19

Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution, Third Edition. William M. Baum. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

2

The idea that there can be a science of behavior is deceptively simple. It leads to two thorny questions. The first is, “What is science?” This might prompt an answer like, “Science is the study of the natural universe.” But this raises further questions: What makes something “natural?” What does “study” entail? If we rephrase the question to be, “What makes science different from other human endeavors, such as poetry and religion?” an answer might be that science is objective. But what is it to be “objective”?

The second question is, “What does it take to make the study of behavior scien- tific?” The answer to this question depends on how we answered the first question. Perhaps behavior is part of the natural universe. Perhaps the way we would talk about behavior from a scientific point of view contains something unique.

This chapter will focus on the first question. Chapter 3 will focus primarily on the second question, although a full answer to the question of what it means to study behavior scientifically will be fleshed out by the rest of the book.

Contemporary behaviorists’ ideas about science differ from those voiced by both early behaviorists and many pre‐twentieth‐century thinkers. Radical behaviorism accords with the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism, whereas earlier views derived from realism.

Realism versus Pragmatism

Realism

As a worldview, realism is so pervasive in Western civilization that many people accept it without question. It is the idea that the trees, rocks, buildings, stars, and people I see really are there—that a real world exists out there that gives rise to our experiences of it. In a sense it is a theory, explaining why, if I turn my back on a tree, I expect that when I turn around I will see the tree again. It seems like common sense that the tree is part of a real world outside me, whereas my expe- rience of the tree, my perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, are inside me. This seemingly straightforward notion entails two not‐so‐simple presumptions. First, this real world seems somehow to be external, in contrast with our experience, which seems somehow to be internal. Second, our experiences are of this real

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science

What is Behaviorism?20

world; they are separate from the world itself. As we shall see, both of these may be doubted, with remarkable results.

As with free will and determinism, philosophers have written a great deal about realism. They have distinguished many versions of realism. The descrip- tion in the last paragraph corresponds to no one philosophical version. It would be closest to the view that philosophers call naïve realism, which holds that an object’s existence is separate from our perceiving it. Since it is part of the view of behavior that we inherit by growing up in Western culture, Folk Psychology, we could call it folk realism. The everyday notion that the stability of our experience of the world (that the tree is still there when I turn around) stems from its reality we will refer to simply as “realism.”

The Objective Universe Several early Greek philosophers who lived in the sixth century B.C. are credited with originating scientific thinking. One of them, Thales, proposed a view of the universe that differed fundamentally from the widely accepted Babylonian view, which held that the god Marduk had created the world and continued to govern all happenings in it. Thales proposed that the sun, moon, and stars moved mechanically across the sky each day, and at night moved around the flat Earth back to their places in the east to rise the next morning (Farrington, 1980). However far this may seem from our ideas today, Thales’s version of the universe was useful. Farrington (1980, p. 37) comments, “It is an admirable beginning, the whole point of which is that it gathers together into a coherent picture a number of observed facts without letting Marduk in.” To put it positively, Thales proposed that the universe is a comprehensible mechanism.

In the context of realism, a comprehensible mechanism means a real mecha- nism that is “out there,” and exists independently of us. Its comprehensibility means that as we learn more about it, this mechanical universe comes to seem less puzzling. Its independent existence makes it objective—that is, regardless of how our conceptions about it may change, the universe remains just what it is.

Discovery and Truth Realism implies a certain view of scientific discovery and truth. If we are learning about an objective universe that really is there (really exists), then it is proper to say that when we study the universe scientifically, we discover things about it. If we can discover something about the way the universe works, it is proper to say that we discover the truth about it. In such a view, bit by bit, discovery upon discovery, we approach the whole truth about the way the universe works.

Sense Data and Subjectivity To the realist, our approach to the truth is slow and uncertain because we cannot study the objective world directly. We have direct contact only with what our senses tell us. The philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753) considered this indirectness to throw the presumption that the world is really there into doubt. He wrote in an essay called “Principles of Human Knowledge”:

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence,

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 21

natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding … yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations?

