Behaviorism

Behaviorism was a movement in psychology and philosophy that emphasized the outward
behavioral aspects of thought and dismissed the inward experiential, and sometimes the
inner procedural, aspects as well; a movement harking back to the methodological
proposals of John B. Watson, who coined the name. Watson’s 1913 manifesto proposed
abandoning Introspectionist attempts to make consciousness a subject of experimental
investigation to focus instead on behavioral manifestations of intelligence. B. F. Skinner
later hardened behaviorist strictures to exclude inner physiological processes along with
inward experiences as items of legitimate psychological concern. Consequently, the
successful “cognitive revolution” of the nineteen sixties styled itself a revolt against
behaviorism even though the computational processes cognitivism hypothesized would be
public and objective — not the sort of private subjective processes Watson
banned. Consequently (and ironically), would-be-scientific champions of consciousness
now indict cognitivism for its “behavioristic” neglect of inward experience.
The enduring philosophical interest of behaviorism concerns
this methodological challenge to the scientific bona fides of consciousness (on behalf of
empiricism) and, connectedly (in accord with materialism), its challenge to the
supposed metaphysical inwardness, or subjectivity, of thought. Although behaviorism as
an avowed movement may have few remaining advocates, various practices and trends in
psychology and philosophy may still usefully be styled “behavioristic”. As long as
experimental rigor in psychology is held to require “operationalization” of variables,
behaviorism’s methodological mark remains. Recent attempts to revive doctrines of
“ontological subjectivity” (Searle 1992) in philosophy and bring “consciousness research”
under the aegis of Cognitive Science (see Horgan 1994) point up the continuing relevance
of behaviorism’s metaphysical and methodological challenges.

Table of Contents
1. Behaviorists and Behaviorisms
a. Psychological Behaviorists
i. Precursors: Wilhelm Wundt, Ivan Pavlov
ii. John B. Watson: Early Behaviorism
iii. Intermediaries: Edward Tolman and Clark Hull
iv. B. F. Skinner: Radical Behaviorism
v. Post-Behaviorist and Neo-behavioristic Currents: Externalism and
Connectionism
b. Philosophical Behaviorists
. Precursors, Preceptors, & Fellow Travelers: William James, John Dewey,
Bertrand Russell
i. Logical Behaviorism: Rudolf Carnap
ii. Ordinary Language Behaviorists: Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein
iii. Reasons , Causes, and the Scientific Imperative
iv. Later Day Saints: Willard van Orman Quine and Alan Turing
v. The Turing Test Conception: Behaviorism as Metaphysical Null Hypothesis
 vi. Logical Behaviorism Metaphysically Construed
2. Objections & Discussion
. Technical Difficulties
. Action v. Movement
i. From Paralytics to Perfect Actors
ii. The Intentional Circle
iii. Methodological Complaints
a. The Ur-Objection: Consciousness Denied
3. References and Further Reading
1. Behaviorists and Behaviorisms
Behaviorism, notoriously, came in various sorts and has been, also notoriously, subject to
variant sortings: “the variety of positions that constitute behaviorism” might even be said
to share no common-distinctive property, but only “a loose family resemblance” (Zuriff
1985: 1) . Views commonly styled “behavioristic” share various of the following marks:

• allegiance to the “fundamental premise … that psychology is a natural science” and,

as such, is “to be empirically based and … objective” (Zuriff 1985: 1);
• denial of the utility of introspection as a source of scientific data;
• theoretic-explanatory dismissal of inward experiences or states of consciousness
introspection supposedly reveals;
• specifically antidualistic opposition to the “Cartesian theater” picture of the mind as
essentially a realm of such inward experiences;
• more broadly antiessentialist opposition to physicalist or cogntivist portrayals of
thought as necessarily neurophysiological or computational;
• theoretic-explanatory minimization of inner physiological or computational
processes intervening between environmental stimulus and behavioral response;
• mistrust of the would-be scientific character of the concepts of “folk psychology”
generally, and of the would-be causal character of its central “belief-desire” pattern
of explanation in particular;
• positive characterization of the mental in terms of intelligent “adaptive” behavioral
dispositions or stimulus-response patterns.
Among these features, not even Zuriff’s “fundamental premise” is shared by all (and only)
behaviorists. Notably, Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and followers in the “ordinary
language” tradition of analytic philosophy, while, for the most part, regarding
behavioral scientific hopes as vain, hold views that are, in other respects, strongly
behavioristic. Not surprisingly, these thinkers often downplay the “behaviorist” label
themselves to distinguish themselves from their scientific behaviorist cousins.
Nevertheless, in philosophical discussions, they are commonly counted “behaviorists”:
both emphasize the external behavioral aspects, deemphasize inward experiential and
inner procedural aspects, and offer broadly behavioral-dispositional construals of
thought.
a. Psychological Behaviorists
i. Precursors: Wilhelm Wundt, Ivan Pavlov
Wundt is often called “the father of experimental psychology.” He conceived the subject
matter of psychology to be “experience in its relations to the subject” (Wundt 1897: 3).
The science of experience he envisaged was supposed to be chemistry like: introspected
experiential data were to be analyzed; the basic constituents of conscious experience thus
identified; and the patterns and laws by which these basic constituents combine to
constitute more complex conscious experiences (e.g., emotions) described. Data were to
be acquired and analyzed by trained introspective Observers. While the analysis of
experience was supposed to be a self-contained enterprise, Wundt — originally trained as
a physiologist — fully expected that the structures and processes introspective analysis
uncovered in experience would parallel structures and processes physiological
investigation revealed in the central nervous system. Introspectionism, as the approach
was called, soon spread, and laboratories sprang up in the United States and elsewhere,
aiming “to investigate the facts of consciousness, its combinations and relations,” so as to
“ultimately discover the laws which govern these relations and combinations” (Wundt
1912: 1). The approach failed primarily due to the unreliability of introspective
Observation. Introspective “experimental” results were not reliably reproducible by
outside laboratories: Observers from different laboratories failed to agree, for instance, in
their Observation (or failure to Observe) imageless thoughts (to cite one notorious
controversy).

Pavlov’s successful experimental discovery the laws of classical conditioning (as they came
to be called), by way of contrast, provided positive inspiration for Watson’s Behaviorist
manifesto. Pavlov’s stimulus-response model of explanation is also paradigmatic to much
later behavioristic thought. In his famous experiments Pavlov paired presentations to
dogs of an unconditioned stimulus (food) with an initially neutral stimulus (a ringing
bell). After a number of such joint presentations, the unconditional response to food
(salivation) becomes conditioned to the bell: salivation occurs upon the ringing of the bell
alone, in the absence of food. In accord with Pavlovian theory, then, given an animal’s
conditioning history behavioral responses (e.g., salivation) can be predicted to occur or
not, and be controlled (made to occur or not), on the basis of laws of conditioning,
answering to the stimulus-response pattern:
S -> R
Everything adverted to here is publicly observable, even measurable; enabling Pavlov to
experimentally investigate and formulate laws concerning temporal sequencing and delay
effects, stimulus intensity effects, and stimulus generalization (opening doors to
experimental investigation of animal perception and discrimination).

