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So what Putnam was pointing to was that, instead of thinking about what
psychological states are made of, know whether they're made of human brain stuff
or alien brain stuff. We should be thinking about what
psychological states do. Now, in order to get our heads around this
idea, let's take another detour. In some countries in Africa, money as we
know it, coins and notes, isn't really very common.
People trade in cows, cows function as currency.
So depending on your daughter, you're, sorry, depending on the future of your
daughter, you'll get a certain number of cows for her.
So you might not even find coins or bits of paper in those countries in the same
way as you do in our country, because what they use for money is cows.
In Pacific Islands for example, instead of using money as coins and paper, people use
shells. Now, what's interesting here is that it
doesn't matter whether money is shells or cows or bits of copper and pieces of
paper. What allows us to call these different
things money or currency. It's what it does.
It's a token that can be exchanged for a particular service or object.
So, bits of paper, coins, shells, cows, all function in a very similar way, even
though, what they're made of is very different.
One thing is a cow and the other bits a bit of paper.
Let's take a different example. Imagine lots of different chairs.
What makes all of these pictures that we see, chairs?
Well, is that they function as chairs, we can all use them for sitting down on and
sitting down in such a way that we're raised up from the floor.
What allows us to say that all these things here are chairs, is that they
function in a particular way, they function so as to allow sitting.
Now, this has ties back to the problem that Putnam was pointing out with identity
theory. He's saying we shouldn't identify mental
states of what they're made of, just as we shouldn't identify a chair with what it's
made of. Because as you can see, chairs can be made
of totally different things. Money can be made of totally different
things. What allows us to say that all these
things are chairs and all these things count as money, is what they do.
And that's exactly what Putnam thought we should do with psychological states.
So instead of saying, what makes a particular psychological state what it is?
What makes my thought about Paris, about Paris is what it's made of, the particular
mixture of chemicals and hormones. Putnam says, that instead, we should think
about what that psychological state does, how that psychological state functions?
And in this way, if we think about how pain functions, so we can think about pain
as a particular state that functions to makes us wince when we touch something.
Maybe to say aw or to pull a face. If we think about how pain functions, then
we can then see how pain can be realized in different species.
How we can see pain in humans and pain in octopi, even though pain in humans and
pain in octopi is made up of very different stuff.
It's made up of octopus brain stuff in one instance and human brain stuff in the
other. What it's made of doesn't matter.
What is crucial is how it functions. This is the materialist view know as
functionalism, it says that we should tell mental states apart.
We should think about mental states, not by what they are made of, but by what they
do. So what is it that mental states do?
Well, the first thing that mental states do is they cause particular behaviors.
So, as, the example I like to use is that, if I want some chocolate, then that
particular psychological state causes me to engage in particular behaviors to
finally coat and go out to go to the shops.
But they do other things as well, they can cause new psychological states.
So if I want chocolate, this could also cause a desire for me to find my coat and
I think mm, I really want some chocolate. Okay.
Till you get some more chocolate, then I should go find my coat.
Alright. Let's go find my coat.
So that I have taken a psychological state in my desire for chocolate which causes a
new psychological state in me. The other important thing to understand
about psychological states or mental states is that they're caused by
particular things as well. So my desire for chocolate might be caused
by the smell of chocolate. I could be walking down the street, for
instance, and smell the chocolate coming out of the patisserie and think mm,
chocolate, I really want some. So, that particular perception of the
world caused me to go into a particular state, that oh, I really want some
chocolate. Which then cause me to go into particular
behaviors, i.e., maybe walking in to the shop or thinking, do I have enough money
for some chocolate? Oh, I'm not sure.
Oh, I'm going to eat later. I probably shouldn't have some chocolate.
So, psychological states cause a function in this particular way.
They're caused by sensory inputs and in turn they cause behaviors, and
psychological states, other internal states as their outputs.
The other thing that can cause a psychological state is another
psychological state. So, I might have the belief that I'm
hungry, that's a particular mental state that I have, and that causes me to desire
chocolate. So you can have psychological states that
cause other psychological states. Now, this is the idea of functionalism.
This is the idea that in order to understand what the desire for chocolate
is, we have to understand it in terms of its functional role.
So the desire for chocolate might cause me to put on my coat, go out to the shops.
In contrast, my belief that there's chocolate in the fridge will cause a whole
different set of behaviors in psychological states.
Might cause me to get up and go to the fridge, it might cause me to answer, yes,
if someone says to me, hey, is there any chocolate in the fridge?
And this is the point that Putnam is trying to drive at.
He's saying that we should understand psychological states not by what they're
made of, but how they function. The types of behaviors and psychological
states that they cause and the types of sensory inputs, and perceptions, and
psychological states, which cause them. So, this is how I can see that my desire
for chocolate is different from my belief that there is chocolate in the fridge.
Because it's caused by different things, my desire for chocolate is caused by the
smell of chocolate and the belief that I'm hungry.
And it causes different behavior, such as going to the shops, and trying to find my
coat, and that's very different form the belief that there's chocolate in the
fridge. Because the belief that there's chocolate
in the fridge is caused itself by a whole different set of sensory inputs.
It's caused perhaps by my perception that there's chocolate in the fridge or someone
telling me, hey, there is chocolate in the fridge.
And that mental state function serves to cause very different behaviors causing me
to go to the fridge if I want some chocolate.
Now, you can see how we've completely stepped away from what psychological
states are made of. We've totally stepped away from this mix
of chemicals, mix of hormones, or octopus brain, or alien stuff.
We've abstracted away and saying no. What we should be looking at, what the
fundamental feature of a psychological state is, is what it does.
And what allows us to attribute a state like pain to an octopus, is if that
octopus functions in such a way that we can say it's in the state of having pain.
So if the octopus touched something that was burning, and shrank away very quickly,
we could say, oh, now octopus is in a particular state that causes it to shrink
away when it touches something hot. Well, maybe that octopus is in a state of
pain because that, that state of pain functions in humans, certainly, to have
withdrawal behavior when you touch something hot.
Stating to use the same types of behaviors in an octopus, then that would suggest
that the octopus can also have pain because it's in a state that's functioning
in exactly the same way as human pain. So again we've stepped away from what it's
made of and we're looking at what states do.