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Part One
What Is Behaviorism?
Behaviorism has been a controversial topic. Some objections arise from correct understanding, but misconceptions about behaviorism abound. The three chapters in this part aim to clarify what might be called the “philosophical stance” of behaviorism. All that is genuinely controversial about behaviorism stems from its primary idea, that a science of behavior is possible. At some point in its history, every science has had to exorcise imagined causes (hidden agents) that supposedly lie behind or under the surface of natural events. Chapter 1 explains how behaviorists’ denial of hidden agents leads to a genuine controversy, the question of whether behavior is free or determined. Chapter 2 aims to forestall misconceptions that may arise because behaviorism has changed over time. An earlier version, called methodo- logical behaviorism, was based on realism , the view that all experience is caused by an objective, real world outside of and apart from a person’s subjective, inner world. Realism may be contrasted with pragmatism , which is silent about the origin of experience, but points instead to the usefulness of trying to understand and make sense out of our experiences. A later version of behaviorism, called radical beha- viorism, rests on pragmatism, rather than on realism. Anyone failing to understand this difference is likely to misunderstand the critical aspect of radical behaviorism, its rejection of mentalism. The behaviorists’ critique of mentalism, explained in chapter 3, underlies the remainder of the book, because it requires behaviorists to suggest nonmentalistic explanations of behavior (Part Two) and nonmentalistic solutions to social problems (Part Three).
2 What Is Behaviorism?
4 What Is Behaviorism?
Historical Background
From Philosophy to Science
All the sciences – astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology – had their origins in, and eventually broke free from, philosophy. Before astonomy and physics existed as sciences, for example, philosophers speculated about the arrangement of the natural universe by starting from assump- tions about God or some other ideal standard and reasoning to con- clusions about the way the universe must be. For example, if all important events seemed to occur on the earth, then the earth must be the center of the universe. Since a circle was the most perfect shape, the sun must travel about the earth in a circular orbit. The moon must travel in another, closer, circular orbit, and the stars must be in a sphere, the most perfect three-dimensional form, around the whole. (To this day, the sun, the moon, and the stars are called heavenly bodies, because they were supposed to be perfect.) The sciences of astronomy and physics were born when individuals began trying to understand natural objects and phenomena by observ- ing them. When Galilei Galileo (1564–1642) trained a telescope on the moon, he observed that its crater-scarred landscape was far from the perfect sphere the philosophers supposed it to be. Contributing to physics also, Galileo recorded the motion of falling objects by rolling a ball down a chute. In describing his findings, Galileo helped invent the modern notions of velocity and acceleration. Isaac Newton (1642–
- added concepts like force and inertia to create a powerful descriptive scheme for understanding motions of bodies on the earth as well as heavenly bodies such as the moon. In creating the science of physics, Galileo, Newton, and other thinkers of the Enlightenment broke with philosophy. Philosophy reasons from assumptions to conclusions. Its arguments take the form “If this were so, then that would be so.” Science proceeds in the opposite direction: “This is observed; what could be true that would lead to such an observation, and what other observations would it lead to?” Philo- sophical truth is absolute; as long as the assumptions are spelled out and the reasoning is correct, the conclusions must follow. Scientific truth is always relative and provisional; it is relative to observation and susceptible to disconfirmation by new observations. For a long time, astronomers thought there were only seven planets, but then an eighth and a ninth were discovered. Philosophical assumptions concerned abstractions beyond the natural universe: God, harmony, ideal shapes,
Behaviorism: Definition and History 5
and so on. Scientific assumptions used in theory-building concern only the natural universe and the way it might be organized. Though Newton was a theologian as well as a physicist, he separated the two activities. About physics, he said, Hypotheses non fingo (I do not make hypotheses), meaning that when studying physics he had no concern for any supernatural entities or principles – that is, for anything out- side the natural universe itself. The reason the ocean has tides is not God’s will but the gravitational pull of the moon as it revolves around the earth. As well as physics, the ancient Greeks speculated about chemistry. Philosophers such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle speculated that matter varied in its properties because it was endowed with cer- tain qualities, essences, or principles. Aristotle suggested four qualities: hot , cold , wet , and dry. If a substance was a liquid, it possessed more of the wet quality; if a solid, more of the dry. As centuries passed, the list of qualities or essences lengthened. Things that grew hot were said to possess the inner essence caloric. Materials that burned were said to possess phlogiston. These essences were considered real substances hidden somewhere within the materials. When thinkers turned away from speculation about hidden essences and began making and inter- relating careful observations of material change, chemistry was born. Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94), among others, developed the concept of oxygen from the careful observation of weights. Lavoisier found that when the metal lead is burned and transformed into a yellow powder (lead oxide) in a closed vessel, the powder weighs more than the original metal, and yet the entire vessel retains the same weight. Lavoisier reasoned that this could occur if the metal combined with some material in the air. Such an explanation contained only natural terms; it left out the hidden essences suggested by philosophy and established chemistry as a science. Biology broke with philosophy and theology in the same way. Philosophers reasoned that if living and nonliving things differed, that was because God had given something to the living things He had not given to the nonliving. Some thinkers considered this inner thing to be a soul; others called it vis viva (life force). In the seven- teenth century, early physiologists began looking inside animals to see how they worked. William Harvey (1578–1657) found what seemed more like the workings of a machine than some mysterious life force. It appeared that the heart functioned like a pump, circulating the blood through the arteries and tissues and back through the veins. As in physics and chemistry, such reasoning left out the hypothetical assumptions of the philosophers and referred only to observations of natural phenomena.
Behaviorism: Definition and History 7
Objective Psychology
Some nineteenth-century psychologists were uneasy with introspec- tion as a scientific method. It seemed too unreliable, too open to per- sonal bias, too subjective. Other sciences used objective methods which produced measurements that could be checked and duplicated in labor- atories around the world. If two trained introspectors disagreed over their findings, the conflict would be hard to resolve; with objective methods, however, one might note differences in procedure that could produce different results. One of the early pioneers in objective psychology was the Dutch psy- chologist F. C. Donders (1818–89), who was inspired by an intriguing astronomy problem: how to arrive at the exact time when a star is in a certain position in the sky. When a star is viewed through a power- ful telescope, it appears to travel at considerable speed. Astonomers trying to make accurate time measurements were having difficulty estimating to the fraction of a second. An astronomer would listen to a clock ticking once a second while watching a star, and count ticks. As the star crossed a line marked in the telescope (the “moment of transit”), the astronomer would mentally note its position at the tick just before transit, mentally note its position at the tick just after transit, and then estimate the fraction of the distance between the two positions that lay between the position just before transit and the line. The problem was that different astronomers watching the same moment of transit obtained different time estimates. The astronomers tried to get around this variation by finding an equation, called the “personal equation,” for each astronomer that would compute the correct time from the particular astronomer’s time estimates. Donders reasoned that the time estimates varied because no two astronomers took the same time to judge the exact moment of transit, and he believed they were actually making their judgments by different mental processes. Donders thought that this “judgment time” might be a useful objective measure. He began doing experiments in which he measured people’s reaction times – the times required to detect a light or sound and then press a button. He found that it took a certain reliable amount longer to press the correct one of two buttons when one or the other of two lights came on than to press a single button when a single light came on. By subtracting the shorter simple reaction time from the longer choice reaction time, Donders argued that one could objectively measure the mental process of choice. This seemed a great advance over introspection because it meant that psychologists could do laborat- ory experiments with the same objective methods as the other sciences.
8 What Is Behaviorism?
Other psychologists developed other methods that seemed to meas- ure mental processes objectively. Gustav Fechner (1801–87) attempted to measure subjective intensity of sensation by developing a scale based on the just-noticeable difference – the physical difference between two lights or sounds that a person could just detect. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) measured the time it took him to learn and later relearn lists of nonsense syllables (consonant–vowel–consonant combinations with no meaning) to produce objective measures of learning and memory. Others used the method developed by I. P. Pavlov (1849–
- to study learning and association by measuring a simple reflex transferring to new signals arranged in the laboratory. These attempts held the common promise that by following objective methods psy- chology could become a true science.