Edward Thorndike, in a similar methodological vein, proposed “that psychology may be,
at least in part, as independent of introspection as physics” (Thorndike 1911: 5) and
pursued experimental investigations of animal intelligence. In experimental
investigations of puzzle-solving by cats and other animals, he established that speed of
solution increased gradually as a result of previous puzzle exposure. Such results, he
maintained, support the hypothesis that learning is a result of habits formed through trial
and error, and Thorndike formulated “laws of behavior,” describing habit formation
processes, based on these results. Most notable among Thorndike’s laws (presaging
Skinnerian operant conditioning) is his Law of Effect:
Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely
followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected
with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur; those which are
accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will, other things being equal, have
their connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be less likely
to occur. The greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the greater the strengthening or
weakening of the bond . (Thorndike 1911)
In short, rewarded responses tend to be reinforced and punished responses eliminated.
His methodological innovations (particularly his “puzzle-box”) facilitated objective
quantitative data collection and provided a paradigm for Behaviorist research methods to
follow (especially the “Skinner box”).
ii. John B. Watson: Early Behaviorism
Watson coined the term “Behaviorism” as a name for his proposal to revolutionize the
study of human psychology in order to put it on a firm experimental footing. In opposition
to received philosophical opinion, to the dominant Introspectionist approach in
psychology, and (many said) to common sense, Watson (1913) advocated a radically
different approach. Where received “wisdom” took conscious experience to be the very
stuff of minds and hence the (only) appropriate object of psychological investigation,
Watson advocated an approach that led, scientifically, “to the ignoring of consciousness”
and the illegitimacy of “making consciousness a special object of observation.” He
proposed, instead, that psychology should “take as a starting point, first the observable
fact that organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment”
and “secondly, that certain stimuli lead the organisms to make responses.” Whereas
Introspectionism had, in Watson’s estimation, miserably failed in its attempt to make
experimental science out of subjective experience, the laboratories of animal
psychologists, such as Pavlov and Thorndike, were already achieving reliably reproducible
results and discovering general explanatory principles. Consequently, Watson — trained
as an “animal man” himself — proposed, “making behavior, not consciousness, the
objective point of our attack” as the key to putting the study of human psychology on a
similar scientific footing. Key it proved to be. Watson’s revolution was a smashing success.
Introspectionism languished, behaviorism flourished, and considerable areas of our
understanding of human psychology (particularly with regard to learning) came within
the purview of experimental investigation along broadly behavioristic lines. Notably, also,
Watson foreshadows Skinner’s ban on appeals to inner (central nervous) processes,
seeming to share the Skinnerian sentiment “that because so little is known about the
central nervous system, it serves as the last refuge of the soul in psychology” (Zuriff 1985:
80). Watson is, consequently, loath to hypothesize central processes, going so far as to
speculate that thought occurs in the vocal tract, and is — quite literally — subaudible
talking to oneself (Watson 1920).
iii. Intermediaries: Edward Tolman and Clark Hull
Tolman and Hull were the two most noteworthy figures of the movement’s middle years.
Although both accepted the S-R framework as basic, Tolman and Hull were far more
willing than Watson to hypothesize internal mechanisms or “intervening variables”
mediating the S-R connection. In this regard their work may be considered precursory to
cognitivism, and each touches on important philosophical issues besides.
Tolman’s purposive behaviorism attempts to explain goal-directed or purposive behavior,
focusing on large, intact, meaningful behavior patterns or “molar” behavior (e.g., kicking
a ball) as opposed to simple muscle movements or “molecular” behavior (e.g., various
flexings of leg muscles); regarding the molecular level as too far removed from our
perceptual capacities and explanatory purposes to provide suitable units for meaningful
behavioral analysis. For Tolman, stimuli play a cognitive role as signals to the organism,
leading to the formation of “cognitive maps” and to “latent learning” in the absence of
reinforcement. Overall,
The stimuli which are allowed in are not connected by just simple one-to-one switches to the
outgoing responses. Rather the incoming impulses are usually worked over and elaborated
in the central control room into a tentative cognitive-like map of the environment. And it is
this tentative map, indicating routes and paths and environmental relationships, which
finally determines what responses, if any, the animal will finally make. (Tolman 1948: 192)
Clark Hull undertook the ambitious program of formulating an exhaustive theory of such
mechanisms intervening between stimuli and responses: the theory was to take the form
of a hypothetical-deductive system of basic laws or “postulates” enabling the prediction
of behavioral responses (as “output variables”) on the basis of external stimuli (“input
variables”) plus internal states of the organism (“intervening variables”). Including such
organismic “intervening” variables (O) in the predictive/explanatory laws results in the
following revised explanatory schema:

S & O -> R
The intervening O-variables Hull hypothesized included drive and habit strength.
Attributes of, and relations among, these variables are what the postulates describe:
further attributes and relationships were derived as theorems and corollaries from the
basic postulates. Hull’s student, Edward Spence, attempted to carry on with the program,
without lasting success. Expected gains in predictive-explanatory scope and precision
were not achieved and, with hindsight, it is easy to see that such an elaborate theoretical
superstructure, built on such slight observational-experimental foundations, was bound
to fall. Hull’s specific proposals are presently more historical curiosities than live
hypotheses. Nevertheless, currently prevalent cognitivist approaches share Hull’s general
commitment to internal mechanisms.
iv. B. F. Skinner: Radical Behaviorism
Skinner’s self-described “radical behaviorist” approach is radical in its insistence on
extending behaviorist strictures against inward experiential processes to include inner
physiological ones as well. The scientific nub of the approach is a concept of operant
conditioning indebted to Thorndike’s “Law of Effect.” Operants (e.g., bar-presses or key-
pecks) are units of behavior an organism (e.g., a rat or pigeon) occasionally emits
“spontaneously” prior to conditioning. In operant conditioning, operants followed
by reinforcement (e.g., food or water) increase in frequency and come under control
of discriminative stimuli (e.g., lights or tones) preceding the response. By increasingly
judicious reinforcement of increasingly close approximations, complex behavioral
sequences are shaped. On Skinner’s view, high-level human behavior, such as speech, is
the end result of such shaping. Prolonged absence of reinforcement leads to extinction of
the response. Many original and important Skinnerian findings — e.g., that constantly
reinforced responses extinguish more rapidly than intermittently reinforced responses —
concern the effects of differing schedules of reinforcement. Skinner notes the similarity of
operant behavioral conditioning to natural evolutionary selection: in each case
apparently forward-looking or goal-directed developments are explained (away) by
a preceding course of environmental “selection” among randomly varying evolutionary
traits or, in the psychological case, behavioral tricks. The purposiveness which Tolman’s
molar behavioral description assumes, radical behaviorism thus claims to explain.
