in april 1933, two bright young Ph.D.s were elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows: the psychologist B. F. Skinner and the philosopher/logician W. V. Quine. Both men would become among the most influential scholars of their time; Skinner leads the "Top 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century," whereas philosophers have selected Quine as the most important Anglophone philosopher after the Second World War.1 At the height of their fame, Skinner and Quine became "Edgar Pierce twins"; the latter (...) obtaining the endowed chair at Harvard's department of philosophy, the former taking up the position at Harvard's psychology department.2Besides these biographical parallels, there also... (shrink)

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide (...) an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. (shrink)

Os projetos de psicologia científica enfrentam pelo menos duas ameaças. A primeira delas surge quando uma proposta de psicologia tenta seguir os cânones da ciência moderna. Nesse caso, torna-se necessário "objetivar o fenômeno psicológico", o que, geralmente, é feito por meio da sua tradução em termos fisiológicos. Mas, nesse ponto, a especificidade da psicologia é ameaçada pelo reducionismo fisiológico. A segunda ameaça aparece quando um projeto de psicologia tenta evitar o reducionismo fisiológico defendendo a natureza subjetiva irredutível do fenômeno psicológico. (...) No entanto, isso coloca uma série de dificuldades metodológicas. Dessa maneira, a segunda ameaça às propostas de psicologia científica é o mentalismo, que impõe limitações ao emprego do método científico. O presente ensaio tem o objetivo de mostrar como o projeto de psicologia científica de Tolman pode ser visto como uma alternativa a essas duas ameaças. Em primeiro lugar, examinamos em que medida a concepção de comportamento como fenômeno molar afasta Tolman do reducionismo fisiológico. Em seguida, analisamos algumas dificuldades decorrentes dessa proposta, em especial, as limitações inerentes à epistemologia realista - adotada inicialmente por Tolman. Por fim, apresentamos a proposta tolmaniana de superação dessas dificuldades: trata-se da analogia entre teorias científicas e mapas, que revela a adoção de uma epistemologia instrumentalista por Tolman. (shrink)

Affinities have been noted between radical behaviorism and phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism, but this paper claims the most promising one has been neglected. Skinner's behaviorism is best seen as elucidating that time-sense characteristic of ordinary, habitual life which Heidegger calls a "temporalizing of everydayness." We usually live 'from moment to moment' as if we were just as predictable as the things around us, but Heidegger and Skinner agree there are moments when noticing this makes 'more of the same' seem unacceptable. (...) Yet in Skinner's deterministic ontology such occasions are only envisioned via the anomaly of "self-management." With Heidegger, behaviorism can be the science of ordinary life, yet leave room for that real but ill-conceived 'volition' which Skinner rightly criticizes but wrongly rejects. (shrink)

Determinism has long been a core assumption in many forms of behaviorism, including radical behaviorism. However, this assumption has been a stumbling block for many—both within and outside the field of radical behaviorism—resulting in misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The following paper provides a descriptive taxonomy of four kinds of determinism assumed or asserted in the radical behavioral literature. This taxonomy is intended to organize these deterministic positions, provide working definitions, and explore their implications. Through this work, it is hoped that behaviorists (...) and nonbehaviorists alike will possess a clearer understanding of determinism in behavioral analysis. (shrink)

This paper is a conceptual analysis of the theory debate in psychology, as carried out by cognitivists and radical behaviorists. The debate has focused on the necessity of theories in psychology. However, the logically primary issue is the nature of theories, or what theories are. This claim stems from the fact that cognitivists and radical behaviorists adopt disparate accounts of the nature of theories. The cognitivists' account is closely akin to the received view from logical positivism, where theories are collections (...) of statements and theoretical terms are restricted to designate unobservable entities. Radical behaviorists also conceive theories as collections of statements, but restrict theoretical terms in psychology to designate observable entities. If each side approaches the necessity issue with its preferred account, both agree that theories are necessary in psychology. Hence, there is no disagreement over the necessity of theories in psychology per se, only over the nature of theories. The received view, however, has been shown to suffer from irreparable difficulties that have led to its total rejection in post-positivistic philosophy of science. Alternative accounts, like the structuralist and semantic views, do not raise the issue of whether theories are necessary in psychology. (shrink)

While Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy is often depicted in an ahistorical fashion, this book explores the consequences of placing his work in its historical context. In order to show how Sellars’ early publications depend on contextual factors, Peter Olen reconstructs the conceptions of language, psychological, and social explanation that dominated American philosophy in the early 20th century. Because of Sellars’ differing explanations of language and behaviour, Olen argues that many of Sellars’ early commitments are incompatible with his later works. In the (...) course of doing so, Olen highlights problematic tensions between Sellars’ early and later conceptions of language, meta-philosophy, and normativity. Supplementing the main text is a collection of previously unpublished archival material from Wilfrid Sellars, Gustav Bergmann, Everett Hall, and other early 20th century philosophers. This text will be a useful resource to those with an interest in the history of American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy, and the myriad issues surrounding normativity and language. (shrink)

The purpose of this commentary is to discuss briefly a few points arising from Malone's (2001) interesting paper, "Ontology Recapitulates Philology: Willard Quine, Pragmatism, and Radical Behaviorism." Malone's paper serves both as a tribute to Quine as well as a reexamination of the possible pathways of influence between Quine and B. F. Skinner. These remarks are directed primarily to questions involving pragmatism in Skinner's radical behaviorism. Some of the points made here have been discussed in more detail elsewhere (Leigland, 1999).

