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| Radical Behaviorism: Conceptual Refinements |
| Saturday, May 29, 2004 |
| 2:00 PM–3:20 PM |
| Independence East |
| Area: TPC |
| Chair: Francois Tonneau (University of Guadalajara) |
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| Empiricism and Radical Behaviorism: An Impossible Allegiance |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| JOSE E. BURGOS (University of Guadalajara) |
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| Abstract: An emphasis on experimentation in natural science is usually inspired by empiricism. In the case of the experimental analysis of behavior, such an emphasis can be interpreted in a similar fashion, which makes radical behaviorism an empiricistic doctrine. However, in 1874, Franz Brentano published "Psychology from an empirical standpoint", where psychology was defined as "the science of mental phenomena". How can that be? Can one be an empiricist and a mentalist? Did Brentano get empiricism wrong? Or did he conceive mental phenomena in a proto-behavioristic manner? None of the above. The solution to this puzzle lies in understanding that all forms of empiricism are mentalistic doctrines. In British empiricism, for instance, Locke's core proposal was that ideas or appearances (viewed as mental states), and not their causing qualities in the external world, were the immediate objects of knowledge. Berkeley, with his rejection of Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities, took the metaphysical step and concluded that everything was mental. And Hume made associationism a key element of his philosophy. The other two forms of empiricism found throughout the history of epistemology (naïve/pre-Lockean and logical) were also strongly mentalistic. Empiricism is thus fundamentally incompatible with Radical behaviorism. |
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| Causality, Functions, and Interdependence |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| FRANCOIS TONNEAU (University of Guadalajara) |
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| Abstract: Bunge (1963) has discussed two traditional critiques of the use of causal notions in science. The romantic critique asserts that nature is too complex and interconnected to be described in causal terms, whereas the positivistic critique rejects irreducibly causal concepts on the ground that they are metaphysical. Although both critiques have been effectively rebutted, their influence on behavior analysis remains strong. Skinner’s emphasis on “functional relations,” for instance, exemplifies the positivistic tradition, whereas Kantor’s field of interdependent components speaks for romanticism. I argue in this talk that the explicit anti-causal flavor of behavior analysis (whether in the romantic or positivist mode) has proved inimical to the natural science of behavior and needs to be reevaluated. |
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| Intentionality, Incommensurability, and Interpretation |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| GORDON R. FOXALL (Cardiff University) |
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| Abstract: 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 neo-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 on the contextual stance, it provides definitions of contingency-shaped, rule-governed, verbal and private behaviors which are entirely non-intentional. Its capacity to do so is independent of any prior assumption of intentionality: it is therefore methodologically autonomous. However, while the account provided by radical behaviorism fulfills the pragmatic criteria of prediction and control/influence of its subject matter, it leaves problems of explanation which 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. |
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