In other words, since we have no direct contact with the real world, but only with our perceptions of it, we have no logical reason to believe that the world is actually there.

One may be so used to thinking the real world out there exists, that Berkeley’s point may be hard to accept. When the famous man of letters, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) heard of Berkeley’s argument, according to his biographer James Boswell, Johnson kicked a stone and said, “I refute him thus” (p. 310). Although Boswell may have misunderstood, possibly even a brilliant person like Johnson failed to grasp Berkeley’s point, because his foot, the stone, and the kicking all would be perceptions according to Berkeley, and no more real than houses, mountains, or rivers.

When I discuss Berkeley’s argument with students, I point to a table and say, “I see this table. It is rectangular, has four legs, and so on. I feel the hardness of its surfaces. If I knock on it, I hear the sound of it. All of those are my perceptions of the table. Yet do they prove that a real table is actually there apart from my perceptions of it?”

Although some philosophers after Berkeley joined his skepticism about the exist- ence of sensible objects and accepted that the objects of the world are only inferences or a manner of speaking, philosophers of science tended to stick to realism and deal with Berkeley’s point differently. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), for example, writing in the early part of the twentieth century, substituted the term sense data for Berkeley’s “ideas” and “sensations.” He proposed that the scientist studies sense data to try to learn about the real world. The sense data, being internal, are subjective, but are the means to understand the objective real world “out there.”

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), one of the founders of quantum theory, criticized views like Russell’s by arguing that the objective world is superfluous:

…if, without involving ourselves in obvious nonsense, we are going to be able to think in a natural way about what goes on in a living, feeling, thinking being (that is, to see it in the same way as we see what takes place in inani- mate bodies)—without any directing demons, … vis viva or any other such rubbish—then the condition for our doing so is that we think of everything that happens as taking place in our experience of the world, without ascrib- ing to it any material substratum as the object of which it is an experience; a substratum which … would in fact be wholly and entirely superfluous.

(pp. 66–67; italics in the original)

Schrödinger here repeats Berkeley’s point and adds that the study of our expe- rience, our sense perceptions, suffices for science, and we need no imagined objective world (“material substratum”). For example, our experience that the

What is Behaviorism?22

sun rises and sets each day may be understood by theorizing that the Earth may be a sphere that rotates on an axis—without supposing that our experience is of some objective world. This insight is particularly relevant for a science of behavior, because, as Schrödinger says, thinking in a “natural way” about living beings requires doing so without “directing demons”—vis viva, free will, the inner self, and so on—a point we will take up in detail in chapter 3.

Explanation In the framework of realism, explanation consists of the discovery of the way things really are. Once we know the orbit the Earth takes around the sun, then we have explained why we have seasons and why the position of the sun in the sky shifts as it does. Explaining the way the universe works is like explaining the workings of an automobile engine: The crankshaft turns because the pistons push it around as they go up and down.

To the realist, explanations differ from mere descriptions, which only detail how our sense data go together. Descriptions of the shifts of the sun’s position in the sky existed long before it was generally accepted that the Earth moves around the sun in an elliptical orbit. In realism, description only tells how things appear on the surface; once the underlying truth about the way things work is discovered, the events we perceive are explained.

Pragmatism

Realism may be contrasted with pragmatism, a view that was developed by philosophers in the United States, particularly Charles Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910), during the last half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century. The fundamental notion in pragmatism is that the power of scientific inquiry lies not so much in our discovering the truth of the way the objective universe works, but in what scientific inquiry allows us to do (hence the name pragmatism, from the same root as “practical”). In par- ticular, the great thing that science permits us to do is to make sense out of our experiences. It makes our experience seem comprehensible; rain falls not because of some mysterious god but because of water vapor and weather conditions in the upper atmosphere. Sometimes science even allows us to predict what will happen and, if we have the means, to control what happens. We listen to weather forecasts because they are helpful. We take antibiotics because they combat infection.

