Dispositional Properties

3. The Existence of Nonintrospectable Mental States

3 THE EXISTENCE OF NONINTROSPECTABLE MENTAL STATES lIla. Introduction: We hope to prove existence of factors constituting actuality of minds similar to mass and shape which constitute actuality of bodies; B. Account of Wittgenstein's later theory; 1] Wittgenstein 's conception of mind; (a) Behaviorism; (b) Criticisms of nonintrospectable mental states; (c) Proof that Wittgenstein is a behaviorist. Having secured the ideas of causal sufficiency and necessity and of power against the criticisms of Hume and the logical empiricists, I want to return to the development of the realist theory. One question in particular demands our attention: I have suggested in Chapter 1, when talking about the nonintrospectable states and capacities of minds, that things have powers, because of the properties which constitute their actuality . This is an obvious claim to make about the powers of physical objects at least; we recognize, for example, that a well-honed knife has the power to cut because of the sharpness of its blade. On the other hand, it is not so obvious that there is a comparable relation between the nonintrospectable states and powers of minds. Indeed, many persons deny that minds have these states at all. It is my own belief that non- DISPOSITIONAL PROPERTIES 120 introspectable mental states do exist, and that they function relative to mental powers in the same way as shape, for instance , functions in relation to the powers of physical objects. Moreover, in Chapter 4, I shall try to determine the precise character of the relation which holds between actuality and potentiality in minds and objects. For the present, however, I want merely to prove that minds do have nonintrospectable states. It will be much easier to account in Chapter 4 for mind's possession of its powers if this is established now. My procedure here will be to consider one example of a theory of mind which supposes that nonintrospectable mental states do not exist. I shall argue that the theory in question is incapable of providing a complete explanation of mental activity just because it makes this assumption. The class of theories which I have in mind are called "behaviorist," holding as they do that all descriptive terms pertinent to talk about minds can be exhaustively defined from the standpoint of an observer who describes the bodily motions and acts of speech which other persons have learned as appropriate responses to particular circumstances. It seems to me that Ludwig Wittgenstein adopted a behaviorist view of mind in his later writings, and I shall argue for the existence of nonintrospectable mental states by way of a criticism of Wittgenstein 's conception of mind. There will be two parts to the discussion. The first part will be a brief review of the principal elements of Wittgenstein's behaviorism, and the second will attempt to resurrect the notion of mental states in the face of Wittgenstein's objections to what he disparages as "hidden" mental mechanisms. In this second part, I shall emphasize the epistemological assumptions which prompt Wittgenstein to deny that mental states exist. Wittgenstein, in his later work, devotes much of his attention to occasions on which various mental activities are learned, because the alternative, a description of the behavior of the accomplished technician, would have to penetrate extraneous detail in order to expose essential features of mental activity which are already apparent in the learning situation. Wittgenstein justifies his procedure in this way: Nonintrospectable Mental States 121 It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the words. A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training.l There is another passage in which Wittgenstein describes the general features of the learning situation, and, given the point of the sentences just quoted, thereby draws our attention to what he regards as the significant factors of mental activity. He writes: In the course of this teaching, I shall show him (the learner) the same colours, the same lengths, the same shapes, I shall make him find them and produce them and so on. I shall, for instance, get him to continue an ornamental pattern uniformly when told to do so.And also to continue progressions. And so, for example, when given: ...... to go on: ................ I do it, he does...