Newsletter
Volume 29 | 2006 | Number 3
Trends in Philosophical, Theoretical, and Conceptual Analysis
By Dr. Edward K. Morris
Theoretical, Philosophical, and Conceptual Issues has been listed in the convention programs of the Association for Behavior Analysis since areas were first assigned in 1979. Before then and since, it has been one of our field’s three main subdisciplines, the others being basic and applied research. Although the latter appear to be purely empirical endeavors, they are rife with philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual activity. Some researchers deny this, claiming that science's only concerns are (a) its subject matter (in our case, behavior), and (b) understanding its subject matter through objective methods (for us, experimental analysis). Everything else – philosophy, theory, and concept – is an arbitrary social construction. Yes, our subject matter is behavior, and yes, we understand it best through experimental analysis, but no, everything else is not an arbitrary social construction. On a behavior-analytic account, philosophy, theory, and concepts characterize our scientific practices as a whole.
The foregoing claims about our subject matter and methods, for example, characterize two such practices – materialism in ontology (i.e., the nature of nature) and empiricism in epistemology (i.e., how nature is known). As stated, however, these underdetermine our practices, and thus warrant analysis. Our materialism, for instance, does not entail neural reductionism, only that our subject matter engages relations among material constituents: behavior, environment, and biology. Our empiricism is not experience per se, but also entails description, prediction, and experimental control. These characteristics are abstract classes of our practices, whether we are aware of them or not, seeing only the instances. To deny this is tantamount to saying that although we behave, we have no personality or, worse yet, no character. One of our field’s challenges, albeit not yet a trend, is to develop a naturalistic account of the practices we call philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual.
To identify the trends, we might conduct a content analyses of the papers presented in the Theoretical, Philosophical, and Conceptual Issues area. This culling, though, would not be inclusive. It would miss philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual trends in, for example, Social and Ethical Issues. For the present, however, I forego the analysis and focus on science, but even then I must be selective in ways that belie the area's richness and depth (and in ways that are uncomfortably personal). In addressing the trends, I take them up in the order in which they are embedded – conceptual, theoretical, and philosophical.
Conceptual Issues
Among the conceptual issues, several trends stand out. One is our appeal to the concept of context to account for variation in behavior that contingencies do not explain. The concept, though, is confused: It includes various terms, disparate meanings, and conflicting referents. Systematizing the concept might prompt research and allow better behavioral interpretations. One systematization might be this: (a) The structure of the current context, biological and environmental (e.g., anatomy, ecology), affects what behavior can occur; (b) the historical context, phylogenic and ontogenic (e.g., behavioral history), affects what behavior may occur, given that it can; and (c) the function of the current context in biology and the environment (e.g., motivating operations) affects what behavior will occur, given that it can and may.
Another trend lies in placing behavior analysis among other sciences. Is it a biological science, a psychological science, or a science unto itself? A biological science? No. Although honorific, this invites explanatory reduction to biology, and eventually to chemistry and physics. Behavior analysis is, instead, an independent life science. A psychological science? Maybe, but not as psychology would have it. Our basic science is a natural science, concerned with fundamental behavioral processes (e.g., reinforcement). Psychological science is mainly an historical science, that is, a natural history of behavioral relations situated in time and place (e.g., altruism). Understanding typical and atypical behavior requires both natural science and natural history. Their integration is an emerging trend and important challenge.
Two other trends are also evident. First, as our unit of analysis expands from a three-term contingency among temporally independent stimulus and response functions to an n-term contingency that includes every participating factor (e.g., motivational operations, conditional stimulus control), it might be better characterized as a stream of behavior – a stream of ever-evolving functional relations. In its static form, this is called a field theory. The second trend is that the oft-stated goal of behavior analysis as prediction and control is becoming the goal of understanding. Prediction and control remain central: They are a means for understanding behavior and a means for assessing the validity of that understanding, but not ends in themselves.