Comparative Psychology
At the same time that psychologists were trying to make psychology an objective science, psychology was also being influenced by the theory of evolution. No longer were human beings seen as separate from other living things. The recognition was growing that not only do we share anatomical traits with apes, monkeys, dogs, and even fish, but we share with them also many behavioral traits. Thus arose the notion of the continuity of species – the idea that even if species clearly differ from one another, to the extent that they share a common evolutionary history, they also resemble one another. Darwin’s theory taught that new species came into existence only as modifications of existing species. If our species evolved like any other species, then it too must have arisen as a modification of some other species. It was easy to see that we and the apes shared common ancestors, that apes and monkeys shared common ancestors, that monkeys and tree shrews shared common ancestors, that tree shrews and reptiles shared common ancestors, and so on. Comparative thinkers reasoned that, just as we could see the origins of our own anatomical traits in other species, so we could see the origins of our own mental traits. Thus the notion of making comparisons among species in order to learn more about our own, coupled with the assumption that our mental traits would appear in other species in simpler or rudimentary form, gave rise to comparative psychology. Comparisons between our species and others became common. Darwin himself wrote a book called The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals. At first, evidence of seemingly human mentality in
10 What Is Behaviorism?
If you fail to reproduce my findings... it is due to the fact that your introspection is untrained. The attack is made upon the observer and not upon the experimental setting. In physics and in chemistry the attack is made upon the experimental conditions. The apparatus was not sensitive enough, impure chemicals were used, etc. In these sciences a better technique will give reproducible results. Psychology is other- wise. If you can’t observe 3–9 states of clearness in attention, your introspection is poor. If, on the other hand, a feeling seems reasonably clear to you, your introspection is again faulty. You are seeing too much. Feelings are never clear. (p. 163)
If introspection was unreliable, analogies between animals and humans were even more so. Watson complained that the emphasis on consciousness forced him into
the absurd position of attempting to construct the conscious content of the animal whose behavior we have been studying. On this view, after having determined our animal’s ability to learn, the simplicity or complexity of its methods of learning, the effect of past habit upon present response, the range of stimuli to which it ordinarily responds, the widened range to which it can respond under experimental condi- tions, – in more general terms, its various problems and its various ways of solving them, – we should still feel that the task is unfinished and that the results are worthless, until we can interpret them by analogy in the light of consciousness... we feel forced to say something about the possible mental processes of our animal. We say that, having no eyes, its stream of consciousness cannot contain brightness and color sensations as we know them, – having no taste buds this stream can contain no sensations of sweet, sour, salt and bitter. But on the other hand, since it does respond to thermal, tactual and organic stimuli, its conscious content must be made up largely of these sensations... Surely this doctrine which calls for an analogical interpretation of all behavior data may be shown to be false... (pp. 159–60)
Psychologists trapped themselves into such fruitless efforts, Watson argued, because of their definition of psychology as the science of con- sciousness. This definition was to blame for the unreliable methods and baseless speculations. It was to blame for psychology’s failure to become a true science. Instead, Watson wrote, psychology should be defined as the science of behavior. He described his disappointment when, seeing psychology defined by Pillsbury at the beginning of a textbook as the science of behavior, he found that after a few pages the book ceased referring to behavior and reverted instead to the “conventional treatment” of consciousness. In reaction, Watson wrote, “I believe we can write a
Behaviorism: Definition and History 11