Likewise, Skinner questions the explanatory utility of would-be characterizations of inner
processes (such as Hull’s): such processes, being behavior themselves (though inner), are
more in need of explanation themselves, Skinner holds, than they are fit to explain
outward behavior. By “dismissing mental states and processes,” Skinner maintains,
radical behaviorism “directs attention to the … history of the individual and to the current
environment where the real causes of behavior are to be found” (Skinner 1987: 75). On
this view, “if the proper attention is paid to the variables controlling behavior and an
appropriate behavioral unit is chosen, orderliness appears directly in the behavior and
the postulated theoretical processes become superfluous” (Zuriff: 88). Thus understood,
Skinner’s complaint about inner processes “is not that they do not exist, but that they are
not relevant” (Skinner 1953) to the prediction, control, and experimental analysis of
behavior.
Skinner stressed prediction and control as his chief explanatory desiderata, and on this
score he boasts that “experimental analysis of behaviour” on radical behaviorist lines “has
led to an effective technology, applicable to education, psychotherapy, and the design of
cultural practices in general” (Skinner 1987: 75). Even the most strident critics of radical
behaviorism, I believe, must accord it some recognition in these connections. Behavior
therapy (based on operant principles) has proven effective in treating phobias and
addictions; operant shaping is widely and effectively used in animal training; and
behaviorist instructional methods have proven effective — though they may have become
less fashionable — in the field of education. Skinnerian Behaviorism can further boast of
significantly advancing our understanding of stimulus generalization and other important
learning-and-perception related phenomena and effects. Nevertheless, what was
delivered was less than advertised. In particular, Skinner’s attempt to extend the
approach to the explanation of high-grade human behavior failed, making Noam
Chomsky’s dismissive (1959) review of Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior, something of a
watershed. On Chomsky’s diagnosis, not only had Skinner’s attempt at explaining verbal
behavior failed, it had to fail given the insufficiency of the explanatory devices Skinner
allowed: linguistic competence (in general) and language acquisition (in particular),
Chomsky argued, can only be explained as expressions of innate mechanisms —
presumably, computational mechanisms. For those in the “behavioral sciences” already
chaffing under the severe methodological constraints Skinnerian orthodoxy imposed, the
transition to “cognitive science” was swift and welcome. By 1985 Zuriff would write, “the
received wisdom of today is that behaviorism has been refuted, its methods have failed,
and it has little to offer modern psychology” (Zuriff 1985: 278). Subsequent
developments, however, suggest that matters are not that simple.
v. Post-Behaviorist and Neo-behavioristic Currents:
Externalism and Connectionism
Several recent developments inside and beside the mainstream of “cognitive science” —
though their proponents have not been keen to style themselves “behaviorists” — appear
to be rather behavioristic. Semantic externalism is the view that “meanings ain’t in the
head” (Putnam 1975: 227) but depend, rather, on environmental factors; especially on
sensory and behavioral intercourse with the referents of the referring thoughts or
expressions. If emphasis on the outward or behavioral aspects of thought or intelligence
— and attendant de-emphasis of inward experiential or inner procedural aspects — is the
hallmark of behaviorism, semantic externalism is, on its face, behavioristic (though this
is seldom remarked). Emphasis (as by Burge 1979) on social (besides the indexical, or
sensory-behavioral) determinants of reference — on what Putnam called “the linguistic
division of labor” — lends this view a distinct Wittgensteinean flavor besides. Such
externalist “causal theories” of reference, although far from unquestioned orthodoxy, are
currently among the leading cognitive scientific contenders. Less orthodox, but even more
behavioristic, is the procedural externalism advocated by Andy Clark (2001), inspired by
work in “Situated Cognition, Distributed and Decentralized Cognition, Real-World
Robotics, and Artificial Life” (Clark 2001: abstract); identifying thought with “complex
and iterated processes which continually loop between brain, body, and technological
environment”; according to which the “intelligent process just is the spatially and
temporally extended one which zig-zags between brain, body, and world” (Clark 2001:
132). Perhaps most importantly, the influential connectionist hypothesis that the brain
does parallel processing of distributed representations, rather than serial processing of
localized (language-like) representations, also waxes behavioristic. In parallel systems,
typically, initial programming (comparable to innate mechanisms) is minimal and the
systems are “trained-up” to perform complex tasks over a series of trails, by a process
somewhat like operant shaping.
b. Philosophical Behaviorists
i. Precursors, Preceptors, & Fellow Travelers: William
James, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell
In opposition to the “Structuralist” philosophical underpinnings of introspectionism,
behaviorism grew out of a competing “Functionalist” philosophy of psychology that
counted Dewey and William James among its leading advocates. Against structuralist
reification of the content of experience, Dewey urged that sensations be given a functional
characterization, and proposed to treat them as functionally defined occupants of roles in
the “reflex arc” which — since it “represents both the unit of nerve structure and the type
of nerve function” — should supply the “unifying principle and controlling working
hypothesis in psychology” (Dewey 1896: 357); though the arc, Dewey insisted, is
misunderstood if not viewed in broader organic-adaptive context. On another front —
against structuralist reification of the subject of experience — William James famously
maintained,
that ‘consciousness,’ when once it has evaporated to this estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the
point of disappearing altogether. It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place
among first principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor
left behind by the disappearing ‘soul’ upon the air of philosophy.
James hastened to add, that he meant “only to deny that the word [`consciousness’]
stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function”
(James 1912). The James-Lange theory of emotions — which holds that “the bodily changes
follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes
as they occur IS the emotion (James 1884: 189-190) — prefigures later behavioristic
deflationary analyses of other categories of presumed mentation.