Theoretical Issues
Among the notable theoretical issues is the integration of behavior analysis and biology. How they are integrated is more than an empirical matter. The questions we ask, concepts we apply, and assumptions we make in achieving this integration are, again, part of our science's character. To consider its character something other than (or lying behind) our practices is a category mistake. The character of our science will, though, influence how we integrate (or fail to integrate) behavior analysis and biology in two cutting-edge areas of research.
The first concerns what neuroscience explains. (a) Does neuroscience explain the basic behavioral processes of a natural science or provide a more thorough description of those processes? (b) Does neuroscience explain the natural history of typical and atypical behavior or provide a more thorough description of them? The answers to these questions may not be the same. In a natural science of behavior, neurology is arguably not an independent variable that explains basic behavioral processes. It is, instead, a participant in those processes. In a natural history of behavior, however, neurology contributes more than further description. It can also be an independent variable and hence, in part, an explanation. The answer to whether neurology explains behavior depends on the science – natural science or historical science.
The second area in which theory will influence the integration of behavior analysis and biology lies in the nature-nurture dichotomy. Behavior analysis has uncharacteristically adopted a culturally standard view: Behavior entails the independent contributions of nature (i.e., phylogenic contingencies in species history) and nurture (i.e., the ontogenic contingencies in individual behavioral history), and has thus essentialized them. An alternative is developmental systems theory, in which nature is the product of the process of nurture, with nurture beginning at conception. On this view, the temporal gap between species history and individual behavioral history is no longer filled with fictional instincts and hypothetical innate acquisition devices, but with individual biological history. Moreover, nature is no longer an uncaused cause. The actions of genes, for instance, depend on time and place, and other participants. Developmental systems theory describes how behavioral development actually happens.
Philosophical Issues
Philosophical issues in science largely concern ontology and epistemology, with behavior analysis emphasizing the latter. It does not take ontological assumptions as givens (e.g., determinism), but as useful or not in advancing description, prediction, and experimental control. Yet at the same time, description, prediction, and experimental control presuppose an ontology about the nature of behavior such that it can be understood through these means. This is why the evolution of science and its philosophy is a bootstrap operation. A naturalized account of these activities will reveal their interdependence.
As for trends in philosophy, contextualism was once advanced as an alternative to mechanism. In the debate that arose, though, behavior analysts on each side attacked straw versions of the other (e.g., contextualism makes science a social construction; behavior is mechanical) and described their own "isms" superficially (e.g., mechanism means science; behavior is context dependent). The debate has now largely run its course, but the trend continues. This is evident in current work showing, on the one hand, that radical behaviorism is a form of pragmatism and, on the other hand, that contextualism is pragmatism.
Conclusion
Across the foregoing trends in philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual analysis, we see two that are overarching. One is the systematization of our philosophy, theories, and concepts to make them more coherent. The usefulness of coherence, though, depends on whether it contributes to the description, prediction, and control of behavior, including our behavior as scientists. The other trend is the integration of our philosophy, theory, and concepts with like-minded (I say, idiomatically) perspectives in the behavioral, social, and cognitive sciences. Scholarship in the history of psychology now shows that the cognitive revolution was not a revolution. It was an evolution from classical S-R behaviorism to mediational S-O-R behaviorism to cognitivism. In this line of ascent (or descent), cognitivism only changed psychology’s surface structure, not the deep structure of its explanatory practices. A minor trend in those other sciences is the recognition and emergence of a number of programs whose philosophy is contextualistic, theories are nonmediational, and concepts are functional. The integration of behavior analysis with them, and then their overall convergence, will be the next revolution in psychology.
Correspondence may be sent to:
- Dr. Edward K. Morris
- Department of Applied Behavioral Science
- 4020 Dole Human Development Center
- University of Kansas
- 1000 Sunnyside Avenue
- Lawrence, KS 66045
- Phone: 785.864.4840
- Fax: 785.864.5202
- E-mail: ekm@ku.edu