psychology, define it as Pillsbury, and never go back upon our defini- tion: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like” (p. 166). Avoiding the terms relating to consciousness and mind would free psychologists to study both human and animal behavior. If continuity of species could lead to “humanizing the beast,” it could equally well lead to the opposite (bestializing the human?); if ideas about humans could be applied to animals, principles developed by studying animals could be applied to humans. Watson argued against anthropocentrism. He pointed to the biologist studying evolution, who “gathers his data from the study of many species of plants and animals and tries to work out the laws of inheritance in the particular type upon which he is conducting experiments... It is not fair to say that all of his work is directed toward human evolution or that it must be interpreted in terms of human evolution” (p. 162). To Watson, the way seemed clear to turn psychology into a general science of behavior that covered all species, with humans as just one of the species. This science of behavior Watson envisioned would use none of the traditional terms referring to mind and consciousness, would avoid the subjectivity of introspection and animal–human analogies, and would study only objectively observable behavior. Yet even in Watson’s own time, behaviorists debated over the correctness of this recipe. It was unclear what objective meant or exactly what constituted behavior. Since these terms were left open to interpretation, behaviorists’ ideas about what constitutes science and how to define behavior have varied. Of post-Watsonian behaviorists, the best known is B. F. Skinner (1904–90). His ideas of how to achieve a science of behavior con- trasted sharply with those of most other behaviorists. Whereas the others focused on natural-science methods, Skinner focused on scien- tific explanation. He argued that the way to a science of behavior lay through development of terms and concepts that would allow truly scientific explanations. He labeled the opposing view methodological behaviorism and styled his own view radical behaviorism. We will dis- cuss these more in chapters 2 and 3. Whatever their disagreements, all behaviorists agree with Watson’s basic premises that there can be a natural science of behavior and that psychology could be that science. The idea that behavior can be treated scientifically implies that, just as the other sciences cast out hidden essences, forces, and causes, so behavior analysis (or psychology if they are the same) omits such mysterious factors. This omission raises controversy paralleling the reaction to Darwin’s naturalistic account of evolution. Whereas Darwin offended by leaving out the hidden hand of God, behaviorists offend by leaving out another hidden
Behaviorism: Definition and History 13
inheritance and environment, past and present, it implies that free will is only an experience, an illusion, and not a causal relation between person and action. A compatibilist theory of free will proposed by philosopher Daniel Dennett defines free will as deliberation before action (Dennett, 1984). As long as I deliberate over eating the ice cream (Will it make me fat? Could I offset its effects with exercise later? Can I be happy if I am always dieting?), my eating the ice cream is freely chosen. This is compatible with determinism because deliberation itself is behavior that might be determined by heredity and past envir- onment. If deliberation plays any role in the behavior that follows, it would act only as a link in a chain of causality extending back into earlier events. This definition, however, deviates from what people conventionally mean by free will. Philosophers call the conventional idea of free will – the idea that choice really can be free of past events – libertarian free will. Any other definition, like those of Hebb and Dennett, that is compatible with determinism presents no problem for behaviorism or a science of behavior. Only libertarian free will conflicts with behaviorism. The history of the concept in Jewish and Christian theology suggests that it exists precisely in order to deny the sort of determinism that behaviorism represents. Parting with the philosophers, therefore, we will refer to libertarian free will as “free will.”
Arguments For and Against Free Will
Proving free will (in other words, disproving determinism) would require that an act go counter to prediction even though every pos- sible contributing factor is known. Since such perfect knowledge is impossible in practice, the conflict between determinism and free will can never be resolved by evidence. If it seems that middle-class children from good homes who become drug addicts must have chosen freely to do so because nothing in their backgrounds would account for the behavior, the determinist can insist that further inves- tigation would reveal the genetic and environmental factors that lead to such addictions. If it seems that Mozart’s musical career was entirely predictable on the basis of his family background and the way society in Vienna worked in his day, the free-will advocate can insist that little Wolfgang freely chose to please his parents with musical efforts rather than to play with toys like the other children. If evidence cannot persuade, then whether a person accepts determinism or free will may depend on the consequences of believing one or the other, and these may be social or aesthetic.