Bertrand Russell was among the first philosophers to recognize the philosophical
significance of the behaviorist revolution Watson proposed. Though never a card-carrying
behaviorist himself — insisting that the inwardness or “privacy” of “sense-data” “does not
by itself make [them] unamenable to scientific treatment” (Russell 1921: 119) — Russell,
nevertheless, asserted that behaviorism “contains much more truth than people suppose”
and regarded it “as desirable to develop the behaviourist method to the fullest possible
extent” (Russell 1927: 73), proposing a united front between behaviorism and science-
friendly analytic philosophy of mind. Such fronts soon emerged on both the “formal
language” and “ordinary language” sides of ongoing analytic philosophical debate.
ii. Logical Behaviorism: Rudolf Carnap
What is sometimes called the “formalist” or “ideal language” line of analytic philosophy
seeks the logical and empirical regimentation of (would-be) scientific language for the
sake of its scientific improvement. “Logical behaviorism” refers, most properly, to Carnap
and Hempel’s proposed regimentation of psychological discourse on behavioristic lines,
calling for analyses of mental terms along lines consonant with the Logical Empiricist
doctrine of verificationism (resembling the “operationism” of P.W. Bridgman 1927) they
espoused. According to verificationism, a theoretic attribution — say of temperature — as
in “it’s 23.4º centigrade” “affirms nothing other than” that certain “physical test sentences
obtain”: sentences describing the would-be “coincidence between the level of the mercury
and the mark of the scale numbered 23.4” on a mercury thermometer, and “other
coincidences,” for other measuring instruments (Hempel 1949: 16-17). Similarly, it was
proposed, that for scientific psychological purposes, “the meaning of a psychological
statement consists solely in the function of abbreviating the description of certain modes
of physical response characteristic of the bodies of men and animals” (Hempel 1949: 19),
the modes of physical response by which we test the truth of our psychological
attributions. “Paul has a toothache” for instance would abbreviate “Paul weeps and makes
gestures of such and such kinds”; “At the question `What is the matter?,’ Paul utters the
words `I have a toothache'”; and so on (Hempel 1949: 17). As Carnap and Hempel came
to give up verificationism, they gave up logical behaviorism, and came to hold, instead,
that “the introduction and application of psychological terms and hypotheses is logically
and methodologically analogous to the introduction and application of the terms and
hypotheses of a physical theory.” Theoretical terms on this newly emerging (and now
prevalent) view need only be loosely tied to observational tests in concert with other terms
of the theory. They needn’t be fully characterized, each in terms of its own observations,
as on the “narrow translationist” (Hempel 1977: 14) doctrine of logical behaviorism. As
verificationism went, so went logical behaviorism: liberalized requirements for the
empirical grounding of theoretical posits encouraged the taking of “cognitive scientific”
liberties (in practice) and (in theory) the growth of cognitivist sympathies among analytic
philosophers of mind. Still, despite having been renounced by its champions as
unfounded and having found no new champions; and despite seeming, with hindsight,
clearly false; logical behaviorism continues to provoke philosophical discussion, perhaps
due to that very clarity. Appreciation of how logical behaviorism went wrong (below) is
widely regarded by cognitivists as the best propaedeutic to their case for robust recourse
to hypotheses about internal computational mechanisms.
iii. Ordinary Language Behaviorists: Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig
Wittgenstein
The “ordinary language” movement waxed most strongly in the work of Ryle and
Wittgenstein around the middle of the twentieth century. Their investigations are “meant
to throw light on the facts of our language” in its everyday employment (Wittgenstein
1953: §130). Where the formalist seeks the logical and empirical regimentation of would-
be scientific language, including psychological terms, Ryle and Wittgenstein regard our
everyday use of mental terminology as unimpeached by its scientific “defects” … which
are not defects … because such talk is not in the scientific line of business. To misconstrue
talk of people “as knowing, believing, or guessing something, as hoping, dreading,
intending or shirking something, as designing this or being amused at that” (Ryle 1949:
15) on the model of scientific hypotheses about inner mechanisms misconstrues the
“logical grammar” (Wittgenstein) of such talk, or makes a “category-mistake” (Ryle).
Philosophical puzzlements about knowledge of other minds and mind-body interaction
arise from such misconstrual: for instance, attempts to solve the mind-body problem,
Ryle claims, “presuppose the legitimacy of the disjunction `Either there exist minds or
there exist bodies (but not both)'” which “would be like saying, `Either she bought a left-
hand and a right-hand glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both)'” (Ryle 1949:
22-3). The most basic misconstrual (Wittgenstein’s and Ryle’s diagnoses concur) involves
thinking — when we talk of “knowing, believing, or guessing,” etc. — “that these verbs are
supposed to denote the occurrence of specific modifications” either mechanical (in
brains) or “paramechanical” (in streams of consciousness):
So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And
now it looks as if we have denied the mental processes. And naturally we don’t want to deny
them.” (Wittgenstein 1953: §308)
Not wanting to deny, e.g., “that anyone ever remembers anything” (Wittgenstein 1953:
§306) Wittgenstein and Ryle offer broadly dispositional stories about how mentalistic
talk does work, in place of “the model of ‘object and designation'” (Wittgenstein 1953:
§293) they reject.
According to Wittgenstein on the object-designation model — where the object is
supposed to be private or introspected — it “drops out of consideration as irrelevant”
(Wittgenstein 1953: §293): the “essential thing about private experience” here is “not that
each person possesses his own exemplar” but “that nobody knows whether other people
also have this or something else” (§272). So, if “someone tells me that he knows what pain
is only from his own case” this would be as if
everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a `beetle’. No one can look in anyone else’s
box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. — Here it
would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even
imagine such a thing constantly changing. — But suppose the word `beetle’ had a use in these
people’s language? — If so, it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box
has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be
empty. — No, one can `divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
(§293)
Rather than referring to inner experiences, sensation words, according to Wittgenstein,
“are connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions of the sensation and used in
their place” (§246): self-attributions of “pain” and other sensation terms are avowals not
descriptions: “A child has hurt himself and he cries; and then adults talk to him and teach
him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour.” Here,
Wittgenstein explains, he is not “saying that the word `pain’ really means crying”: rather,
“the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it” (§244). Avowals
join the “natural expressions” to supply the “outward criteria” which logically (not just
evidentially) constrain and enable the uses sensation and other “`inner process'” words
have in our public language (§580). Furthermore, Wittgenstein famously argues, we
cannot even coherently imagine a private language “in which a person could write down
or give vocal expression to his inner experiences” exclusively “for his private use” because
the “private ostensive definition” (§380) required to fix the reference of the would-be
sensation-denoting expression could not establish a rule for its use. “To think one is
obeying a rule is not to obey a rule” and in the case of usage consequent on the envisaged
private baptism “thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as … obeying”
(§202).