This paper aims to argue for a lawful, intentional approach to human behavior. Donald Davidson’s idea that an event is mental according to the way it is described is here accepted. However, his nonlawful conception of psychology, in its turn, is rejected. Rather, based on Howard Rachlin’s teleological behaviorism, a lawful, externalist approach to explaining human behavior is adopted, according to which a bit of behavior is to be interpreted in connection with other ones, within a certain social context. It (...) is argued here also that Rachlin’s perspective amounts to a sort of externalization of intentionality. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century psychology became the study of "behavior." This article reviews developments within animal psychology, functional psychology, and American society and culture that help explain how a term rarely used in the first years of the century became not only an accepted scientific concept but even, for many, an all-encompassing label for the entire subject matter of the discipline. The subsequent conceptual and linguistic activity of John B. Watson, Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and B.F. Skinner, (...) as they attempted to explain "behavior" throughout the course of the twentieth century, is then discussed. Finally, the article suggests the need for greater conceptual and linguistic diversity in psychology. In this last regard, reference is made to cognition and consciousness, to William James and John Dewey, and to the fact that prediction and control might not be the most relevant aims of contemporary psychology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPhysiologists have long known that some vertebrates can survive for months without a brain. This phenomenon attracted limited attention until the nineteenth century when a series of experiments on living, decapitated frogs ignited a controversy about consciousness. Pflüger demonstrated that such creatures do not just exhibit reflexes; they also perform purposive behaviours. Suppose one thinks, along with Pflüger's ally Lewes, that purposive behaviour is a mark of consciousness. Then one must count a decapitated frog as conscious. If one rejects this (...) mark, one can avoid saying peculiar things about decapitated animals. But as Huxley showed, this position leads quickly to epiphenomenalism. The dispute long remained stalemated because it rested on conflicting sets of intuitions that were each compatible with the growing body of experiments. What eventually resolved it is that one set of intuitions supported a research programme in physiology that came to seem more fruitful on the whole. So my case st... (shrink)

The central fact in the delineation of radical behaviorism is its conceptual avoidance of propositional content. This eschewal of the intentional stance sets it apart not only from cognitivism but from other non-behaviorisms. Indeed, the defining characteristic of radical behaviorism is not that it avoids mediating processes per se but that it sets out to account for behavior without recourse to propositional attitudes. Based, rather, on the contextual stance, it provides definitions of contingency-shaped, rule-governed verbal and private behaviors which are (...) non-intentional. However, while the account provided by radical behaviorism fulfills the pragmatic criteria of prediction and control of its subject matter, it has problems of explanation that stem from the failure of radical behaviorist interpretation to address the personal level of analysis, to provide for the continuity of behavior, and to show how its accounts can be delimited in the face of causal equifinality. This leaves gaps in its explanation that radical behaviorists choose either to ignore or to fill with the very intentional locutions that they formally abhor but which I argue are essential. As a result, many psychologists who style themselves radical behaviorists have already moved beyond radical behaviorism as a philosophy of science. They have done so primarily as a result of adopting the language of intentional psychology in order to explain behavior; where they have not done this, they have resorted to the unscientific assumption that somewhere there is a learning history that explains their data. While it is indeed the case that a learning history precedes all operant behavior, the explanatory gap that is revealed by the search for this unobtainable information reveals the inescapability of intentionality. Hence, psychologists, including radical behaviorists, are right to employ it. The challenge is to understand why this is so and to celebrate rather than denigrate the resulting extension of behavioral science. In this response, I first raise and seek to answer two questions: what is radical behaviorism, and what is intentional explanation? I go on to discuss the incompleteness of radical behaviorism. There follows a summary of the argument with respect to intentional behaviorism and super-personal cognitive psychology. And, finally, I bring the discussion back to Daniel Dennett, the philosopher who initiated so much of it. (shrink)

Although the historical dispute between introspective psychology and ontological behaviorism encourages the belief that attitudes do not exist, this belief is misguided. Even the Hacking test, suggested by someone with grave doubts about behavioral science, supports the claim that attitudes are “just as real as neutrinos.” Nevertheless, the progress of a science of attitudes may be severely limited by the influence of exogenous factors, factors including normative beliefs about how we should treat the people to whom attitudes are attributed. In (...) so far as these beliefs prevent scientists from experimenting on people and their institutions, particle physics has resources unavailable to survey research. Thus a serious examination of behavioral science leads to some surprising conclusions as to which sciences are the “hard” ones and which ones are simply easier. (shrink)