Free Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn Page B

smile and carry on. Behaviour is not a transparent guide to
sensations, thoughts, or feelings. (That is the point of the joke
about two behaviourists in bed: `That was great for you, how was it
for me?') So, at the very least, complications must be added. Perhaps we could salvage the analysis in terms of dispositions to behaviour by pointing out that even if you bravely smile and carry
on, you are still in some sense disposed to more expressive demonstrations of pain that you are suppressing for one reason or another. It is almost impossible to suppress tendencies to pain
behaviour entirely, and other parties are very good at noticing the
difference between, for instance, a child who has not hurt itself,
and one who has but who is being brave. It seems essential to pain
that it disposes in this way. But even this much is sometimes challenged by cases of people with certain kinds of brain damage, who
apparently sincerely say that some pain is still present, but that they
don't mind it any more. We should notice, however, that it is quite
hard to make sense of that. If you give yourself a nice sturdy example of pain-touch a hotplate, or swing your toe into the wallit is very hard to imagine that very mental state without imagining it as incredibly unpleasant. And it is hard to imagine it without its
tendency to cause typical manifestations in behaviour.

    Contemporary thinkers tend not to pin too much faith on
behaviourism of this kind. They prefer a slightly more elaborate
doctrine known as functionalism. "Phis too pays prime attention to
the function of the mental state. But it identities that function in a
slightly more relaxed way. It allows for a network of physical relationships: not only dispositions to behaviour, but typical causes,
and even effects on other mental states-providing those in turn
become suitably expressed in physical dispositions. But the idea is
essentially similar.
    Pain is a mental event or state that lends itself fairly readily to the
project of analysis, for at least it has a fairly distinctive, natural, expression in behaviour. Other states with the same kind of natural
expression might include emotions (sadness, fear, anger, and joy all
have typical manifestations in behaviour). But other mental states
only relate to behaviour very indirectly: consider the taste of coffee, for example. To taste coffee gives us a distinctive experience.
"There is something that it is likefor us to taste coffee (not forLom-
hies). But it doesn't typically make us do anything much. Contemporary thinkers like to put this by saying that there are qualia or
raw feels or sensations associated with tasting coffee. And friends
of qualia arc often fairly glum about the prospects of reducing
qualia to dispositions in behaviour. As far as that goes, they are
back with Locke. As it happens, these qualia are superadded to various physical events-in my case, if not in yours-but it could have
been otherwise. But then scepticism whether you are Zombies or
Mutants again threatens.

    A SCIENTIFIC MODEL
    One distinction the contemporary debate is fond of making is important to notice. So far, we have presented Leibniz as opposing the
element of brute happenstance in Locke, in the name of a rational
quasi-mathematical relation between mind and body. It is possible
to suggest that there is a middle route: one that opposes the happenstance, but does not go so far as a mathematical or rationally
transparent relationship. This is usually put by saying that perhaps
there is a metaphysical identity between mental and physical facts
or events, but that it is not necessarily one that can be known a
priori.
    A common analogy is this. Classical physics identifies the temperature of a gas with the mean kinetic energies of the molecules
that compose it. So in making hot gases God has only one thing to
fix: fix the gas and the mean kinetic energy of its molecules, and
this thereby fixes the temperature.