James (1907) presented pragmatism as having dual aspects: as a method for settling disputes and as a theory of truth. Some questions seem to lead only to endless disputes back and forth, with no satisfactory resolution:

Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 23

traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.

(pp. 42–43)

In other words, if the answer to a question would in no way change the way science would proceed, then the question itself is at fault and merits no attention.

You might already have guessed that the question of whether there really is a real, independent, objective world out there apart from our experience quali- fies as one of those questions about which dispute is idle. That is just how James and Peirce regarded it. James wrote that our conception of an object consists of nothing beyond its practical effects: “—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare” (p. 43). What matters about a bicycle is that I see it, call it by its name, may lend it to a friend, may ride it myself. Pragmatism remains agnostic about whether there is a real bicy- cle behind these effects.

With such an attitude toward questions, pragmatism must imply a special attitude toward the truth of answers. As a theory of truth, pragmatism roughly equates truth with explanatory power. If the question of whether there is a real universe out there is idle, then so too is the question of whether there is some final, absolute truth. Instead of ideas being simply true or false, James proposed that ideas can be more and less true. One idea is truer than another if it allows us to explain and understand more of our experience. James put it this way: “Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally” (p. 49). The idea that the sun and stars move around the Earth explained only why they move across the sky, but the idea that the Earth orbits the sun while rotating on its axis is more true, because it explains also why we have sea- sons. Strictly speaking, however, we will never know whether the Earth really revolves around the sun; another, even truer, theory could conceivably come along.

In support of his view, James pointed out that in practice all scientific theories are approximations. Rarely, if ever, does one theory explain all the facts of experience. Instead, one theory often does well with one set of phenomena while the other theory does well with another set. James wrote,

…and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the branches of science that investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that any one of them may from some point of view be useful. Their great use is to summarize old facts and to lead to new ones. They are only a man‐made language, a conceptual shorthand, … in which we write our reports of nature…

(pp. 48–49)

What is Behaviorism?24

A modern counterpart to James is Thomas Kuhn (1970), who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In this book, he argued that science cannot be characterized as unending progress toward some ultimate truth. Most of the time, during periods of “normal science,” some puzzles yield to research and inquiry, while at the same time new puzzles crop up. When too many puzzles remain unsolved, a totally different way of viewing the domain of the science may begin to gain acceptance and eventually overthrow the old view—a revolution occurs—and the new view (called a “paradigm”) usually explains more but differ- ent phenomena than the old view explained and presents its puzzles, too. Such a conception of science might see it less as a march toward ultimate truth than as a dance on a dance floor, in which different dancers try out different steps and figures, and for which every so often the band begins to play an entirely different tune. Not to exaggerate, Kuhn pointed out that science does progress, in that one paradigm replaces another in part because it explains more phenomena. The dances and tunes get more sophisticated.

With a view like Kuhn’s, how may one explain this progress—what one may call the “unreasonable successfulness” of science? Why doesn’t science just shift from one vogue to another endlessly without ever progressing? Doesn’t the progress of science imply a real world that guides it to success? For a pragmatist like James, for example, the answer to these questions derives from pragmatism’s theory of truth. A scientific theory that explains more is truer than one that explains less, and the truer theory is preferred. Kuhn might add that even a paradigm that explains no more phenomena than a rival but explains those phenomena better is preferred—as for example Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the solar system was preferred to Ptolemy’s geocentric model, because Copernicus’s model was simpler and more elegant that the cumbersome epicycles of Ptolemy’s model, even though at the time the two models fitted astronomical data about equally well. If scientists prefer theories that explain more phenomena and paradigms that make more sense of our experience more plausibly, then the progress of science no longer seems so unreasonable. It is the result of selection, the exercise of scientists’ preference for theories and paradigms that make better sense of our experience.

