Psychological Behaviorism

One of the great values of the Immanuel Kant Lectures is that it sheds new light on the nature of Quine’s views about behaviorism. Where Quine’s linguistic behaviorism is well-known, the Lectures contain one of his most detailed discussions of behaviorism in psychology and the philosophy of mind. Quine clarifies the nature of his psychological commitments by arguing for a view that is quite modest: he argues against ‘excessively restrictive’ variants of behaviorism while maintaining that ‘a good measure of behaviorist (...) discipline is still needed to keep [our mental] terms under control’. In this paper, I use Quine’s comments in the Lectures to reconstruct his position. I start by distinguishing three types of behaviorism in psychology and the philosophy of mind: ontological behaviorism, logical behaviorism, and epistemological behaviorism. Next, I reconstruct Quine’s perspective on each of these views and argue that he does not fully accept any of them. Finally, I combine these perspectives and reconstruct Quine’s subtle view about behaviorism in psychology. (shrink)

Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating behaviors to the experience of willfulness, from pathological over-control and self-deception to subtler forms of (...) behavior such as altruism, sadism, gambling, and the 'social construction' of belief. This book integrates approaches from experimental psychology, philosophy of mind, microeconomics, and decision science to present one of the most profound and expert accounts of human irrationality available. It will be of great interest to philosophers and an important resource for professionals and students in psychology, economics and political science. (shrink)

This chapter examines the mechanistic psychology of Descartes in the _Passions_, while also drawing on the _Treatise on Man_. It develops the idea of a Cartesian “psychology” that relies on purely bodily mechanisms by showing that he explained some behaviorally appropriate responses through bodily mechanisms alone and that he envisioned the tailoring of such responses to environmental circumstances through a purely corporeal “memory.” An animal’s adjustment of behavior as caused by recurring patterns of sensory stimulation falls under the notion of (...) “learning,” behavioristically conceived. Indeed, Descartes’s animal-machine hypothesis may well be a distant ancestor to Watsonian behaviorism, via T. H. Huxley (1884). The final two sections of the chapter take stock of what psychological capacities Descartes ascribed to mind, body, or both, and consider those capacities that we might now plausibly construe as being explicable by nonmentalistic mechanisms as opposed to those that at present remain unreducedly mentalistic. -/- This chapter derives from a lecture delivered at the University of King's College (Halifax, Nova Scotia) as part of a year-long series on Descartes and the Modern. The lecture series was co-sponsored by the programs in History of Science and Early Modern and Contemporary Studies. (shrink)

The chapter examines some common assumptions regarding the shape of the history of theories of mind. It questions the conception that the Scientific Revolution resulted in placing the mind “outside of nature.” During the seventeenth century, the followers of Descartes routinely placed study of the mind, or, at least, mind–body interaction, within “physics” considered as a science of nature in general (and so including physics in the narrow sense, biology, and psychology). By the end of the eighteenth century, many authors (...) treated the psychological and the physical as distinct areas of investigation (with points of contact, to be sure), both amenable to natural scientific study. Another assumption is that, prior to behaviorism, the notion of “the psychological” was equivalent to “the mental.” And yet, during the seventeenth century psychological phenomena were assigned to both sides of the mind–body divide: the Cartesians and their allies offered (nonmentalistic) mechanistic explanations for the sensory and behavioral capacities that human beings share with animals, while also holding that some aspects of mental life (including consciousness, free will, conceptual language, and general intelligence) require an immaterial mind. Finally, from the late eighteenth century onward, some have maintained that if mental states are reached only by introspection then they cannot be studied objectively. The chapter argues that the standard version of this objection misunderstands the nature of introspection, and it mounts a reply founded on Wundt’s methodological discussions and making reference to the perceptual investigations of the Gestalt psychologists. (shrink)