For Ryle, when we employ the “verbs, nouns and adjectives, with which in ordinary life
we describe the wits, characters, and higher-grade performances of people with whom we
have do” (Ryle 1949: 15) “we are not referring to occult episodes of which their overt acts
and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves”
(25) or else to a “disposition, or a complex of dispositions” (15) to such acts and
utterances. “Dispositional words like `know’, `believe’, `aspire’, `clever’, and
`humorous”’ signify multi-track dispositions: “abilities, tendencies or pronenesses to do,
not things of one unique kind, but things of lots of different kinds” (118): “to explain an
action as done from a specified motive or inclination is not to describe the action as the
effect of a specified cause”: being dispositions, motives “are not happenings and are not
therefore of the right type to be causes” (113). Accordingly, “to explain an act as done from
a certain motive is not analogous to saying that the glass broke, because a stone hit it, but
to the quite different type of statement that the glass broke, when the stone hit it, because
the glass was brittle” (87). The force of such explanation is not “to correlate [the action
explained] with some occult cause, but to subsume it under a propensity or behavior
trend” (110). The explanation does not prescind from the act to its causal antecedents but
redescribes the act in broader context, telling “a more pregnant story,” as when we explain
the bird’s “flying south” as “migration”; yet, Ryle observes,” the process of migrating is
not a different process from that of flying south; so it is not the cause of its flying south”
(142). Finally, the connection between disposition and deed, as Ryle understands it, is
a logical-criterial, not a contingent-causal one: brave deeds are not caused by bravery,
they constitute it (as the “soporific virtue,” or sleep-inducing power, of opium
doesn’t cause it to induce sleep since tending to induce sleep is this power or “virtue”).
iv. Reasons , Causes, and the Scientific Imperative
For formalists, the informality and imprecision of ordinary language formulations invite
criticism. Take Ryle’s “migration” comparison: either, it would seem, Ryle is saying that
everyday psychological explanations yield only vague interpretive understanding, having
no scope for scientific development; or else, it would seem, the “more pregnant story”
must be formalizable in terms of predictive-explanatory laws (as of migration, in Ryle’s
example) with logical-behaviorial-definition-like rigor (if not content). The point
of logical behaviorist analysis is to scientifically ground talk of “belief,” “desire,”
“sensation,” and the rest, whose everyday use seems empirically precarious. With this aim
in mind, “explanatory” procession from low-level matter-of-fact description (“flying
south”) to more interpretive description (“migration”), such as Ryle envisages, seems to
move in the wrong direction … unless, again, the “more pregnant story” is not
just redescriptive but delivers scientific theoretic gains in the form of more general and
precise explantory-predictive laws. A related debate raged fiercely through the nineteen
fifties and early sixties between defenders of the (would-be) scientific status of “motive”
or “belief-desire” explanations (notably Hempel) and champions of the Rylean thesis that
“reasons aren’t causes” (Elizabeth Anscombe and Stuart Hampshire, among them).
Donald Davidson’s (1963) defense of “the ancient — and commonsense — position that
rationalization is a species of causal explanation” is widely recognized as a watershed in
this debate, though it remains doubtful to what extent cognivists retain rights to the water
shed, since Davidson counts reasons to be causal in virtue of noncognitive (low-level
physical) properties. On the other hand, philosophers in the ordinary language tradition
(e.g., Hampshire 1950, Geach 1957) raised daunting technical difficulties (below) for the
“narrow translationist” plans of logical behaviorism. Such criticisms hastened the advent
of cognitivism as an alternative to behaviorism of any stripe among philosophers
unwilling to abide the informality, imprecision, and seeming scientific defeatism of the
ordinary language approach.
v. Later Day Saints: Willard van Orman Quine and Alan
Turing
Quine, considered by many to be the greatest Anglo-American philosopher of the last half
of the twentieth century, was a self-avowed “behaviorist,” and such tendencies are evident
in several areas of his thought, beginning with his enthusiasm for a linguistic turn (as
Bergmann 1964 styled it: see Rorty 1967) in the philosophy of mind. “A theory of mind,”
Quine writes, “can gain clarity and substance … from a better understanding of the
workings of language, whereas little understanding of the working of language is to be
hoped for in mentalistic terms” (Quine 1975: 84). Quine’s “naturalized” inquiries
concerning knowledge and language attempt, further, to incorporate empirical findings
and methods from Skinnerian psychology. In contrast to logical behaviorism (above),
notably, Quine “never … aspired to the ascetic adherence to operational definitions” and
always acknowledged — indeed insisted — that science “settles for partial criteria and for
partial explanations” of its theoretic posits “in terms of other partially explained notions”
(Quine 1990: 291). Still, he is not keen — as his cognitivist contemporaries (for example,
Putnam) and followers (for example, Fodor) are — about the prospects such looser
empiricist strictures offer for scientific deployment of mentalistic vernacular terms like
“belief,” “desire,” and “sensation”. To standard behaviorist concern about
the empirical credentials of alleged private entities and introspective reports, Quine adds
the consideration that talk of “belief”, “desire”, and other intentional mental states is so
logically ill-behaved as to be irreconcilable with materialism and scientifically
unredeemable. In the final analysis, however, the behaviorism Quine proposes is
methodological. His final metaphysical word is physicalism: “having construed behavioral
dispositions in turn as physiological states, I end up with the so called identity theory of
mind: mental states are states of the body” (Quine 1975: 94); yet, his antiessentialism here
(as elsewhere) lends his physicalism a behavioristic cast (see next section).
Alan Turing is transitional. Along with the digital age, his theory of computation helped
inspire the cognitivist revolution, making him, by some lights the first cognitivist. On the
other hand, the methodological behaviorism of Turing’s proposed Imitation Game test for
artificial intelligence (the “Turing test”) has been widely remarked and “the Turing test
conception” of intelligence may be considered a parade case of metaphysical behaviorism
for purposes of refutation (as by Block 1981) or illustration (as follows).
vi. The Turing Test Conception: Behaviorism as
Metaphysical Null Hypothesis
The Imitation Game proposed by Turing (1950) was originally a game of female
impersonation: the aim of the game for the (male) querant is to pass for (that is, be judged
by the questioner to be) female. The Turing test replaces the male querant with a
computer whose aim is to pass for human. This simplified setup (Turing’s actual proposal
involves an additional complication, a third participant or foil besides to
the querant and questioner) can be used to explain the metaphysical character of the
dispute as a dispute about essence. In the original (man-woman) Imitation Game, notice,
however good the impersonation, it doesn’t make the querant female. Something else is
essential: it’s the content of their chromosomes (not their conversation) that makes the
querant female or not. Different proposals for what that essential something is in the case
of thought, then, represent different metaphysical takes on the nature of mind. In the
Turing test scenario these different [proposed essences] represent further
conditions necessary to promote intelligent-seeming behavior into actual intelligence,
and sufficing for intelligence, or mentation, even in the absence of such behavior.