Science and Experience Pragmatism influenced modern behaviorism indirectly, as a result of a friendship between William James and the physicist Ernst Mach (1838–1916). James’s effect on Mach shows in Mach’s book, The Science of Mechanics, a history that applied pragmatism to that branch of physics. Since this book greatly influenced Skinner, and Skinner greatly influenced modern behaviorism, in this roundabout way modern behaviorism owes a great debt to James.

Following James, Mach argued that science has to do with experience and par- ticularly making sense of our experience. He considered science to originate in the need for people to communicate efficiently, economically, with one another. Economical communication is essential to human culture because it permits understanding about the world to be passed easily from one generation to the next. Economy requires the invention of concepts that organize our experiences into types or categories, allowing one to use one term instead of many words.

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 25

Mach compared science to the body of knowledge possessed by artisans, who he characterized as a social class that practices a certain craft:

A class of this sort occupies itself with particular kinds of natural processes. The individuals of the class change; old members drop out, and new ones come in. Thus arises a need of imparting to those who are newly come in, the stock of experience and knowledge already possessed; a need of acquainting them with the conditions of the attainment of a definite end so that the result may be determined beforehand.

(Mach, 1960/1942, p. 5)

A potter’s apprentice, for example, learns about different kinds of clay, working the clay, glazes, firing, kilns, and so on. Without such instruction, the apprentice would have no way to be sure what procedures to follow to get a good finished product. Without the concepts that allow such instruction, each new generation of potters would have to experiment and discover the techniques all over again. This would not only be inefficient; it would prevent accumulation of knowledge over many generations. Imagine the state of house‐building today if carpenters had no way to benefit from the experiences of carpenters a hundred years ago!

Conceptual Economy As it is for any skilled performance, so it is for science. If I am teaching you to drive a car, I would be foolish indeed to put you behind the wheel and say, “OK, go ahead and experiment.” Instead, I will explain to you concepts like starting, steering, braking, clutch, accelerator, gears, and so on. Then you will know what to do if I say, “When you are entering a curve, let up on the accelerator, and then if the steering is easy, you can accelerate again.” One might discover such rules on one’s own by experimenting, but it is a lot easier to be told. Just as the concepts of clutch and accelerator allow one to pass on understanding of driving, so scien- tific concepts allow one to pass on understanding of experiences with other aspects of the natural world. Mach wrote,

To find, then, what remains unaltered in the phenomena of nature, to dis- cover the elements thereof and the mode of their interconnection and inter- dependence—this is the business of physical science. It endeavors, by comprehensive and thorough description, to make the waiting for new experiences unnecessary; it seeks to save us the trouble of experimentation, by making use, for example, of the known interdependence of phenomena, according to which, if one kind of event occurs, we may be sure beforehand that a certain other event will occur.

(pp. 7–8)

In other words, science creates concepts that allow one person to tell another person what goes with what in the world and what to expect if such‐and‐such happens—to predict on the basis of past experience with such events. When scientists make up terms like “oxygen,” “satellite,” or “gene,” the one word tells a whole story of expectations and predictions. These concepts allow us to talk

What is Behaviorism?26

about such expectations and predictions economically, without having to go through long explanations over and over again.

As an example of the way science invents economical, summarizing terms, Mach recounted the history of the concept air. He began with the time of Galileo (1564–1642):

In Galileo’s time philosophers explained the phenomenon of suction, the action of syringes and pumps by the so‐called horror vacui—nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum. Nature was thought to possess the power of preventing the formation of a vacuum by laying hold of the first adjacent thing, whatsoever it was, and immediately filling up with it any empty space that arose. Apart from the ungrounded speculative element which this view contains, it must be conceded, that to a certain extent it really represents the phenomenon.

(p. 136)

If you ever put a drinking glass over your mouth and sucked the air out of it so that it would stick to your face, you felt the vacuum in the glass “pulling” your cheeks into it. Nowadays we would describe this as the action of air pressure. One crucial step in this change of view was the observation that air had weight:

Galileo had endeavored … to determine the weight of the air, by first weighing a glass bottle containing nothing but air and then again weighing the bottle after the air had been partly expelled by heat. It was known, accordingly, that the air was heavy. But to the majority of men the horror vacui and the weight of the air were very distantly connected notions.

