample. To continue with the anger example, if you feel angry, you will at least have a short term memory about that fact (I just felt angry). Unless someone is trying to defend the idea that memories exist outside the brain, at which point you'd be making the same mistake as Descartes† in his first proof of God's existence, that's your physical manifestation: you felt angry, some synapses fired, neurons changed, electrons got rearranged, you have a short term memory of it. Why does the physical manifestation need to be externally visible (the example I'm posing *is* observable if you really wanted to observe it)? ____ † Descartes defined "God" in a particular way, and the proof follows from that definition. That doesn't mean it exists, it means Descartes can follow the method of logic. If you define memories as something that exists outside the body, without physical manifestation, then yeah, sure, it's possible that feeling angry doesn't have *any* physical manifestation.

[@eduardoborges5901]

The thing is... It doesn't need to be "visible" (or public, to use the right term). Your point is accurate with post-watsonian behaviorism. Also, describing emotional states as visible events help us understand not necessarily how we experience these events, but how we interpret them in other people, and how we teach children to interpret them based on their public aspects.

[@fatemep1113]

Just wanted to thank you for your awesome videos which helped me a lot in my presentations. Thanks❤.

[@manuellafond1365]

Don't you hate it when it's 3am, and you suddenly realize that you're being jealous, spying on others in your car.

[@jakobbrenner]

funny because it is also sometimes true, similar situations do occur.

[@dragonflyxj]

how is he able to write backwards so legibly???

[@justintonytoney]

He doesn't! He flips the video image after recording

[@otimelyofficial8146]

@@justintonytoneyHe also doesnt do that! He has a special room in his university with a special whiteboard that reflects what he’s writing on the opposite side, so for him it looks normal but for his students (and us) it looks normal as well, but it looks like hes writing backwards!

[@MrToney-cr3pz]

@@otimelyofficial8146 That's quite a setup! I'd love to see it if you have a link to him showing it off. The reason I thought the video was reversed is because all of his shirt buttons in all of his videos go right over left, which is the opposite of standard for men's shirts. But I maybe the guy just has a whole wardrobe of custom shirts, which (if you're correct) could make sense since he would actually be left-handed and not (as I thought) "reverse right-handed."

[@quakers200]

The objection that there are thoughts that have no observed behavior attached may mean that the definition of observed may not be broad enough. Thoughts can bring about physiological changes in temperature, blood pressure, hormone production, heart rate that will appear as nothing observed. Thoughts are known to cause other parts of the brain to become active that inturn causes other responses.

[@nathanclaypole3778]

You are actually so good. thank you

[@snartzera]

Great class, thank you man!

[@richardedward123]

At last, philosophy lectures I can sorta understand. 👍👍👍👍

[@plateoshrimp9685]

Behaviorist:"Being angry is doing angry things." Regular Person: "But I was angry and didn't do anything." Behaviorist: "Maybe not, but you were disposed to do things!". This is a shockingly bad argument. You can't just call internal mental states "dispositions" and act like that fixes the problems in a theory which claims that mental states aren't internal.

[@kaylagaspar1642]

thank you so much for this

[@profjeffreykaplan]

You're very welcome!

[@FleurDeCersier]

Thank you, great explanation. Will definitely check out more of your content!

[@darrencheasley9130]

Thank you you’ve done very well, with talking about the ideas behind behaviouralism…….Next?

[@joephrafael35]

Wait is this guy just a master of writing backwards? or is there something i'm missing?

[@AndrewBlucher]

Yes, there is something you are missing ...

[@ОлегБобров-в7ъ]

It is simply liable to shutter is just a simplified way to describe physical properties based on a possible outcome. On the basis of outcome being the main interest in the day to day life we tend to light it first. Anger also has the tendency to give certain outcomes, so it is a phenomenon, that shares this property with the glass, the property of having an outcome or outcomes. Is the glass it's brittleness, though? It is certainly not. Is it the only way to describe glass? Certainly not. If not outcomes, glass has the structure. So, my thought experiment will be imagining something, that is brittle, but is lucking the structure. Ice, is brittle, is not a glass. But it has the disposition, but it is not glass, therefore glass is not a disposition, it has a disposition.