Dualistic Essentialism: S -> [(the right) conscious experiential processes] -> R
Physicalistic Essentialism: S -> [(the right) physical processes] -> R
Cognitivistic Essentialism: S -> [(the right) computational processess] -> R
Behavioristic Inessentialism: S -> [whatever works] -> R
Dualistic theories propose a conscious experiential essence; physicalistic (or “mind-brain
identity”) theories propose a physical (specifically, neurophysiological) essence; and
cognitivistic theories a procedural or computational essence. Behaviorism, in
contrast, doesn’t care what mediates the intelligent-seeming S -> R connection;
behavioristically speaking, intelligence is as intelligence does regardless of the manner of
the doing (experiential, neurophysiological, computational, or otherwise). Behaviorism,
thus construed, “is not a metaphysical theory: it is the denial of a metaphysical theory”
and consequently “asserts nothing” (Ziff 1958: 136); at least, nothing positively
metaphysical.
vii. Logical Behaviorism Metaphysically Construed
Logical behaviorism may be seen, in the light of the preceding, as attempting to
stipulate nominal essences (Locke 1690: IIiii15) where dualism, physicalism, and
cognitivism propose to discover real ones. Further, although the motives of its founders
(Carnap and Hempel) were chiefly epistemic or “methodological,” logical behaviorism
seemed to many to invite metaphysical exploitation. Because the definitions Carnap and
Hempel proposed sought to specify observationally necessary and sufficient conditions
for true attributions of the mental terms in what they called “the physical thing language,”
the successful completion of this program, it seemed, would reduce the mental to the
physical. Mentalistic descriptions of people as “expecting pain” or “having toothaches”
would be completely replaceable, in principle and without cognitive loss, by talk of bodily
transitions; thoughts and experiences would thus be shown to be nothing above and
beyond such bodily transitions; vindicating materialism. As the the methodological
emphasis of early analytic philosophy receded and was replaced by more frankly
metaphysical concerns among formalist analytic philosophers of mind, it was chiefly this
would-be metaphysical application of logical behaviorism that came increasingly under
philosophical scrutiny.
2. Objections & Discussion
a. Technical Difficulties
i. Action v. Movement
Ordinary language philosophers were among the first to raise daunting difficulties for the
strict translationist program which, they argued, was guilty of a category mistake — or at
least of wildly underestimating the impracticability of what they were proposing — in
conflating the concepts of action and movement under the heading of “behavior.” As D. W.
Hamlyn puts this complaint, “where activity is exhibited, it is not necessarily
inappropriate to talk of movements, but it will be so to do so in the same context, in the
same universe of discourse”:
With movements we are concerned with physical phenomena, the laws concerning which
are in principle derivable from the laws of physics. But the behaviour which we call “posting
a letter” or “kicking a ball” involves a very complex series of movements, and the same
movements will not be exhibited on all occasions on which we should describe the behavior
in the same way. No fixed criteria can be laid down which will enable us to decide what series
of movements shall constitute “posting a letter.” Rather we have learnt to interpret a varying
range of movements as coming up to the rough standard which we observe in acknowledging
a correct description of such behaviour as posting a letter. (Hamlyn 1953: 134-135)
The task of defining mentalistic predications such as “wanting to score a goal” in terms of
outward acts — or dispositions to acts — like kicking a ball (Tolman’s “molar behavior”)
seems daunting enough; the task of casting the definition in terms of movements or
“molecular behavior” — “colorless movements and mere receptor impulses” (Watson),
“motions and noises” (Ryle) — seems beyond daunting.
ii. From Paralytics to Perfect Actors
If the mental were completely definable in outwardly behavioral terms — as logical
behaviorism proposes — then outward behavioral capacities or dispositions would
be necessary for thought or experience. But a complete paralytic, it seems, might still think
thoughts (e.g., I can’t move), harbor desires (e.g., to move) and experience (e.g., despairing)
sensations. Such possibilities are, on their face, contrary to logical behaviorism. From the
logical behaviorist perspective, while such cases may complicate the description of the
mental in behavioral terms, they do not seem fatal. It may be replied, e.g., that wanting to
move is being disposed to move if able and, since the various possible causes of the
disability (severed spinal cords, curare poisoning, etc.) are physically specifiable, this
envisaged complication is wholly consistent with behaviorist strictures and reductionist
hopes. Hilary Putnam’s imagined super-super-spartans (“X-worlders“) are less easily
countered. X-worlders (as Putnam called them) “suppress all … pain behavior” by “a great
effort of will” for “what they regard as important ideological reasons” (Putnam 1963: 332-
334). Like paralytics, these super-super-spartans “lack the behavioral dispositions
envisioned by the behaviorists to be associated with pain, even though they do in fact have
pain” (Block 1981: 12); but, unlike paralytics, they lack these dispositions
for psychological reasons: efforts of will undertaken for ideological reasons — unlike
severed spinal cords and doses of curare — would not be physically specifiable and any
envisaged complications of the behavioral definitions attempting to build exceptions for
these causes would be inconsistent with behaviorist strictures and reductionist hopes. And
contrary to the sufficiency of behavior for pain that logical behaviorist definitions would
imply, “an exactly analogous example of perfect pain-pretenders shows that no behavioral
disposition is sufficient for pain either” (Block 1981: 12: emphasis added).
iii. The Intentional Circle
Among the technical arguments against logical behaviorism, the most influential has been
the “intentional circle” argument harking back to Chisholm (1957, ch. 11) and Geach
(1957, p. 8): indeed the perfect actor line of counterexamples “flows out of the Chisholm-
Geach point” as Block (1981:12) notes. A desire to stay dry, for instance, will dispose you
to carry an umbrella only on the condition that you believe it might rain; and, conversely,
the belief it might rain will dispose you to carry an umbrella only on the condition that
you desire to stay dry. Such Geach-Chisholm type examples show that “which behavioral
dispositions a desire issues in depends on other states of the desirer. And similar points
apply to behaviorist analyses of belief and other mental states” (Block 1981: 12). While
this point is most plain with respect to intentional mental states such
as belief and desire, perfect actor examples seem to show it to extend to sensations, such as
pain, as well: “a disposition to pain behavior is not a sufficient condition of having pain,
since the behavioral disposition could be produced by a number of different combinations
of mental states, e.g., [pain + a normal preference function] or by [no pain + an
overwhelming desire to appear to have pain]” (Block 1981: 15); and, conversely, the
dispositions are not a necessary condition since unpained-behavior dispositions might be
produced by, e.g. [no pain + a normal preference function] or by [pain + an overwhelming
desire to appear not to have pain]. “Conclusion: one cannot define the conditions under
which a given mental state will issue in a given behavioral disposition” as logical
behaviorism proposes “without adverting to other mental states” (Block 1981: 12), which
logical behaviorism precludes. Such arguments are widely “regarded as decisive
refutations of behaviorist analyses of many mental states, such as belief, desire, and pain”
(Block 1981: 13). The “functionalist” doctrine that a mental state is “definable in terms of
its causal relations to inputs, outputs, and other mental states” (Block 1980: 257), not to
inputs and outputs alone (a la logical behaviorism), also flows directly from the Geach-
Chisholm point.
