Conceptions of determinism in radical behaviorism: A taxonomy Slife, Brent D ABSTRACT: Determinism his long been a core assumption in many forms of behaviorism, including radical behaviorism. However, this assumption has been a stumbling block for many– both within and outside the field of radical behaviorism-resulting in misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The following paper provides a […]
Category: Behavior and Philosophy
On psychological terms that appeal to the mental Moore, J ABSTRACT: A persistent challenge for nominally behavioral viewpoints in philosophical psychology is how to make sense of psychological terms that appeal to the mental. Two such viewpoints, logical behaviorism and conceptual analysis, hold that psychological terms appealing to the mental must be taken to mean […]
Linguistic behaviorism and the correspondence theory of truth Place, Ullin T ABSTRACT: Linguistic Behaviorism (Place, 1996) is an attempt to reclaim for the behaviorist perspective two disciplines, linguistics and linguistic philosophy, most of whose practitioners have been persuaded by Chomsky’s (1959) Review of B. F. Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior that behaviorism has nothing useful to […]
SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON THE PRAGMATIC AND BEHAVIORAL CONCEPTION OF PRIVATE EVENTS Moore, J ABSTRACT: For behavior analysis, ontological concerns arc linked with pragmatism, rather than any stance on the inherent nature of the thing studied. Thus, behavior analysis regards as troublesome ontological commitments that formulate certain covert events as “mental” rather than behavioral because […]
COVERT BEHAVIOR AND MENTAL TERMS: A REPLY TO MOORE Stemmer, Nathan In a recent paper, Moore (2001) compares the behavior analytic treatment of so-called mental phenomena with other behaviorist approaches, in particular, with logical behaviorism and conceptual analysis (see also Moore, 1980, 1981, 1995). Moore concludes that behavior analysis gives a more adequate account of […]
Behaviorism as an ethnomethodological experiment: Flouting the convention of rational agency Place, U T BEHAVIORISM AS AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT: FLOUTING THE CONVENTION OF RATIONAL AGENCY’ ABSTRACT: As interpreted here, Garfinkel’s “ethnomethodological experiment” (1967) demonstrates the existence of a social convention by flouting it and observing the consternation and aversive consequences for the perpetrator which that […]
Facts, concepts, and theories: The shape of psychology’s epistemic triangle Machado, Armando ABSTRACT: In this essay we introduce the idea of an epistemic triangle, with factual, theoretical, and conceptual investigations at its vertices, and argue that whereas scientific progress requires a balance among the three types of investigations, psychology’s epistemic triangle is stretched disproportionately in […]
Is Alcoholics Anonymous really a religious cult that uses communist-derived techniques to brainwash its members? A Review of Jeffrey A. Schaler, Addiction is a Choice Anderson, Jack R Dr. Schaler has impressive credentials: a doctoral degree in psychology, multiple faculty appointments at prestigious universities, including the title of “adjunct professor,” which frequently connotes polymath stature, […]
CONSCIOUSNESS OUTSIDE THE HEAD Tonneau, François ABSTRACT:Brain-centered theories of consciousness seem to face insuperable difficulties. While some philosophers now doubt that the hard problem of consciousness will ever be solved, others call for radically new approaches to conscious experience. In this article I resurrect a largely forgotten approach to consciousness known as neorealism. According to […]
Beyond trial-and-error in a selectionist psychology Cleaveland, J M ABSTRACT: A common criticism of a selectionist psychology is that the mechanism of overt behavioral variability and environmental selection cannot account for instances of seemingly novel, intelligent behavior. However, behavioral novelty is quite easily accounted for in much the same manner as it is in phylogenetic […]