Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Maryam Samadieh ¹
• Fatemeh Fazelzadeh ²

¹ Assistant Professor of Department of Islamic Studies, The Faculty of Humanities, University of Maragheh, Maragheh, Iran.

² Faculty member (instructor), Department of Theology, Payame Noor Unvierstiy, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Explanation of the nature of mental states is among the important doctrines of the philosophy of mind which has been undertaken by Putnam insofar as he discusses it in his numerous works. To explain the nature of mental states, Putnam first proceeds to criticize and deny the physicalist perspective concerning mental states and their problems. According to Putnam, identification of mental and cerebral states can have its origin in “confusion of notion and extension; negligence of the distinction between the object and its notion”, “failure of language and its ambiguity” and “ambiguity of scientific methods”. Later he critically evaluates the behaviorist perspective according to which the behavioral reactions are identified as the nature of mental states. Putnam contends that behaviorism fails to explain human understanding of pain and fear of other human beings. To solve this problem, he turns to the functionalist perspective according to which mental states are not the same as the cerebral states rather they are software set on the hardware. However, Putnam pushes this to the next stage where he criticizes functionalism and argues that mental states are not calculable states and even they are not physical states either; because having a calculative notion of the mental states cannot provide a transparent representation of human psychology as it does not have any word to say of the propositional attitudes.

Keywords

• Hilary Putnam
• Mental States
• Physicalism
• Behaviorism
• Functionalism
• Propositional Attitudes