In truth, as Putnam himself notes, whether refutation of the “admittedly oversimplified
position” of logical behaviorism refutes behaviorism tout court depends on the extent to
which “the defects which this position exhibits are also exhibited by the more complex
and sophisticated positions which are actually held” (Putnam 1957: 95). Notably, perfect
actor and other would-be thought experimental counterexamples to behaviorism would
counterexemplify metaphysical construals which those who have actually held “the more
complex and sophisticated positions” at issue, for the most part, explicitly disavow. Also,
notably, Ryle’s characterization of intentional mental states (in particular) as multi-
track “dispositions the exercises of which are indefinitely heterogenous” (Ryle 1949: 44)
seems already to allow for intentional “circularity”: Tolman and Hull-style behaviorism
even explicitly embraces it. For refutation of behaviorism tout court to be claimed,
cognitivism would be have to be so simply identified with the view that a mental state is
“definable in terms of its causal relations to inputs, outputs, and other mental states” that
Tolman, Hull, and Ryle, count as cognitivists. That’s too simple. One may agree “that the
logically necessary and sufficient conditions for the ascription of a mental state” would
have to “refer not just to environmental variables but to other mental states of the
organism” (Fodor 1975: 7 n.7) — that mental attributions have to be reduced all together
(or holistically) not one by one (atomistically) — yet behavioristically refuse the call for
further computational (or physical or phenomenological) constraints on what count
as mental states. The “faith that … one will surely get to pure behavioral ascriptions” —
motions and noises — “if only one pursues the analysis far enough” (Fodor 1975: 7 n.7) is
also behavioristically dispensable. Notably these two tacks have their costs: the first
abandons hope for essential scientific characterization of the mental. The second
abandons hope for reductionist exploitation of behaviorist ideas on behalf of materialism.
So chastened, behaviorism, while defensible, seems, to many, too boring to merit further
philosophical bother.
iv. Methodological Complaints
Fodor’s summation of the complaint against against methodological behaviorism is
succinct: by it, he maintains, “[p]sychology is … deprived of its theoretical terms” meaning
“psychologists can provide methodologically reputable accounts only of such aspects of
behavior as are the effects of environmental variables”; but “the spontaneity and freedom
from local environmental control that behavior often exhibits” makes “this sort of
methodology intolerably restrictive” (Fodor 1975: 1-2). Furthermore, “there would seem
to be nothing in the project of explaining behavior by reference to mental processes which
requires a commitment to [their] epistemological privacy in the traditional sense” of
conscious subjectivity. “Indeed,” Fodor continues, “for better or worse, a
materialist cannot accept such a commitment since his view is that mental events are a
species of physical events, and physical events are publicly observable, at least in
principle” (Fodor 1975: 4): the commitment is to inner computational not inward
experiential processes. However, while Fodor 1975 adduces, “failure of behavioristic
psychology to provide even a first approximation to a plausible theory of cognition”
(Fodor 1975: 8) in support of cognitivist alternatives, Fodor 2000 confesses “that the most
interesting — certainly the hardest — problems about thinking are unlikely to be much
illuminated by any kind of computational theory we are now able to imagine” (Fodor
2000: 1). As for more isolated or “modular” processes (e.g., syntactic processing) where
the “Computational Theory of Mind” by Fodor’s lights remains “by far the best theory of
cognition that we’ve got; indeed, the only one we’ve got that’s worth the bother” (Fodor
2000: 1) … here, where, in Fodor’s judgment, behaviorism failed “to provide even a first
approximation of a plausible theory,” cognitivism may be faulted with producing too
many: elaborate theoretical superstructures built on slight observational-experimental
foundations reminiscent of Hull’s. Notably, since Chomsky’s watershed “Review of Verbal
Behavior by B. F. Skinner” Chomsky himself has held at least four distinct syntactic
theories, and his currently fashionable “Minimalist Theory” presently competes with at
least five distinct others. (Chomsky’s four theories (in chronological order) have
been Transformational Grammar (1965), Extended Standard Theory (1975), Government and
Binding (1984), and Minimalism (1995). Competing theories include, notably, Lexical
Function Grammar (Bresnan), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Sag,
Pollard), Functionalism (see Newmeyer), Categorial Grammar (Steedman),
and Stratificational Grammar (Lamb).)
b. The Ur-Objection: Consciousness Denied
Behaviorism’s disregard for consciousness struck many from the first, and continues to
strike many today, as contrary to plain self-experience and plain common-sense; not to
mention all that makes life precious and meaningful. In this vein behaviorism has been
“likened to `Hamlet’ without the Prince of Denmark” (Ryle 1949: 328) and behaviorists
accused of “affecting general anesthesia” (Ogden & Richards 1926: 23) and made the butt
of jokes in the vein of the following (see Ziff 1958):
Q: What does one behaviorist say to another when they meet on the street?
A: You’re fine. How am I?
Q: What does one behaviorist say to another after sex?
A: That was great for you. How was it for me?
In the same vein as John Searle still complains “the behaviorist seems to leave out the
mental phenomena in question,” (Searle 1992: 34), E. B. Titchener complained, at the
movement’s outset, of behaviorism’s “irrelevance to psychology as psychology is
ordinarily understood” (Titchener 1914: 6). On the other hand Titchener’s prediction —
that, due to this irrelevance, introspective psychology would continue to
flourish alongside behaviorism — with hindsight, seems a bit laughable itself. As Ryle puts
it, “the extruded hero,” consciousness, for scientific purposes, “soon came to seem so
bloodless and spineless a being that even the opponents of these [behaviorist] theories
began to feel shy of imposing heavy burdens upon his spectral shoulders” (Ryle 1949:
328). Ryle’s countercomplaint still rings true today despite recent attempts to revive
consciousness as a subject of serious scientific inquiry; or, more to the point especially,
in light of such attempts, which all, in one way or another, seek to revive the Wundtian
program of correlating introspected experiential with observed neurophysiological
events. While it may be urged that the hero was never wholly extruded but has been
lurking all along in the caves of psychophysics (e.g., in correlations of physical stimulus
variations with noticed differences in sensation), recent attempts to extend this
psychology-as-psychophysics approach beyond psychophysics remain nascent at best.
“Imagery from Galton on has been the inner stronghold of a psychology based on
introspection” (Watson 1913: 421) and here, with regard to direct sensory presentations
(e.g., afterimages) and sensations (e.g., pain) — so-called qualia — the “neglect of
consciousness” complaint against behaviorism is most acutely felt; and here it must be
confessed that behaviorist replies have been mostly halting and evasive. Watson,
confessing, “I may have to grant a few sporadic cases of imagery to him who will not be
otherwise convinced” would marginalize the phenomena, insisting, “that the images of
such a one are as sporadic and as unnecessary to his well-being and well-thinking as a few
hairs more or less on his head” (Watson 1913: 423n.3) — a verdict Ryle deems confirmed.
Scientifically, the “extruded hero,” it seems, can neither explanans nor explanandum be.
