Ryle's Logical Behaviorism

A disposition is a tendency to behave in a certain way in specified circumstances. For example, solubility (in water) is a dispositional property of sugar. Given any piece of sugar X, one can say:

If X were to be placed in water, then (all other things being equal) X would dissolve.

This kind of statement is called a subjunctive conditional. This is because it is of conditional form, namely of the form "if P then Q"; and its antecedent P is supposed to be unfulfilled at the time the statement is made.

The rider '(all other things being equal)' is called a ceteris paribus clause (because that is what the Latin words mean). The clause is put in to cover oneself against the possibility of an interfering condition that may thwart one's expectation. For example, the lump of sugar should not have been covered with a coat of varnish. Philosophers are good at thinking up all manner of thwarting conditions, which are impossible to rule out explicitly when framing the subjunctive conditional.

We could go even further, and strengthen the subjunctive conditional to a counterfactual conditional, by saying

If X had been placed in water (which it has not), then (once again, ceteris paribus) X would have dissolved.

The solubility of X makes this counterfactual conditional true. The solubility of X also makes the following explanatory exchange satisfactory:

Q: Why did X dissolve when I placed it in the water?

A: Because X was a lump of sugar, and sugar is soluble in water (that is, dissolving in water is the characteristic behavior of sugar). And there were no thwarting conditions to prevent the expected manifestation, in these conditions, of the sugar's solubility.

Science of full of dispositional talk. Having mass, being magnetic, having a certain modulus of elasticity, being a good conductor of heat or of electricity—these are all dispositional properties. So are: having 20/20 vision; having high blood pressure; being autistic; being a miser. As an exercise, you should think up what the respective test conditions would be for each of these, and what the ensuing 'manifesting behavior' of the substance or individual in question would be.

So: a dispositional property of an object X is a property of X in virtue of which under certain conditions C, the object X will behave in manner B. We call C the test conditions, and we call B the manifesting behavior.

How does this bear on the mind-body problem? In a nutshell, because the logical behaviorist offers a dispositional analysis of what it is for a particular person (say X) to be in a particular mental state (say M). The general template for such an analysis is:

X is in state of mind M

if and only if

in the various circumstances C1, C2, ..., Cn, ...,
X tends to behave
in the respective ways B1, B2, ..., Bn, ... .

All this makes being in a mental state look suspiciously like having the property of solubility. You specify certain conditions, you specify the manifesting behavior to be expected in those conditions, and the job is done.

But it's not as simple as that; and, even though more complex, it makes an extraordinarily simplifying claim about the metaphysical nature of mind.

First, on the matter of the dispositions in question not being simple: Notice that we have provided, in the case of a single mental state M, for a potentially infinite spectrum C1, C2, ..., Cn, ... of different kinds of test conditions, and for a correspondingly potentially infinite spectrum B1, B2, ..., Bn, .... of behavioral manifestations. Why do we do this? Because a moment's reflection convinces us that a given mental state M can be 'infinitely various' in the ways it can disclose itself in human behavior. Being in a state of belief-that-P—for example, believing that it is raining—is not a straightforward matter. There is no single dispositive test of whether a person believes that P, the way there is for finding out whether a lump of white stuff is soluble in water. In the latter case, we would simply immerse the lump in water and wait a while to see whether it dissolved. If it did, we'd say it was soluble; if not, we'd say it wasn't soluble. And that would dispositive.

But being in a mental state—even one as simple as believing that it is raining— is not that straightforward. This is because so much depends on what other mental states one is in at the time. John believes that it is raining. John is quite a predictable guy. If he goes outside (C1), he will take his umbrella (B1). If he is asked 'John, is it raining?' (C2), he will anser 'Yes' (B2).

But now consider Jake, who is not quite a psychopath, but who has problems. Jake too believes that it is raining. But he thinks, for whatever reason, that it will seem ultra-cool to the girl on whom he has a crush if he ventures out without his umbrella, and arrives bedraggled at his next class. He is also full of disdain for naive questioners, so, when asked 'Jake, is it raining?' he lies, and says 'No, it's sunny outside'.

Now consider Jech, a recently arrived immigrant who is struggling with English, and is too poor to afford an umbrella, and too proud to acknowledge that getting wet discomfits him. Jech too believes it is raining. And Jech has to go outside. So he simply walks, just as he would were it sunny instead. And, if asked whether it is raining, he smiles politely and offers the only English sentence he knows, with the use of which he was trained by a malicious immigration official on arrival: 'I am sorry, I do not have enough information at my disposal; but I assure you that I take your question seriously.' This utterance comes out in a slightly labored, halting way, but is complicated enough to convince listeners that he is reasonably fluent in English, and it leaves them completely befuddled.

So much for the ease with which we thought we could specify test conditions and manifesting behavior, even in the case of a belief as simple as that it is raining.

Faced with the potentially infinite variety of test-conditions C1,C2,...,Cn,..., and the corresponding variety B1,B2,...,Bn,... of manifesting behaviors, the dispositional theorist of mental states could follow the time-honered strategy, in the special sciences, of plumping for the relatively few conditions that account for most of the variance. That is what I did above, in focusing on the pairs (C1,B1) and (C2,B2). We naively think that having beliefs amounts, roughly, to being disposed to behave in some canonically criterial, non-linguistic way in some canonically criterial, non-linguistic condition, and to being disposed also to behave in some canonically criterial, linguistic way to some canonically criterial, linguistic condition. Respectively: taking one's umbrella when going outside; and answering affirmatively when asked whether it is raining.

Our examples of John, Jake and Jech should, however, succeed in showing that this is a pipe-dream. There is no way to 'nail down', in an explicit 'if and only if' form, everything that flows from one's being in a given state of belief. We have seen that the manifesting behavior depends too crucially on what other beliefs one has, on what desires one has, and on what meanings one associates with what strings of sounds.

This is know as the Problem of Holism, and it is fatal for any form of dispositional analysis of the kind proposed by Ryle.

But it is worth reflecting for a moment on the metaphysical possibilities that Ryle's proposal opened up, which are still being pursued by contemporary philosophers of mind.

1. 'The mind' is not a thing. Having a mind, or being possessed-of-a-mind, is a matter of being in many different kinds of mental state, each to be construed as a complicated dispositional property.
2. If the dispositional analysis were to succeed, we would have, in principle, a way of reducing talk of the mental to talk of the physical-behavioral.
3. Consciousness would be analyzed mainly in terms of dispositions to say appropriate things and otherwise react in appropriate ways to various stimuli. The importance of an intensely first-person, phenomenological understanding of consciousness would give way to a more third-person construal of the public criteria by means of which we warrant our assertions that a given person or creature is conscious.
4. The 'evolution of mind' becomes a chapter of evolutionary ethology: acquiring a mind is a matter, across evolutionary time, of coming to be able to behave in increasingly fine-tuned ways in response to challenging circumstances.