Hilary Putnam (1967), “Psychological Predicates”, in W. H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Mind, and Religion: Proceedings of the 1965 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 37–48 — DOI-10.2307/jj.6380610.6. Reprinted as “The Nature of Mental States” in Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, 1975.
On the citation. The brief’s details are right: Capitan & Merrill, Art, Mind, and Religion, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967, reprinted as “The Nature of Mental States”. The page details and the date need saying:
- The paper itself runs pp. 37–48. Crossref’s chapter record (JSTOR) runs pp. 37–68, which on this evidence includes the symposium material that follows the paper; the next chapter, Cavell’s, starts on p. 69. I did not see that material and cannot say whose it is.
- Why NOTE-131 dates it 1965. Schwitzgebel cites “Putnam, Hilary (1965).
Psychological predicates. In Art, mind, and religion” in both his
manuscript and its reference list. The volume is the proceedings of the
1965 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. It was published in 1967
(Online Books Page; Crossref; Block 1978 cites it as 1967). So 1965 is the
colloquium, not a publication. The first appearance in print is 1967, and
that is what
published:carries. - The page Schwitzgebel cites does not fit. He quotes the bees motive at “p. 163”. The paper occupies pp. 37–48 of the 1967 volume. Block cites the same passage at pp. 434–439 of the 1975 reprint. I could not identify an edition with the passage on p. 163, so the page is unverified and is probably a slip or an unnamed anthology’s pagination.
Key takeaways
Seeded from the reprint excerpt read in NOTE-335, not a full reading of the original.
- Pain is a functional state of a whole organism, offered as an empirical hypothesis that is more plausible than the brain-state hypothesis. A brain-state theorist must find one physical-chemical state common to every possible pain-feeler, mammal, octopus and extraterrestrial alike. The functionalist needs only a common functional organisation, which behaviour gives us reason to expect.
- The hypothesis has four clauses. (1) Pain-feelers are probabilistic automata. (2) Each has a Description of a certain kind. (3) No pain-feeler “possesses a decomposition into parts which separately possess Descriptions of the kind referred to in (2)”. (4) Pain is being in a distinguished subset of sensory inputs. Clause (1) is “empty, since everything is a Probabilistic Automaton under some Description”.
- Condition (3)‘s sole stated motive is “to rule out such ‘organisms’ (if they can count as such) as swarms of bees as single pain-feelers”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 for the bridge between Minsky’s society of mind (LIT-429) and Schwitzgebel’s conscious United States (LIT-159, NOTE-131). This paper is the anti-nesting principle, in its first, stipulated form. Schwitzgebel’s §2 (and Appendix Objection 1 in the book, LIT-216) attacks it as “a danglingly unjustified exception to his otherwise clean functionalism”. Block’s critique (LIT-407) is the first published one.
On NOTE-131’s claims:
- It contests C3 by stipulation, not argument. A whole whose parts separately have pain-feeler organisation is not a pain-feeler.
- It is the target of C4. The excerpt bears out the textual half of C4: the bees sentence is the only motive given in the passage read. The excerpt elides text just before it, so a fuller reading should confirm nothing else is offered.
- It is neutral on C5, which concerns IIT.
Schwitzgebel’s quotation is not Putnam’s wording. NOTE-131 quotes, after Schwitzgebel, “No organism capable of feeling pain possesses a decomposition into parts which are separately capable of feeling pain”. The reprint reads “which separately possess Descriptions of the kind referred to in (2)”, and Block quotes the same words. The difference matters on the seam. Putnam’s condition bans parts with the pain-capable functional organisation. It does not mention the parts’ pain. Read with clause (2), it withholds pain from a whole whose parts separately have the pain-capable organisation, even though the whole has that organisation too. The bees keep their pain-feeler organisation and the swarm gets none. So it is an exclusion rule in the same form as IIT’s: one level, not both. The difference is that Putnam always gives the verdict to the parts, where IIT gives it to whichever level integrates most. Schwitzgebel’s paraphrase turns it into a ban on parts that feel pain. That is a different principle, and it is the one he then attacks.
The swarm is the case Putnam excludes. Hofstadter’s “Ant Fugue” in Gödel, Escher, Bach (LIT-437, unread here) treats a colony as a mind, which is the case Putnam’s condition was written to forbid. That pairing is mine.
It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.