(p. 137)

It was Torricelli (1608–1647) who first saw the connection between suction and the weight of air. He saw that a tube closed at one end, filled with mercury, and inverted with the open end in a bowl full of mercury, would contain a vacuum at the top and a column of mercury of a certain height below it. Mach commented:

It is possible that in Torricelli’s case the two ideas came into sufficient proximity to lead him to the conviction that all phenomena ascribed to the horror vacui were explicable in a simple and logical manner by the pressure exerted by the weight of a fluid column—a column of air. Torricelli discovered, therefore, the pressure of the atmosphere; he also first observed by means of his column of mercury the variations of the pressure of the atmosphere.

(p. 137)

Invention of the vacuum pump made possible many further observations about what happens when air is exhausted from a vessel. Many of these observations were made by Guericke (1602–1686), who had one of the first efficient vacuum pumps:

The phenomena which Guericke observed with this apparatus are mani- fold and various. The noise which water in a vacuum makes on striking the

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 27

sides of the glass receiver, the violent rush of air and water into exhausted vessels suddenly opened, the escape on exhaustion of gases absorbed in liquids …were immediately remarked. A lighted candle is extinguished on exhaustion, because, as Guericke conjectures, it derives its nourishment from the air … A bell does not ring in a vacuum. Birds die in it. Many fishes swell up, and finally burst. A grape is kept fresh in vacuo for over half a year.

(p. 145)

In Mach’s view, the concept of air allowed all these observations (i.e., experiences) to be seen as connected with one another. Without it, they remained disorganized. The word air allows them to be spoken of as related to one another, easily, and with relatively few words. The concept provides our discussion with economy.

Explanation and Description In some of the quotes above, Mach suggests that the aim of science is descrip- tion. For realism, we noted that the aim of science was not “mere” description, but explanation based on discovery of the reality beyond our experience. For realism, description only summarizes appearances, whereas explanation speaks of what is really true. A pragmatist like James or Mach makes no such distinction, because, practically speaking, all that science has to go on is appearances— that is, observations or experiences. For pragmatism, explanations are descrip- tions in economical terms.

What matters to the pragmatist is that in describing our observations we use terms that relate one phenomenon to another. When we can see relations, see how one observation is connected to others, then our experiences seem orderly and comprehensible, instead of chaotic and mysterious. Mach argued that the job of science begins when some events seem out of the ordinary, puzzling. Science then seeks out commonalities in natural phenomena, elements that are the same despite all the apparent variation. You puzzle over a statue of Mickey Mouse on your employer’s desk until you are told that it is a telephone. As a child I was accustomed to the idea that things fall when you let them go because they have weight and, therefore, was surprised that a helium balloon would fly away if you let it go. Later in life, I learned about the concepts of density and floating (common elements) and understood that a helium balloon floats in air much as a boat floats in water.

Mach argued that this process of describing a phenomenon in familiar terms is exactly what we mean by explanation:

When once we have reached the point where we are everywhere able to detect the same few simple elements, combining in the ordinary manner, then they appear to us as things that are familiar; we are no longer surprised, there is nothing new or strange to us in the phenomena, we feel at home with them, they no longer perplex us, they are explained.

(p. 7)

Scientific explanation consists only in describing events in terms that are economical and familiar—the “same few simple elements.” It has nothing to do with revealing some hidden reality beyond our experience.

What is Behaviorism?28

You might be surprised at Mach’s subjective tone: Events are explained when we “feel at home” with them. Mach’s point, however, is that an event appears familiar (is explained) when it is described in simple, familiar terms. Although a pragmatist would view a familiar term as just a term well learned, someone else might suppose familiarity depends on feelings. In realism, what makes an event “familiar” is noth- ing about the event itself—nothing objective—but something about our experience with this or similar events—something subjective. When a helium balloon rises, whether that event seems mysterious or familiar depends, to the realist, on nothing about the objective event, but about our subjective appreciation of the event.

