Talk:Behaviorism

Comment

Having Behavior Analysis, a scientific discipline, redirect to Behaviorism (and not even Radical Behaviorism at that) makes no sense. Behavior Analysis is a research discipline that has nothing to do with Pavlov, Watson or any historical philosophy or other behaviorisms (and I am not kidding, really).

See The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis or the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and tell me if they look even close to philosophy.

Please make Behavior Analysis it's own page, or have the decency to redirect it to Radical Behaviorism which is, at least, the philosophy that parallels Behavior Analysis.

It is a mistake to cluster all the behaviorisms together. Read Mecca Chiesa's Radical Behaviorism: The Philosophy and The Science and you'd see what a mistake it is to pretend there is much to unite the Behaviorisms except the most superficial qualities. This is the same mistake Chomsky makes in his inept review of Verbal Behavior.

--Florkle 08:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Very nice edit of Behaviorism, 12.225.170.144!

Arthur 18:42 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

Reverted move to Behavior Analysis. Behaviorism is by far the more common name, and it is also more general; Behavior analysis is a term used essentially by subscribers to Skinner's radical behaviorism, and connotes that particular flavour of behaviorism. There are several other flavours, and this article should and does them all - it did last time I looked at it. Trying to make the article cover one flavour only offends against Wikipedia's NPOV rules. If we need a specific article on Skinnerian behaviourism, it should either be under radical behaviorism or under the experimental analysis of behavior, both of which we have. Furthermore, "behavior analysis" and "behavioral science" are in no way synonyms for behaviorism; behaviorism is an approach to psychology, behavior analysis and behavioral science are terms for a field of study, which may or may not be coterminous with psychology. seglea 06:08, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The way the page is now, behaviorism is based upon a proposition that EVERYONE agrees with ("the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research"). That's neither informative nor interesting. It makes it look like everyone but everyone is a behaviorist.

Please sign your comments, so that a discussion can go on intelligibly. If you haven't got a username, it doesn't take a moment to get one.

Would that it were true that everyone agreed that behaviour is interesting and worthy of scientific research... It wasn't true in William James's time, and it isn't true now: try talking to some transpersonal psychologists, for example, or a good many cognitive scientists. seglea 04:02, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Bandura's social learning theory

One crucial behaviourist theory which is ignored is Bandura's study on SLT. He used it to explain learned behaviour, aggression and other sorts of behaviour. On the whole, I reckon this is an omission, deliberate or no. How do people feel about including this theory on the page? (I am appealing to expert psychologists here)

I'm a student and I agree, so I added a mention of it to the Approaches section. Molindo 20:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Much of Bandura's work does not qualify as behavior analytic work. He appeals to inner, mental states as the causative agents of behavior frequently. A lot of his social learning work does not place importance on the consequences of socially learned behavior. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.120.4.1 (talk) 15:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Change in references

See [1]

Is this vandalism or a correct change? Suspicious since made by anonymous editor and date changed to 2005. Enochlau 12:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Watson was a "S-R" Psychologist; Skinner an "S-R-S" Psychologist -- The Critical "S" is the one after the "R"

It's misleading to say that B.F. Skinner was a "disciple" of John B. Watson -- though it is true that Skinner, a very loyal person, defended Watson throughout Skinner's long career. It is more apt to speak of Clark Hull of Yale University, and his disciples, e.g. John Dollard and Neal Miller, as "disciples of John B. Watson."

Skinner characterized the stimulus-response psychology of Watson and his intellectual offspring as a kind of "push button" analysis, derived from the strictly "push-pull" causation found in traditional (though possibly not post-Einsteinian) physical science. In a very important paper published in "Science," in the early 1980s, "Selection by Consequences," Skinner provided a brief intellectually rigorous elaboration of a kind of causation he claimed affected living matter -- and only living matter -- in addition to the "push button" causation adapted from physics and chemistry by the descendents of Pavlov and Watson.

Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, in one of his many essays seems to depart from his intellectual mentor when he states his admiration for Rene Decartes (See http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/DesDis.html and any other of his essays where Huxley mentions Descartes, cf. Vols I through 9, bottom of that page.) And indeed, in one of those essays, Huxley recognizes that the mechanistic causes and effects of physical science rendered the traditional materialist helpless to explain "consciousness" or "mind." Another kind or order of causation was needed.