Descartes developed an elaborate theory of animal physiology that he used to explain functionally organized, situationally adapted behavior in both human and nonhuman animals. Although he restricted true mentality to the human soul, I argue that he developed a purely mechanistic (or material) ‘psychology’ of sensory, motor, and low-level cognitive functions. In effect, he sought to mechanize the offices of the Aristotelian sensitive soul. He described the basic mechanisms in the Treatise on man, which he summarized in the Discourse. However, (...) the Passions of the soul contains his most ambitious claims for purely material brain processes. These claims arise in abstract discussions of the functions of the passions and in illustrations of those functions. Accordingly, after providing an intellectual context for Descartes’s theory of the passions, especially by comparison with that of Tho- mas Aquinas, I examine its ‘machine psychology’, including the role of habituation and association. I contend that Descartes put forth what may reasonably be called a ‘psychology’ of the unensouled animal body and, correspondingly, of the human body when the soul does not intervene. He thus conceptually distinguished a mechanistically explicable sensory and motor psychology, common to nonhuman and human animals, from true mentality involving higher cognition and volition and requiring (in his view) an immaterial mind. (shrink)

Há de entre as ciências, uma que ainda carrega vestígios muito visíveis que denunciam seus vínculos familiares com a mãe. Essa ciência cujos precursores ainda revelam-se sagazes pensadores, capazes de construir conhecimento, e não perpetuadores de uma escola especializada em ordenar e classificar a realidade. Essa ciência, é a ciência Psicológica. PSICOLOGIAS é uma introdução ao estudo da Psicologia, apresentada em seus vários aspetos: história, temas básicos, áreas de conhecimento, principais características da profissão, análises de temas cotidianos (vistos sob a (...) ótica da Psicologia), e outros. Estudo esse que dessacraliza o universo da alma – historifica-o, humaniza-o. Ridiculariza qualquer processo de deificação do homem. Sugere, fidelidade a Terra. (shrink)

Skinner has assigned the persistence of cognitive explanations to the literature of freedom and dignity. This view is challenged especially as it applies to behavioral scientists. It is argued that cognitive explanations persist (a) because current behaviorism does not challenge cognitive epistomology; (b) because behavior analysts have failed to provide research evidence at the level of human behavior, and finally (c) because a science of behavior based solely on op?rant principles is necessarily incomplete. The implications of these problems for behavior (...) analysis are addressed. (shrink)

On the orthodox view in economics, interpersonal comparisons of utility are not empirically meaningful, and "hence" impossible. To reassess this view, this paper draws on the parallels between the problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility and the problem of translation of linguistic meaning, as explored by Quine. I discuss several cases of what the empirical evidence for interpersonal comparisonsof utility might be and show that, even on the strongest of these, interpersonal comparisons are empirically underdetermined and, if we also deny (...) any appropriate truth of the matter, indeterminate. However, the underdetermination can be broken non-arbitrarily (though not purely empirically) if (i) we assign normative significance to certain states of affairs or (ii) we posit a fixed connection between certain empirically observable proxies and utility. I conclude that, even if interpersonal comparisons are not empirically meaningful, they are not in principle impossible. (shrink)

Behaviorism was a peculiarly American phenomenon. As a school of psychology it was founded by John B. Watson (1878-1958) and grew into the neobehaviorisms of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Philosophers were involved from the start, prefiguring the movement and endeavoring to define or redefine its tenets. Behaviorism expressed the naturalistic bent in American thought, which came in response to the prevailing philosophical idealism and was inspired by developments in natural science itself. There were several versions of naturalism in American (...) philosophy, and also several behaviorisms. Most behaviorists paid homage to Darwinian functionalism; all forswore introspection and made learned changes in behavior the primary subject matter and explanatory domain of psychology. They differed in their descriptions of behavior, modes of explanation, and attitudes toward mentalistic concepts. Watson was a strict materialist who wanted to eliminate all mentalistic talk from psychology. Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959) regarded mind as a biological function of the organism. He permitted mentalistic terms such as 'purpose' in behavioral description, and posited intervening processes that included 'representations' of the environment, while requiring such processes be studied only as expressed in behavior. Clark L. Hull (1884-1952) developed a hypothetical-deductive version of behaviorism, akin to Tolman's functionalism in positing intervening variables but without his cognitivist constructs. B. F. Skinner (1904-90) rejected intervening variables and developed his own account of the behavior of the whole organism, based on the laws of operant conditioning. The naturalism in American philosophy of the early twentieth century showed respect for the natural sciences, especially biology and psychology. John Dewey (1896, 1911), George Santayana (1905, 1920), and F. J. E. Woodbridge (1909, 1913) expressed this attitude. It animated the neorealism of E. B. Holt and Ralph Barton Perry, who gave special attention to psychology, and the evolutionary naturalism and critical realism of Roy Wood Sellars. This naturalism differed from Watson's in regarding mind as part of nature from a Darwinian and functionalist perspective, and treating behavior as the product of the mental functioning. It fed Tolman's version of behaviorism. It was not materialistic or physical-reductionist. Only later, with Quine and logical empiricism, was behaviorism seen as essentially physicalistic. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