In pragmatism, however, if we were to make a distinction between subjectivity and objectivity at all, it would differ altogether from the distinction made in real- ism. You could say that the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity is for the pragmatist resolved in favor of subjectivity. Since no objective real world needs to exist, “objectivity,” if it has any meaning at all, at most could be a quality of the scientific inquiry. The move most consistent with pragmatism would be simply to drop the two terms subjective and objective altogether.

It might seem peculiar that in some of the quotes above Mach uses the word “dis- cover” in speaking of scientists’ activities. Discovery seems to imply getting beyond appearances to the way things really are, an idea consistent with realism. To Mach, “discovering” the common “elements” in phenomena is the same as inventing con- cepts. Each common element corresponds to a category or type, and its label is the concept or term. This type of event we call “floating”—boats float in water and helium balloons float in air. The behavior of the helium balloon becomes compre- hensible once we have invented (or discovered) the concept of floating. Just as the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity disappears for pragmatism, so the distinction between discovery and invention also disappears. Commenting on the concept “air,” Mach wrote, “What indeed could be more wonderful than the sudden discovery that a thing which we do not see, hardly feel, and take scarcely any notice of, constantly envelopes us on all sides, penetrates all things; that it is the most important condition of life, of combustion, and of gigantic mechanical phenomena” (p. 135). Yet he could equally have said that air, the concept, was a wonderful invention.

The interested reader should refer to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for a discussion of the identity of discovery and invention. Lavoisier, who “discovered” oxygen, discovered a new way of talking about combustion. One could equally say that he invented a new term, “oxygen.”

In later chapters, particularly chapters 6 and 7, we will discuss scientific terms again, because in the behavioral view neither word—invention nor discovery— describes science so well as the idea that scientific talk is, after all, behavior. We will see that a scientist is someone who engages in certain types of behavior, including certain types of verbal behavior. Right now, however, we continue at a more general level and defer the more specific discussion to later.

Radical Behaviorism and Pragmatism

Modern, radical behaviorism is based on pragmatism. To the question, “What is science?” it gives the answer of James and Mach: Science is the pursuit of eco- nomical and comprehensive descriptions of human natural experience (i.e., our

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 29

experience of the “natural world”). The goal of a science of behavior is to describe behavior in terms that are economical and that render it familiar and hence “explained.” Its methods aim to enlarge our natural experience of behavior by precise observation.

Radical behaviorists prefer pragmatism to realism for two reasons. The first is that realism leads to a dualistic view of people that is incompatible with a science of behavior. If you say that the external world is real, that raises the question, “If I am separate from the real world, then where am I?” The answer, according to Folk Psychology, is that you dwell in an inner world, private to you, in which you experience sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Only your external body belongs to the outer world. As we saw in chapter  1, such a dualism is unacceptable because it introduces mysteries such as “How does the inner self or mind influ- ence the behavior of the body?” No answer to this question will ever be found because the inner self is separate from the natural world, and we have no way to understand how nonnatural things can affect natural events. We will discuss this point further in chapter  3. For now, note that if we accepted inner‐outer or subjective‐objective dualism, a science that dealt only with external behavior would seem incomplete; indeed, the accusation that behaviorists ignore the inner world of thoughts and feelings derives from just this assumed dualism. Radical behaviorism, however, rejects the dualism between inner world and outer world. Instead, it considers behavior analysis to deal with one world and behavior to be found in that one world.

An older view, methodological behaviorism, was based on realism. Being real- ists, methodological behaviorists distinguished between the objective world and the subjective world. Since science seemed to them to have access only to the objective world, they emphasized the methods of science for studying the world “out there.” Since realism assumes that the same objective world is out there for everyone, whereas each person’s subjective world is different and inaccessible to anyone else, methodological behaviorists thought that the only route to a scientific psychology would be through methods that placed behavior in the objective world, the world that everyone shares and could potentially agree about. The name methodological behaviorism derives from this emphasis on methods.

