Emotional Intelligence and The Nature of Mind
How emotional behaviors lends us insight into our inner-lives
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is the idea the mind is its behaviors. In a sense, if someone acts a certain way, that tells you about the nature of their mind and its dispositions in that very moment.
For instance, if I touch a hot stove, recoil from it, and scream “ouch”, that’s an indication that the character of my mind at that moment is “pain.”
Behaviorism would in this instance focus solely on the action of recoiling, rather than the inner sensation when it comes to revealing the nature of mind. For the behaviorist, the epistemological weight of actions is the only relevant factor when attempting to understand the nature of the mind.
But, we can envision a scenario whereby such behaviors are repressed to the point of losing such behavioral dispositions — indeed, from a societal perspective, we do this in raising men (at least emotionally).
In this instance, they feel pain but cannot do anything with it, for they are not disposed to. Pain is still an experience for them, but the behaviors associated with it are impossible.
Indeed, in such a scenario, we could test such individuals blindly, and some of them…