The rise and some more recent developments of the machine-simulation methodology of living-organism behavior are discussed in this paper. In putting forward these issue, my aim is that of isolating recurring themes which help understanding the development of such a machine-simulation methodology, from its, so to speak, discovery during the first half of the twentieth century up to the present time. The machine designed by the engineer S. Bent Russell in 1913 seems to share the core of at least some (...) points of such a methodology. This machine was designed with the aim of embodying certain hypotheses on the plasticity of nervous connections, pointed out at the time by psychologists in order to explain the physical bases of learning. I would like to suggest that this machine might be viewed as a case-study of the discovery of the above mentioned simulative methodology, further on developed by cyberneticians beginning from the 1940s. Certain present-day steps toward such a methodology are briefly touched upon in the concluding section of the paper. (shrink)

In this paper I start from a definition of “culture of the artificial” which might be stated by referring to the background of philosophical, methodological, pragmatical assumptions which characterizes the development of the information processing analysis of mental processes and of some trends in contemporary cognitive science: in a word, the development of AI as a candidate science of mind. The aim of this paper is to show how (with which plausibility and limitations) the discovery of the mentioned background might (...) be dated back to a period preceding the cybernetic era, the decade 1930–1940 at least. Therefore a somewhat detailed analysis of Hull's “robot approach” is given, as well as of some of its independent and future developments. -/- Reprinted in R.L. Chrisley (ed.), Artificial Intelligence: Critical Concepts in Cognitive Science, vol. 1, Routledge, London and New York, 2000, pp. 301-326. (shrink)

Understanding Behaviorism explains the basis of behavior analysis and its application to human problems in a scholarly but accessible manner. Behaviorism is defined as the proposition that a science of behavior is possible, and the book begins by exploring the question of whether behavior is free or determined, relating behaviorism to pragmatism, and showing how feelings and thoughts can be treated scientifically. Baum then discusses ancient concepts such as purpose, knowledge, and thought, as well as social problems such as freedom, (...) responsibility, government, and culture. (shrink)

This volume has three goals with respect to the interplay between philosophy and behavioral psychology's experimental, applied, and interpretive levels of knowing. It aims to examine core principles in the philosophy of science, as they are interpreted by and relate to behavioral psychology; how these core principles interact with different problem areas in the study of human behavior; and how experimental, applied, and interpretive analyses complement one another to advance the understanding of behavior and, in so doing, also the philosophy (...) of science. (shrink)

To a greater extent than any other behavioral formulation, Radical Behaviorism has abandoned mechanistic explanation. Like Darwin, B.F. Skinner adopted selection as a causal mode. He applied that mode himself to the behavior of the individual, pointing out but leaving it to others to unravel the causal role of selection in the behavior of a social culture. Also, Radical Behaviorism parts company with traditional behaviorists who pronounce private experience and thinking to be outside the domain of science. Misconceptions, misinterpretations, and (...) misrepresentations have kept the humanity and the promise of this approach to behavioral science from those who would have welcomed and used it if they had been properly informed. (shrink)

This book attempts to synthesize two apparently contradictory views of psychology: as the science of internal mental mechanisms and as the science of complex external behavior. Most books in the psychology and philosophy of mind reject one approach while championing the other, but Rachlin argues that the two approaches are complementary rather than contradictory. Rejection of either involves disregarding vast sources of information vital to solving pressing human problems--in the areas of addiction, mental illness, education, crime, and decision-making, to name (...) but a few. Where previous books have focused either on psychology as an abstract science of the mind or as a strictly empirical approach to behavioral problems, this is the only book that attempts to show how the best modern theoretical work on mental mechanisms relates to the best modern empirical work on complex behavioral problems. It will be of considerable interest to psychologists and philosophers across many disciplines and perspectives. (shrink)

