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THE MENTALIST HYPOTHESIS, EMPIRICAL DATA, AND INTERNAL CONSISTENCY ALAN STEINBERG* Introduction There has been (and still remains) much disagreement among psychologists , neurobiologists, theologians, and philosophers about (1) what exactly it is we are speaking ofwhen we speak of the mind or of a mental event, (2) what exactly is the relationship between mind and body, and (3), specifically, whether there is any room (or necessity) for invoking the notion of a "mental cause" of behavior, an "act of will" which initiates the firing of a neuronal network culminating in the behavior ofan organism. Empirical research will doubtless have a bearing on how these questions are ultimately answered, but it is important to see that there are complex conceptual issues involved in these disagreements, and further, it is essential to understand what is, and what is not, an empirical question. Recently, there appeared in this journal a provocative article by a neurobiologist dealing with the bearing of empirical data from invertebrate neurobiology on these traditional philosophical conundrums [I]. The import of this paper was that invertebrate models for the study of behavior along with the relative wealth of data (compared with data concerning the neurological bases ofanimal or human behavior) that has been amassed, "leaves little room for mentalist interpretations" [1, p. 115]. The author also asserts, It must be emphasized that mentalism is not a well-formed hypothesis in the sense that it can be definitely disproven. One difficulty is that a chain ofcausation is never completely closed, so that regardless of how strong the evidence is for a thoroughly neural description of behavior, it will inevitably be possible for a resolute dualist to assert that some details have been unexplained. There is also the impossibility of proving that something does not exist, or does not occur. To show that mental interventions are absent in a particular instance does not prove ?Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science, and UCLA Program in Medicine, Law, and Human Values, Neuropsychiatrie Institute, Center for the Health Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024. O 1982 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved 003 1 -5982/82/2502-0275$0 1 .00 254 I Alan Steinberg ¦ The Mentalist Hypothesis their absence from another instance. Nevertheless, as the power and the number of neural explanations increase, the likelihood of mental efficacy will correspondingly decrease. [P. 110] The idea that more empirical data from neurobiology will decrease the likelihood of the mentalist hypothesis, or that it is impossible to prove that something does not exist, rests on a confusion concerning what is and what is not an empirical issue. No amount of empirical data will disconfirm mentalism or prove that mental causes of behavior are not possible. Both these issues are conceptual issues and must be considered accordingly. The Nature of the Mind The questions of the nature and existence of the mind, or spirit, or soul, and whether it can conceivably exist separately from a body or play a causal role in the explanation of behavior have been perennial questions in Western thought since Socrates. These questions are extremely difficult because, on the one hand, it is not readily apparent how exactly minds are connected with bodies (traditionally known as the mind-body problem), and, on the other, it is not really clear what a mind is. What is not seen clearly enough in discussions of this topic is that the answer to the question of whether a mind could exist unassociated with a body or play a causal role in the explanation of behavior varies with the view or theory of the mind to which we subscribe. According to some theories of the mind, disembodiment or mental causation are impossible; according to some others, one or both may be thought to be possible. Some Theories A certain form of behaviorism called "philosophical behaviorism," [2-4] holds that words for psychological states actually stand for certain complicated patterns of behavior rather than denote inner "private" events. So, for example, to say of someone that he is angry is simply to say that he is behaving (or would behave, were it not for some kind of interference) in certain characteristic ways: To use thejargon, it...

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