The characterization of B.F. Skinner as an "S-R-S" psychologist is found in "Skinner for the Classroom," a very valuable compilation of Skinner's papers by Robert Epstein, a tireless scholarly protegé of this critically important scientist, thinker, and culture critic. Another very valuable link is this 60 minute RealPlayer rendering of a speech, "On Having a Poem," which Skinner gave at the Poetry Center in Manhattan just a few weeks after "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" was published: http://www.bfskinner.org/audio.asp

According the Skinner, the S-R formulation ( "respondent conditioning") of Pavlov and Watson works well for analyzing the action of the smooth muscles and glands; the activity of the striated musculature requires a different, "operant analysis"; "operant conditioning" is what is referred to by the "S-R-S" designation; it covers every thing from a walk across the room to an casual conversation, and to the most abstruse mathematical analysis or the most sublime poem -- but not as recorded conversations, mathematics, or a poem on a page, but as things done.

R.S. Peters, a mid-twentieth century scholarly expert on Thomas Hobbes, once wrote that Hobbes was the "great metaphysician of motion." B.F. Skinner might be said to have been the "great metaphysician of consequences" (or "results") -- except that he was convinced that philosophy -- and metaphysics especially -- were a great waste of time and a fatally tempting digression from the true Baconian scientific precept of "reading nature, not books."

But it is still fair to say I think that the most potent "S" in Skinner's "S-R-S" psychology is the final one: the consequence or result -- a result furnished by an selectively active environment. (This, incidently, is not teleology or "future causation" -- living creatures only "work for" results because of a history of having do so successfully in their history, in a context of the selective action of their environment; or, if not for that reason, then that of their species' history under the contingencies of Darwinian natural selection.)

first link to Association, is this the intended page?

the first association link takes you to "Classical Conditioning" wouldn't

Association (psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_%28psychology%29

be better?

A few notes - I don't want to start an edit war, but just a few things about this article are fairly bizarre, in particular at the beginning. I'm not going to attempt to hack this up too much, at least not until there has been some time for others to discuss thoughts (below).

"One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory"

Who says? Which behaviorists? There is no slate on which is written the requirement that a behaviorist must believe that free will is illusory. You can be a compatibilist, for example, and believe that free will is totally legitimate (just not dualistic). Daniel Dennett does not identify as a behaviorist, for example, but others call him one, and it is hard to argue that he is ENTIRELY unlike a behaviorist, especially on issues like determinism - and he wrote "Freedom Evolves," which is very much a compatibilist work. That means he does not say free will is illusory, he just says it's something nonmagical. You can argue whether compatibilism is really possible or desirable, but it just isn't right to use the article on behaviorism to editorialize on these things. Go hack on articles about free will or compatibilism where it is more directly relevant. Free will is really not crucial to any variety of behaviorism I know of.

"Some behaviorists argue simply that the observation of behavior is the best or most convenient way of investigating psychological and mental processes."

Maybe this is true (although it is awfully weaselly; who specifically says this?) However, the article then goes on to discuss EAB, conveniently omitting the E (that's for Experimental.) Skinner, for one example, makes much of the difference between his approach and what he calls "structuralism," emphasizing that his "structuralism" rests on mere-observation and does not involve causal manipulations involved in an experiment. You could maybe justly say that Skinner is beating a straw man, but it certainly is the case that behaviorists (in psychology at least) tend to emphasize experiment, and not just observation. So, perhaps this statement needs to get specific about who is observational, or talk about experimental approach rather than observational one (as this would pretty accurately span from Watson through Tolman, Spence, Skinner, blah blah blah - in general little work in experimental psychology has been purely observational)

Re: Versions. Okay, I don't want to be too harsh, but we seem to have here, for each of a small collection of behaviorisms, a collection of disconnected adjectives a little reminiscent of a wine review. In the description of Theoretical Behaviorism, for example, is the word "dynamic." What does that mean here? Is dynamic an aspect of a philosophy of the science of behavior known as behaviorism, or are theoretical behaviorists dynamic sorts of people, or what? Or maybe theoretical behaviorism as a research project is associated with an interest in dynamic theories, as opposed to static ones like matching.

The opening of the article currently emphasizes "not to be confused with behavioralism in political science." Maybe this is necessary, but if we buy it then we certainly shouldn't later say "Behaviourism has been criticised within politics as it threatens to reduce the discipline of political analysis to little more than the study of voting and the behaviour of legislatures." To my awareness, psychological behaviorism has nothing direct to do with voting behavior or the behavior of legislatures, and behavioralism does. The subsequent rant against behavioralism and about the claim that it is "value free" is not only a rant, but is off topic in an entry on behaviorism.