[@ОлегБобров-в7ъ]

P. S. If someone is able to know the properties of glass better, than the glass, it may be behaviorism is.

[@oscalba9281]

It would be great a vídeo about physicalism and the consecuences of deny it, like in the vídeo about Thomas nagel you say. Great class

[@lucasferrer7005]

anyone knows which article of Armstrong he is referring to ?

[@chrisw4562]

Thanks for the lecture. It seems there have been many philosophers with bad theories. Behaviorism is one example. Did any of them get it right?

[@karachaffee3343]

Does not introducing "dispositions" create another entity? And kick the can down the road to where we could then postulate dispositions of dispositions --and so on into the hall of mirrors...

[@nickgrant8260]

Surely if i can tell my self that im not jealous but exhibit outwardly "jealous behavior" then is there not an argument for a three way split, mind (me the thinker) vs a mind/body mix. In one part of my subconscious mind, i am jealous, and that is having a physical effect on my body, but in MY mind (the thinker), i dont want to be jealous or act in that way but i am. This probably makes no sense whatsoever but im not a philosopher but i do love these videos 😂

[@jordancridland9657]

I had no idea that these were for a proper college course, just watching for fun.

[@robertochacon5338]

I love your channel :)

[@beya_ba3]

If mind is behaviourist then what is idea? How about dreams?

[@quakers200]

So either mind creates the physical universe or the physical universe creates the mind. If the mind creates the universe then you would think that my mind would create a world more tomy liking. If the universe creates mind then there is no self, just atomes that will very soon disperse and in fact are continually dispersing just as the person i call myself is constantly changing. Even my memories which seem such a part of me are changing, rearanging themselves.

[@vincentrockel1149]

I think most people operate in life like they are engaged in a poker game. You keep the hand you possess hidden from other's and try to leverage the best hand they can out of it. That's how they were taught. It's about keeping up appearances.

[@martinbennett2228]

The counterexample does not work. The claim is that we can know that a person is angry without any manifestation of this state of anger, but how are we supposed to know that this person was angry? If you can answer this question you have revealed behavioural or physical attributes that are indicative of a state of anger. If you cannot answer the question the claim that the person is angry is unsubstantiated. The basis of behaviourism is a rejection of the dualist belief that physical events can result from non-physical causes. A refutation of behaviourism would have to provide an account of how immaterial causes can have material effects. No such account plausibly exists.

[@foulmercy8095]

“The claim that the person is angry is unsubstantiated” well there you go. There is no objective way to say someone is angry (though maybe not from a neuroscientific view point) without a some level of “guessing”. We can assume that someone is angry if they yell, but that may not be the case. Is everyone who cries sad? Is there no such thing as “crocodile tears”? I see no problem in acknowledging the fact that certain things we acknowledge as “true” are merely unsubstantiated axioms. I would like a refutation though, would help my thought process a lot. Edit: I would also like to bring up intent. To quote Ludwig Wittgenstein “what is left over from the fact that my arm raises when I raise my arm”? That would be intent right? So I would ask you if there’s any objective way to decipher intent that makes behaviorism “true” (whatever that means).

[@zendan37]

Isn't it the case that mind is part of the physical world because its functions are basically the firing of patterns of neurons? These are physical events.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

Well, how crazy is behaviorism?

[@looneycrow7978]

Why not call it "behavioral dispositionism"

[@noahskinner4452]

So just think about this. If I were to think about a picture. Not a picture that exists, nor a picture that i intend to create, i just imagine a pocture tht i create in my head, how can that thought be constituted as physical without being a disposition towards anything outward?

[@calorion]

So who actually holds or held behaviorism? Because it seems pretty implausible.

[@someonenotnoone]

Sounds like Robert Sapolsky who argues we do not have free will.

[@mohamedmilad1]

expression of behaviour could mean no expression of it is expression of it

[@appleislander8536]

It seems more like a rhetorical tool than something anyone would actually believe...

[@iotheyare]

Wow. 🤯

[@jessewilley531]

Can't the case of Phineas Gauge be seen as the last nail in the coffin of Dualism?

[@khristinejmilan1382]

Can you make a philosophical reflection about covid 19

[@alexbos8211]

Why isn't physicalism obviously true to anyone who could split open a brain? Simply seeing that there is an organ inside - and the high likelihood that the organ you're looking at is responsible for the thoughts you have - therefore everything must be made out off stuff, including your mind?

