It occurred to me in the course of thinking over the referees' reports on the Long Precis that I actually have several independent arguments for E = A, the view that the kinds of experience are the kinds of action.
A) There is a formally valid "direct argument" running as follows:
- The K is a kind of action just if a K can occur attentively;
- A K can occur attentively just if a K can occur consciously;
- A K can occur consciously just if the K is a kind of experience.
Comment on the schematic letters: Here I'm using 'the K' and 'a K' as a "generic" and an "indefinite description", respectively, along the following lines: 'the tiger is a mammal just if a tiger can be born live'.
Ad 1: LR says that anything that can be done can be done attentively; RL says that anything that can't be done can't even occur attentively. Counterexamples to LR would be like /daydreaming/; strategy for managing this would be to go for a notion of attentiveness which pushes laboriousness into the act. Counterexamples to RL would be like /seeing/; strategy for managing this is standard pro-Ryle/anti-Place stuff.Ad 2: thought here is that attentiveness is a high-grade form of consciousness, a fairly traditional idea. LR says that anything that can occur attentively can occur consciously; RL says that anything that can occur consciously can occur attentively. Counterexamples to LR might be zombie-type cases; strategy for managing this might be to go for something like Chalmers's functional/conscious distinction in terminology. Counterexamples to RL would be /seeing/ again; strategy for managing it would be a combination of the multifariousness of 'conscious' and undermining the plausibility that seeing is intrinsically conscious via Gorilla considerations.
Ad 3: thought here is somewhat along the lines of co-defining what I mean by "kind of experience" and "consciously" in case there was any doubt.
General reflections:
- We see attention as the sort of "conceptual bridge" between action and experience here. This is a nice synergy with the view that which actions/experiences one is performing when + the diachronic flow of attentiveness = the facts about conscious life, where we once again see action, consciousness, and attentiveness in this sort of interplay.
- Adverbialism plays a central role in preserving the sort of "thick behaviorism" I am defending. This is a nice synergy with the historical stuff, on which Ryle lost the thread due to his half-hearted adverbialism.
B) There is a sort of "historical" argument: according to the mythology of Intro Mind, the contemporary philosophy of mind got kicked off when Ryle's behaviorism was overthrown for Place's central state materialism. This was in turn overthrown for some version of functionalism; which was (perhaps) overthrown for some version of dualism. These positions all concern the nature of phenomenal states: what is it to be in pain? The behaviorist says this is to behave as if in pain, and so forth.
Bracket the question of whether central state materialism should be overthrown (tho speaking personally I'm sympathetic to functionalism for Chomsky-Marr type stuff and dualism for real mental stuff). Why should /Ryle/ have been overthrown?
According to the legend, it was all about incurable paralytics and X-worlders and the like: people who behave or are disposed to behave a certain way but can conceivably be regarded as varying mentally despite this.
Puzzle 1: this wasn't Place's reason (or Smart's, or Lewis 1966's). This didn't show up until Putnam 1961.
Puzzle 2: is this really a problem for Ryle? Ryle is notoriously hard to interpret, especially in light of the passage about James Joyce: in which he seems to be saying something like there are aspects of mentality that don't have much to do with behavior but they're not very interesting. /Interesting/? What does that have to do with the nature of pain?
The Intro Mind legend leaves us uncertain what Ryle was doing, and why Place thought it would be a good idea to stop doing it and start being a central state materialist.
The answer is that Ryle -- or at least his cousin, Repaired Ryle -- was doing what I am doing; and that Place rejected Ryle because he (unlike Repaired Ryle, but like Ryle in some moods) rejected the adverbial theory of attention. But since the adverbial theory of attention is true, there was never any reason to move to central state materialism from Repaired Ryle's view.
Respect for precedent, then, says that we should rewind the tape, and endorse the views of Repaired Ryle, as the oldest unrefuted view on the table.
That's a bit of a joke of course. A real argument would look at whether Ryle has good arguments for Repaired Ryle's view: I'm inclined to think that there is more in the worries about the Ghost in the Machine than Ryle typically gets credit for; more on that later. It would also assess whether there is a good argument by any of the post-central state theorists against Repaired Ryle: short answer, not from the functionalist, from the dualist only if Repaired Ryle is a materialist but he is not.
Arguments (C) and (D), respectively, are a phenomenological argument moving step-by-step from the phenomenal state conception to my view; and a version of the Mabel argument on which my view gives the best account of ordinary discourse (I can provide a straightforward pragmatic story for why we discuss perceptual states and "happenings", my opponent must provide a more complex story for why we discuss actions). More on these later.