Toward the end - "what is needed is an understanding of the real-time dynamics of operant behavior, which will involve processes at both short and long time scales." I agree, but this is pretty clearly editorializing. Is that you, JERS?

- yours truly, 12.225.170.144

Criticism

I think there should be a section on Criticism of the Behaviorial school?

Probably. Feel free to add one so long as you can add some references. Molindo 20:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Chomsky has some serious issues with it.

Chomsky simply didn't understand what Skinner was saying. That said - I agree - should be a section on criticism.

I think the focus on external observable behavior while completely discounting the internal processes was criticized. Andries 20:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Didn't behaviorism collapse from the inside out?--77.248.90.202 14:08, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Shockingly there are still behaviorists alive today ;)Ratinabox (talk) 21:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Alfie Kohn's 'Punished by Rewards...' holds plenty of criticisms against what he calls 'popular behaviorism' and people's lighthearted misuse of the concept, i.e rewards/punishments. If the criticism section comes up, his work should be mentioned, imo.

Vandalism

Hi everybody, if you look at the history page of this article, you can see there is a lot of vandalism since few days. Maybe we could block unregistered users for a while, i don't know how...What do you think about this idea? Frédérick Lacasse 13:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC) (P.S. I a bit new that's why i ask questions instead of doing things by myself)

Language/Verbal Behavior

I suggest adding a sentence about Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). Skinner didn't reply to Chomsky's review, but someone did. Milktoast 07:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Article needs a better definition

The article starts with Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be studied and explained scientifically without recourse to internal mental states. Is there a way this can be defined more clearly and lucidly, without resorting to a slew of indirect references and prepositions? After all, this is the very first sentence of the article. -76.4.49.201 17:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

"Wittgenstein was not a behaviorist"

This assertion needs a cite or it needs to be removed. I'm not saying Wittgenstein was a behaviorist, but I am saying the matter is up for debate (and therefore needs to not be stated so categorically one way or the other in this article).

Good point, I think that the influence of behaviorism in philosophy and the philosophy of science need be clarified in even the scholarly literature on the subject. --Kenneth M Burke 18:53, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Behaviorism is not allowed to resort to internal physiological events?

The second sentence reads:

The school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind.

That does not seem accurate to me. I know I've recently read in a behaviorist text that changing skin conductances are a behavior (arguably not "internal"), and I do not believe that they have any objection to fMRI, etc. I suggest that this sentence be changed to simply:

This school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse to hypothetical constructs such as the mind.

Thoughts? Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain a little more? It seems to me that schools of psychology today are less definable in such a way (rather, misunderstood or more broadly defined). If a text is "behaviorist," it may not necessarily be a behavioral science as the article discusses the school of psychology. Just because it is interested in human behavior does not mean it is necessarily "behaviorism." I have not been involved in this page except for some copy editing, but I believe that I could find a cited source to support how the article reads (at least for behaviorism at its origins). If the text you note is a contemporary "behaviorism" that suggests the change of assumptions, then maybe you could note it accordingly. But, certainly I'm no expert. --Kenneth M Burke 21:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the text with me, but it is a text for a course in applied behavioral analysis (that my wife is taking), so I suppose that would be radical behaviorism. That does still qualify as behaviorism, though, right? (That's a sincere question.) Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:54, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Applied behavior analysis to my knowledge does have its origins with "behaviorism" and "radical behaviorism;" but certainly I would think it has come along way from those theoretical origins as an applied discipline. At least, I hope it has. It would be interesting to further research it, the correlation and to what extend behaviorism influenced ABA. For example, to what extent do ABA methods in therapy for autism actually account for what they know about biological states of an autistic mind? If you feel the article is misleading, I think a change or at least disclaimer is agreeable. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself can help. --Kenneth M Burke 00:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The issue discussed here is philosophical and historical. Skinner argued (ca. 1938) that psychology needs not refer to internal events in order to be a complete science. Internal events here means physiological events. This is generally misunderstood to mean mental events. The reason for the debate was the inadequacy of physiological knowledte at the time. Skinner adapted a non-reductionist position, arguing that a behavioral account is not less true than a physiological one, it's just at another level of explanation. The original text on beahviorism reiterated the common misunderstanding that behaviorism rejects inner events and that inner events is the same as mental events. roffe (talk)

Clause doesn't seem to make sense

"some would say it as true"? AnonMoos 02:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Anon comment

The irony is that Skinner was such an over-the-top behaviorist only because being such got him lots of attention. That'd be a behaviorist interpretation, anyway.