[@MsJavaWolf]

Few people are denying that there is a very strong correlation between the mind and the brain but what properties does the mind actually share with the brain? The brain has extension in space, subjective experience does not. The brain has mass, subjective experience does not. Material things can bump into other material things, consciousness can not bump into another consciousness.

[@greanbeen2816]

@@MsJavaWolf What properties does a movie share with a screen? The screen has mass while the film does not. The screen has physical extension and can bump into other physical things; I’ve yet to see a movie bump into anything. I must say, it seems as though there is a separate, nonphysical phenomenon called “movie”

[@MsJavaWolf]

@@greanbeen2816 What do you mean by movie? Do you just mean the light coming off the screen? I would say that photons are definitely physical but there is a kind of an abstract concept of what that movie is. However, that second point would lead us towards a discussion of abstract objects, like numbers etc. but I don't think the mind is abstract. Your movie analogy is actually pretty close to how I see it, but I think it's still just an analogy. The light from the screen is not the screen itself, and the mind is not the brain itself. I am not settled on any view of the mind but the way I see it at the moment is, that the brain does create the mind but that creation is different stuff than the stuff the brain is made of. Just like the monitor is made of atoms while the light is made of photons, the brain is made of atoms and the mind is... something else. I don't know if that "something else" should be called physical or not, I'm not committing to the view that it's not physical. As long as we agree that the mind has those properties that I listed there are no other disagreements. Edit: As I said, I'm undecided on whether the mind is non-physical but it does seem to me that it's at least immaterial. That doesn't make it spooky and I don't believe, for instance, that our minds survive the death of our physical bodies, but I still find the fact that the mind has different properties than a steel ball for instance to be important.

[@adrianoyorkshire]

If you really know your mind, you know everyone else's.

[@jonaskoelker]

Imagine three persons, one is autistic, the other has schizophrenia and the third has ADHD (and each has only their one mental condition and no other). Will knowledge of one's own internal experience create knowledge of another person's very different internal experiences? I'm not sure how to apply or understand your statement in this scenario.

[@boydhooper4080]

Annoying that so many people make it human centric. Behaviourism was mainly developed on other animals and it’s equally about animals as it is about humans, which, of course are animals anyway

[@jshir17]

It's ironic that neurodiverse folks are chided for lacking theory of mind by Behaviorist (as behaviorism teaches that people have no internal motivation but merely respond to external stimuli). *Behaviorism leads to addiction in neurodiverse people because they are taught not to think but merely to respond to outer stimuli and they get baited into developing habits by a reward scheme.*

[@dareese6778]

Mind is physical? Brain, sure. If mind falls into physicalism, then, if actual, so does God. But I think God would be epiphysical. Then wouldn't the mind? The brain creates waves; some believe waves are partials. In that sense waves qualify as physical. Does the mind fit into that category? As you've mentioned, a possible afterlife, of which we know zero. What is your division between physicalism & epiphysicalism? Yo!

[@greanbeen2816]

Regrettably, this is completely false. Behaviorism does not “teach” to react mindlessly to external stimuli. If that is the lesson that someone gleans from it, they were taught it exceptionally poorly. It merely observes that all behavior, including cognition, is caused by external stimuli. This says nothing about how one ought to behave. Anyone who learned behaviorist theory and took it as a lesson on how to behave completely failed to understand even the fundamental premise of it.

[@jshir17]

@@greanbeen2816 But people have souls and they do not merely respond to outer stimuli; behaviorism is false

[@greanbeen2816]

@@jshir17 Any evidence on the “souls” bit

[@jshir17]

@@greanbeen2816 Behaviorism is for animals like Pavlovs dog but people have a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, and other internal motivators like religious or ethical beliefs, etc

[@thelastaustralian7583]

Socrates would be saying how could you get something so simple and make it so confusing .

[@not_my_name5200]

the intro without context was too deep for me already

[@Mai-Gninwod]

I feel as if this video is disingenuous. It doesn't present a single convincing argument for behaviorism, which leads the audience to be baffled that it is considered serious at all or barely even worthy of though

[@hissingfaunaa]

loud ass intro