Although they might be surprised to hear it, most experimental psychologists seem to be methodological behaviorists. They claim to study something inside— mind, memory, attitudes, personality, and so on—but they have no methods to study the inner world itself. Instead, experimental psychologists study the inner world indirectly—by making inferences about the internal world from external behavior, such as performance on estimation tasks, puzzles, paper‐and‐pencil tests, or questionnaires. They study outer behavior with objective methods in order to make inferences about the inner processes that “underlie” the outer behavior. Such an approach perpetuates the dualism of subjective and objective things and processes.

Radical behaviorism, in contrast with methodological behaviorism, makes no distinction between the subjective and the objective worlds. Instead of focusing on methods, it focuses on concepts and terms. Just as physics advanced with the invention of the term “air,” so a science of behavior advances with the invention of its terms. Historically, behavior analysts used concepts such as response, stimulus, and reinforcement. The uses of these concepts have changed as the science has

What is Behaviorism?30

progressed. In the future, their use may continue to change, or they may be replaced by other, more useful, terms. In the chapters that follow, we will take up many terms, old and new, and evaluate them for their usefulness. We will ask again and again which terms make for economical, comprehensible descriptions.

The second reason that radical behaviorism rejects realism is that realism leads to confusing definitions of behavior. In the context of studying behavior, realism would hold that there is some real behavior that goes on out in the real world, and that our senses, whether used with instruments or in direct observation, only provide us with sense data about that real behavior, which we never know directly. If, for example, we make the objective observation that a man is moving his feet one in front of the other rapidly in the street, someone might object that this fails to capture the sense of the description that the man is running along the street. And someone else might object that this still falls short; the man might be exercising, running from the police, or running a race. Even if we determine that the man is running a race, he still might be described as training for the Olympics or impressing his family and friends.

To the realist (methodological behaviorist), the best way to deal with this diver- sity of possible descriptions is to stick close to the first, to describe running in the street in as mechanical (objective) terms as possible, perhaps even going into the muscles involved, because those mechanical movements would supposedly bring us as close as we can get to the real behavior. The man’s reasons for engaging in this behavior would be dealt with separately.

However, casting behavior as composed of limb and muscle movements creates a troubling ambiguity. The same limb and muscle movements may enter into many different activities. In our example above, the runner’s movements might be part of exercising or fleeing the police. Since the movements are the same, the realist has to say it is the same behavior, but by any reasonable definition exercising and fleeing the police cannot be the same behavior.

The pragmatist (radical behaviorist), having no commitment to any idea of real behavior, asks only which way of describing the man’s behavior is most useful, or in Mach’s terms, most economical—that is, which gives us the best understand- ing or the most coherent description. That is why radical behaviorists favor definitions of activities that include the man’s reasons for running, like exercising and fleeing the police. A useful description might be, “The man is running in a race along this street as part of an attempt to enter the Olympics.” Indeed, we might refine this further by incorporating the reasons behind the attempt to enter the Olympics and in other ways, as well. As we shall see in chapters 4 and 5, coher- ent definitions of activities must include the function they serve; the reasons for engaging in the behavior are part of the behavior itself.

How does radical behaviorism answer the question, “What is behavior?” The answer is pragmatic. The terms we use to talk about behavior not only allow us to make sense of it, but also define it. Behavior includes whatever events we can talk about with our invented terms. Radical behaviorism inquires after the best ways, the most useful ways, to talk about it, and if, for example, it is useful to say that a person is running a race in order to qualify for the Olympics, then running a race in order to qualify for the Olympics constitutes a behavioral event. In

Behaviorism as Philosophy of Science 31

chapter 4, when we take up some of the concepts used by behavior analysts today, we will also be able to define behavior more specifically.