Anyway, where is the criticism section on the soulless, patently absurd nonsense that is behaviorism? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.44 (talk • contribs)

Did you have a specific criticism or suggestion? If you have reliable sources to back up your claims, feel free to add them. WLU (talk) 19:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying it is absurd because it is a naturalistic approach to psychology, rejecting free-will and inner-determinants? If so, that's fine. I'll repeat what I mentioned further down the page. The notion that anything is of a "mental" substance is rediculous. Rather, the behaviorist would view these suppossed "mental" events as behavior and, as such, take them into account as setting factors along with the external environment that influence psychological events. See Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche (2001). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition...that should give you a good start. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Static7181 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments on attachment theory?

I wonder whether someone would come to the Attachment theory article and insert into the criticism section some discussion of the behaviorist view of attachment. Particularly, can someone comment on whether the behaviorist view is argued to be a better predictor of behavior than the nativist view, or is it simply argued to be as good, and more parsimonious?Jean Mercer (talk) 15:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Discredited?

I get the impression that radical behaviorism has pretty much been discredited by modern psychology, which has studied internal mental constructs in detail. Would it be appropriate to mention this in the article? -- Beland (talk) 01:01, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe on education, people (academics) use more Constructivism (psychological school) than Behaviorism. Tosqueira (talk) 06:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Behavior analysts view the suppossed "internal mental" phenomena as behavior like any other. There isn't anything "mental" about it. For a good start on this issue, see Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche (2001). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Static7181 (talk • contribs) 18:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Practice (learning method)

I believe it is basically Behaviorism. Tosqueira (talk) 06:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

That is your personal opinion, and is not justification for the merging of these articles. Even if the theory of practice were based off of behaviorism, it is a distinct phenomenon that merits its own page in accordance with the wiki guidlines. I suggest that someone take down your template, although I will not do so myself, as I do not wish to sink to your level of forcing my opinions on others in what should be an unbiased medium. Utmostevil (talk) 17 December 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.131.252.59 (talk) 05:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Behavior Analysis and Culture

Cultural analysis has always been at the philosophical core of Radical Behaviorism from the early days (As seen in Skinner's Walden Two, Science & Human Behavior, Beyond Freedom & Dignity, and About Behaviorism.)

During the 1980s, behavior analysts, most notably Sigrid Glenn, had a productive interchange with cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris (the most notable proponent of "Cultural Materialism") regarding interdisciplinary work. Very recently, behavior analysts have produced a set of basic exploratory experiments in an effort toward this end Link to article:[2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Static7181 (talk • contribs) 18:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Behaviorism is a Philosophy of Science

I think it is incorrect to describe behaviorism as "a philosophy of psychology". Behaviorists can be found in psychology, anthropology, sociology and other sciences. Behaviorism should therefore be described as "a philosophy of science", and then the schools of psychology that embrace behaviorism can be listed and described. Greg987 (talk) 05:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Behaviourism in philosophy of mind

There's only a small section on this. Perhaps a subarticle could be created, e.g. Behaviorism (philosophy of mind)? We spent a while on this in the philosophy of mind course I'm doing and the Jackson/Braddon-Mitchell text has a whole chapter on it, not to mention surely numerous whole books on the subject. Richard001 (talk) 11:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

neobehavioristic

The second phase of behaviorism, neobehaviorismLink title, was associated with Edward C. Tolman, Clark Hull, and B. F. Skinner. Like Thorndike, Watson, and Pavlov, the neobehaviorists believed that the study of learning and a focus on rigorously objective observational methods were the keys to a scientific psychology. Unlike their predecessors, however, the neobehaviorists were more self-consciously trying to formalize the laws of behavior. They were also influenced by the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, a group of philosophers led by Rudolph Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Herbert Feigl, who argued that meaningful statements about the world had to be cast as statements about physical observations. Anything else was metaphysics or nonsense, not science, and had to be rejected. Knowledge, according to the logical positivists, had to be built on an observational base, and could be verified to the extent that it was in keeping with observation.

Read more: Behaviorism - Neobehaviorism (1930–1955) http://science.jrank.org/pages/8448/Behaviorism-Neobehaviorism-1930-1955.html#ixzz0Z9RbZvRf

Language

Some of the journals include but others don't include? For fuck's sake with this sick use of the word "include". --213.130.252.119 (talk) 20:09, 2 April 2010 (UTC)