Tutorial #2. Behaviourism. Discussion Questions

After having read the article on behaviourism on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/ and Descartes' Myth (Chapter 1 of The Concept of Mind) by Gilbert Ryle, think about these questions.

Another highly recommended reading is Jaegwon Kim Philosophy of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy 2nd Edition, Perseus books, 2006) ch.3

• What is the difference between methodological, psychological and logical behaviourism?
• What counts as behaviour and of what counts as observable?
• What is Descartes’ myth? What is Ryle’s argument against the myth?
• In which sense Ryle can be considered a behaviourist?
• What is the relationship between pain and pain behaviour?
• What is pain? What is typical in pain behaviour? and why is it typical? Can you show pain behaviour without feeling pain? Can you be in pain but showing joy-behaviour?
• What’s the role of context when a person tries to infer one’s mental state from her behaviour?
• What problems do we run into if we attempt to translate psychological concepts into talk of behavioural dispositions?
• What’s the role of our understanding of how the mind works when we try to study people’s behaviour?
• Your friend’s observable behaviour (e.g. her movements, physiological reactions, facial expression, posture, and so forth) provides the best evidence for attributing a certain mental state to her?
• Assuming that observable behaviour provides the best evidence for mental states ascription, would it follow that mentality just consists in behavioural tendencies?
• If you were a behaviourist how would you identify “pretence behaviour”? What differences there may be between creatures who—on a certain restrictive notion of behaviour—do indeed behave identically?
• Do you think that behavioural\observable data are the only admissible data for science?
• Is psychology a respectable science?