This pragmatic emphasis on talk, terms, and descriptions—as opposed to meth- ods of observation—leads to one of the striking contrasts between methodological behaviorism and radical behaviorism. Conscious phenomena, being among those things we can talk about, are included in the study of behavior for the radical behaviorist. How this is done, we will see in chapter 3.

Summary

The idea that a science of behavior is possible raises two questions: (1) What is science? and, more specifically, (2) What view of science applies to behavior? Radical behaviorists view science within the philosophical tradition of pragma- tism. Pragmatism contrasts with realism, the view adopted by many pre‐twentieth‐ century scientists and by early twentieth‐century behaviorists. Realism holds that a real world exists outside of us and that this outer real world gives rise in each of us to internal experiences. The outer world is considered objective, whereas the world of inner experience is considered subjective. In realism, science consists of discovering the truth about the objective world. Since, however, we have no direct knowledge of the outer world, but only of our inner experience, which comes to us through our senses, philosophers like Bertrand Russell argued that science must proceed by reasoning from sense data what the objec- tive universe must be like. Our experiences of the real world are explained when our reasoning leads us to the ultimate truth about it. Pragmatism, in contrast, makes no assumption of an indirectly known real world apart from our experience. It focuses instead on the task of making sense out of our experi- ences. Questions and answers that help us to understand the happenings around us are useful. Questions, such as whether there is a real world outside of us, questions that can make no difference to understanding our experiences, merit no attention. There is no absolute ultimate truth; rather the truth of a concept lies in how much of our experience it allows us to link together, organize, or comprehend. For pragmatists like William James and Ernst Mach, this process of linking together various parts of our experience is what constitutes explanation. In Mach’s view, speaking effectively about our experiences—that is, communication— was the same as explanation. He argued that insofar as we can talk about an event in familiar, economical terms, the event is explained. To the extent that talking about events in familiar terms is called description, explanations are descriptions. Science discovers only concepts that render our experience more comprehensible.

Whereas methodological behaviorism is based on realism, radical behaviorism is based on pragmatism. Radical behaviorism rejects the dualism of inner and outer worlds as inimical to a science of behavior and instead proposes a science based on behavior in one world. To the realist, real behavior occurs in the real world, and this real behavior is accessible only indirectly, through our senses. Accordingly, the methodological behaviorist tries to describe behavioral events in terms as mechanical as possible, as close to physiology as possible. The radical behaviorist looks instead for descriptive terms that are useful for understanding

What is Behaviorism?32

behavior and economical for discussing behavior. Pragmatic descriptions of behavior include its ends and the context within which it occurs. To the radical behaviorist, descriptive terms both explain behavior and define what it is.

Further Reading

Boswell, J. (2008/1799). The life of Samuel Johnson. London: Random House Penguin Classic. This biography portrays Samuel Johnson as James Boswell experienced him.

Day, W. (1980). The historical antecedents of comtemporary behaviorism. In R. W. Rieber & K. Salzinger (Eds.), Psychology: Theoretical‐historical perspectives (pp. 203–262). New York: Academic Press. In this article, Willard Day discusses the relationship between pragmatism and radical behaviorism.

Farrington, B. (1980). Greek science. Nottingham: Russell Press. An excellent book on early Greek science.

James, W. (1974/1907/1909). Pragmatism and four essays from The meaning of truth. New York: New American Library. William James’s ideas about pragmatism may be found in this book.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thomas Kuhn’s extension of pragmatic thinking is summarized in this book.

Mach, E. (1960/1942). The science of mechanics: A critical and historical account of its development. La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing. (Originally published in 1942.) Ernst Mach’s application of pragmatism to physical science.

Russell, B. (1965). On the philosophy of science. New York: Bobbs‐Merrill. Bertrand Russell’s views on science may be found in this collection of essays.

Schrödinger, E. (1983/1961). My view of the world. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press. This book contains two essays that Schrödinger wrote about science and reality.

Keyterms

Conceptual economy Dualism Folk realism

Horror vacui Naïve realism Pragmatism

Realism Sense data Sense data theory