Inward experience seems, scientifically, as nonexplanatory (of intentionality, intelligence,
or other features of mind we should like to explain) as it seems itself scientifically
inexplicable. Nevertheless, Ryle frankly confesses that “there is something seriously
amiss” with his own treatment of sensations (Ryle 1949: 240) and, even, “not to know the
 right idioms to discuss these matters” in behavioristic good conscience; only hoping, his
“discussion of them in the official idioms may have at least some internal Fifth Column
efficacy” (Ryle 1949: 201). Still, inward experiences seem just as unaccountable on inner
computational grounds as on outward behavioral ones — Kossyln’s 1980 data structural
analysis of images as two dimensional data arrays, e.g., leaves their qualia still
unaccounted for. Behavioristic losses on the count of qualia are, by no means, cognitivistic
gains. Cognitivism itself “has been plagued by two `qualia’ centered objections” in
particular: the Inverted Qualia Objection that, possibly, e.g., “though you and I have
exactly the same functional organization, the sensation that you have when you look at
red things is phenomenally the same as the sensation that I have when I look at green
things” (Block 1980: 257); and the Absent Qualia Objection “that it is possible that a
mental state of a person x be functionally identical to a state of y, even though x‘s
state has qualitative character while y‘s state lacks qualitative character altogether” (Block
1980: 258).
Methodologically, then, the matter of consciousness remains about where Watson left it,
as scientifically intractable as it seems morally crucial and common-sensically
inescapable. Unless there is more scientific gold in those psychophysical hills than
recently renewed attempts to mine them by Crick (1994) Edelman (1989) and others (see
Horgan 1994) suggest, this is apt to be where matters remain for the foreseeable future.
Notice, metaphysical dualism (identifying mental events with private, subjective,
nonphysical, “modes” of conscious experience) may be held consistently with
methodological behavioristic commitment to the explanatory superfluity of such factors
by disallowing such events their apparent causal roles in the generation of
behavior. Epiphenomenalism denies their causal efficacy altogether. Parallelism just denies
their “downward” (mental-to-physical) causal efficacy. It is due, largely, to their
reluctance to embrace such drastic expedients as parallelism and epiphenomenalism that,
despite recently renewed would-be scientific interest in consciousness, most cognitive
scientists and allied analytic philosophers continue to reject metaphysical dualism —
remaining true to their metaphysical, along with their methodological, behavioral roots.
The enduring cogency of behaviorism’s challenge to the scientific bona fides of
consciousness means that methodologically, at least, there seems no viable alternative to
“practically everybody in cognitive science” remaining — if not “a behaviorist of one sort
or another” (Fodor 2001: 13-14) — at least, behavioristic in some manner. Cognitive
Science killed Behaviorism, they say. Still, Cognitive Science seems entitled to its last
name only on condition that it retain a good measure of behavioristic conscience.
3. References and Further Reading
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• Bergmann, Gustav. Logic and Reality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
• Bergmann, Gustav, and Kenneth Spence. “Operationism and Theory in Psychology.” Psychological
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• Block, Ned. “Troubles with Functionalism.” First appeared in Perception and Cognition: Minnesota
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX. Ed. P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1979. Reprinted in Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology. Ed. N.
Block. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980: 268-305.
• Block, Ned. “Are Absent Qualia Impossible?” The Philosophical Review 89 (1980): 257-274.
• Block, Ned. “Psychologism and Behaviorism.” The Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 5-43.
• Bresnan, Joan. Lexical-Functional Syntax. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.
• Bridgman, P. W. The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan, 1927.
• Burge, Tyler. “Individualism and the Mental.” Studies in Metaphysics: Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol.
4. Ed. P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979: 73-
121.
• Carnap, Rudolf. 1932/33. “Psychology in Physical Language.” Erkenntnis 3. Reprinted (in translation by
George Schick) in Logical Positivism. Ed. A. J. Ayer. New York: The Free Press, 1959: 165-98.
• Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
• Chihara, C. S., and Fodor, J. A. “Operationalism and Ordinary Language: A critique of
Wittgenstein.” American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 281-295.
• Chisholm Roderick. Perceiving: a Philosophical Study. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957.
• Chomsky, Noam. “Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner.” Language 35 (1959): 26-58.
• Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1965.
• Chomsky, Noam. “Conditions on Transformations.” A Festschrift for Morris Halle. Ed. Stephen R.
Anderson and Paul Kiparsky. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973. 232-286.
• Chomsky, Noam. Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. Dordrecht Holland: Foris
Publications, 1984.
• Chomsky, Noam. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
• Clark, Andy. “Reasons, Robots and the Extended Mind.” Mind & Language 16 (2001): 121-145.
• Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1994.
• Davidson, Donald. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford
University Press (1980): 3-19.
• Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald
Murdoch. In The philosophical writings of Descartes, Vol. II. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1984: 1-62. First appeared 1642.
• Dewey, John. “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” Psychological Review, 3 (1896): 357-370.
• Edelman, G.M. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York: Basic Books,
1989
• Fodor, Jerry A. The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
• Fodor, Jerry A. “Language, Thought, and Compositionality.” Mind and Language 16 (2001): 1-15.
• Geach, P. Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 1957.
• Hamlyn, D. W. “Behaviour.” Philosophy 28 (1953): 132-145.
• Hampshire, Stuart. “Critical Notice of Ryle, The Concept of Mind.” Mind 59 (1950): 234: .
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• Hempel, Carl. “Author’s Prefatory Note, 1977.” Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1. Ed. N.
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• Horgan, John. “Can Science Explain Consciousness?” Scientific American, 271.1 (1994): 88-94.
• Hull, Clark. Principles of Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1943.
• Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Online:
http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/hume/treat.html. Originally appeared 1739.
• James, William. “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9 (1884): 188-205. Online:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/emotion.htm.
• James, William. “Does `Consciousness’ Exist?” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 1
(1912) : 477-491. Online: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/consciousness.htm.
• Kossyln, S. M. Image and Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
• Lamb, Sidney. Pathways of the Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of Language. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1999.
• Lewis, David. “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50
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• Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Online:
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Syntax.” Journal of Linguistics 37 (2001): 101-126.
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• Ogden, C. K., and I. A. Richards, eds. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Harcourt, Brace, & Co, 1926.
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• Place, Ullin T. “Ryle’s Behaviorism.” Handbook of Behaviorism. Ed. William O’Donohue and Richard
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• Pollard, Carl, and Ivan Sag. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994.
• Putnam, Hilary. “Psychological Concepts, Explication, and Ordinary Language.” Journal of Philosophy 54
(1957): 94-100.
• Putnam, Hilary. “Brains and Behavior.” Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2: 325-
341. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First appeared 1963.
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Author Information
Larry Hauser
Email: lshauser@aol.com
Alma College
U. S. A.

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