This book combines ideas from two separate sources. The first of these is the total body of research which comes under the head of operant psychology and which owes its origin primarily to B. F. Skinner. The second is the set of techniques which have been developed in philosophy in the last 50 years and which are associated in particular with the names of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Gilbert Ryle. Our main task will be to make use of (...) these techniques in modifying and advancing the programme of operant psychology. (shrink)

[FREE PUBLISHED VERSION AT LINK BELOW]. This chapter provides an empirical defense of credit theories of knowing against Alfano’s the-ses of inferential cognitive situationism and of epistemic situationism. It also develops a Nar-row-Broad Spectrum of agency-ascriptions in reply to Olin and Doris’ ‘trade-off problem.’ In order to support the claim that credit theories can treat many cases of success through heuristic cognitive strategies as credit-conferring, the paper develops the compatibility between VE and dual-process theories (DPT) in cognitive psychology. A genuine (...) convergence between VE and DPT is called for, while acknowledging that this effort may demand new and more empirically well-informed projects on both sides of the division between Conservative VE (including the credit theory of knowing) and Autonomous VE (including accounts of epistemic responsibility and of guidance for improving practices of inquiry). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Behavior and personality: Psychological behaviorism by Arthur W. Staats . Staats' latest book provides a brief introduction to his philosophy of science known as unified positivism and a comprehensive review of his specific theory known as psychological behaviorism . Readers unfamiliar with Staats' work can, through this book, become acquainted with his earnest, if not somewhat totalitarian, strategy for uniting psychology under a single theoretical framework. Although Staats' earlier publications provide a more clear and accessible exposition of (...) his project than the current work, this book nonetheless constitutes an important contribution to the literature of fragmentation. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Galton and subsequent investigators find wide divergences in people's subjective reports of mental imagery. Such individual differences might be taken to explain the peculiarly irreconcilable disputes over the nature and cognitive significance of imagery which have periodically broken out among psychologists and philosophers. However, to so explain these disputes is itself to take a substantive and questionable position on the cognitive role of imagery. This article distinguishes three separable issues over which people can be "for" or "against" mental images. Conflation (...) of these issues can lead to theoretical differences being mistaken for experiential differences, even by theorists themselves. This is applied to the case of John B. Watson, who inaugurated a half-century of neglect of image psychology. Watson originally claimed to have vivid imagery; by 1913 he was denying the existence of images. This strange reversal, which made his behaviorism possible, is explicable as a "creative misconstrual" of Dunlap's "motor" theory of imagination. (shrink)

The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism is the first book to describe the unique contributions of a behavioral perspective to the major issues of philosophy. Leading behavioral philosophers and psychologists have contributed chapters on: the origins of behaviorism as a philosophy of science; the basic principles of behaviorism; ontology; epistemology; values and ethics; free will, determinism and self-control; and language and verbal behavior. A concluding chapter provides an overview of some scholarly criticisms of behavioral philosophy. Far from espousing a `black box' (...) perspective on human cognition and philosophical reasoning, behaviorism (as derived from the works of B. F. Skinner) represents a contemporary and viable approach to conceptualizing important philosophical and psychological issues. Audience: This work will make an excellent text for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in the fields of philosophy and psychology, as well as being of interest to established scholars in those disciplines. (shrink)

Beyond Behaviorism explores and contrasts means and ends psychology with conventional psychology -- that of stimuli and response. The author develops this comparison by exploring the general nature of psychological phenomena and clarifying many persistent doubts about psychology. Dr. Lee contrasts conventional psychology (stimuli and responses) involving reductionistic, organocentric, and mechanistic metatheory with alternative psychology (means and ends) that is autonomous, contextual, and evolutionary.

Each of us is uniquely subject to certain kinds of stimulation from a small part of the universe within our skins. Mentalistic psychologies insist that other kinds of events, lacking the physical dimensions of stimuli, are accessible to the owner of the skin within which they occur. One solution often regarded as behavioristic, granting the distinction between public and private events and ruling the latter out of consideration, has not been successful. A science of behavior must face the problem of (...) privacy by dealing with events within the skin in their relation to behavior, without assuming they have a special nature or must be known in a special way. (shrink)