The author argues for a purely naturalistic underpinning of the linguistic practice of reporting one's introspections. In doing so he avoids any commitments about the ontological status of entities referred to in introspective reports. He also presents evidence of the inadequacy of peripheralistic behaviorism as a naturalistic underpinning of introspective reports. The paper includes (a) a definition of 'introspection' and criticism of alternative definitions, (b) a classification scheme that sorts introspections into six different types, and (c) a presentation of evidence (...) that the reporting of certain of these is based on such fundamental psychological phenomena as stimulus generalization, and possibly also conditioning to covert mediating responses. (shrink)

Behaviourist Learning Theory and Utility Theory. Comparisons between theories are rare, especially in social theory which is believed to be a "multi-paradigmatic" science. Against this prevailing impression it is shown that there are logically reconstructable inter-theory-relations at least between different basic theories of individual action. Following Wladyslaw Krajewski a formal model of theory-approximation is developed and applied to behaviourist learning theory and utility theory. Comparing both theories leads to the result that the latter has to be preferred to Behaviourism. That (...) utility theory has a richer content than learning theory helps to explain why George Caspar Homans explanatory programme which leans on a Skinnerian version of learning theory finally did not succeed in becoming the leading approach in social science. (shrink)