14 What Is Behaviorism?
Social arguments
Practically, it appears that denial of free will might undermine the whole moral fabric of our society. What will happen to our judicial system if people cannot be held responsible for their actions? We are already having trouble when criminals plead insanity and diminished competence. What will happen to our democratic institutions if people have no free choice? Why bother to have elections if choice among candidates is not free? Belief that people’s behavior can be determined might encourage dictatorship. For these reasons, perhaps it is good and useful to believe in free will, even if it cannot be proved. Behaviorists must address these arguments; otherwise, behavior- ism risks being labeled a pernicious doctrine. We will address them in Part Three when we discuss freedom, social policy, and values. A brief survey now will give an idea of the general direction taken later. The perceived threat to democracy derives from a false assumption. Although it is true that democracy depends on choice, it is false that choice becomes meaningless or impossible without free will. The idea that choice would disappear arises from an oversimplified notion of the alternative to free will. If an election offers a person two different ways to vote, which vote actually occurs depends not only on the person’s long-term history (background, upbringing, or values) but also on events right before the election. Campaigning goes on for precisely this reason. I can be swayed by a good speech, and without it I might have voted for the other candidate. People need not have free will for elections to be meaningful; their behavior need only be open to influ- ence and persuasion (shorter-term environmental determinants). We favor democracy not because we have free will but because we find that, as a set of practices, it works. People in a democratic society are happier and more productive than under any known monarchy or dictatorship. Instead of worrying over the loss of free will, we may more profitably ask what it is about democracy that makes it better. If we can analyze our democratic institutions to discover what makes them work, we might be able to find ways to make them even more effective. Political freedom consists of something more practical than free will: It means having choices available and being able to affect the behavior of those who govern. A scientific understanding of behavior could be used to increase political freedom. In this way, the know- ledge gained from a science of behavior could be put to good use; nothing requires that it be abused. And after all, if we really do have free will, presumably no one need worry about the use of such know- ledge anyway.
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freely. When we know that a politician has accepted a bribe, we no longer consider that politician’s positions to be taken freely. When we learn that an artist had supportive parents and a great teacher, we wonder less over his talent. The other side of this argument is that no matter how much we know, we still cannot predict exactly what a person will do in a given situation. This unpredictability has sometimes been considered evid- ence of free will. The weather, however, is also unpredictable, but we never regard weather as the product of free will. Many natural systems exist, the momentary behavior of which we cannot predict in advance but which we never consider free. Why would we set a higher standard for a science of behavior than for the other natural sciences? It seems illogical, and it is, because the argument from unpredictability contains a logical error. Free will does imply unpredictability, but this in no way requires the converse, that unpredictability implies free will. In a way, it should even be false that free will implies unpre- dictability. My actions may be unpredictable by another person, per- haps, but if my free will causes my behavior, I should know perfectly well what I am going to do. This requires that I know my will, because it is difficult to see how a will that was unknown could be free. If I decide to go on a diet, and I know this is my will, then I ought to predict that I will go on the diet. If I know my will and my will causes my behavior, I should be able to predict my behavior perfectly. The notion that free will causes behavior also raises a thorny prob- lem. How can a nonnatural event like free will cause a natural event like eating ice cream? Natural events can lead to other natural events, because they can be related to one another in time and space. Sexual intercourse leads to a baby just about nine months later. The phrase leads to implies that the cause can be placed in time and space. By definition, however, nonnatural things and events cannot be placed in time and space. (If they could be placed in time and space, then they would be natural.) How, then, can a nonnatural event lead to a natural event? When and where does willing take place, that it can lead to my eating ice cream? (Another version of the same problem, the mind– body problem, will occupy us in chapter 3.) The murkiness of such hypothetical connections led to Newton’s Hypotheses non fingo. Science admits unsolved puzzles, because puzzles may ultimately yield to further thought and experimentation, but the connection between free will and action cannot be so illuminated. It is a mystery. Science’s aim of explaining the world excludes mysteries that cannot be explained. The mysterious nature of free will, for example, runs counter to the theory of evolution. First, it raises the problem of discontinuity. If animals lack free will, how did it suddenly arise in our species? It
Behaviorism: Definition and History 17
would have to have been presaged in our nonhuman ancestors. Sec- ond, even if animals could have free will, how could such a nonnatural thing evolve? Natural traits evolve by modification from other natural traits. One can imagine even the evolution of a natural mechanical system that could behave unpredictably from moment to moment. But no conceivable way exists for natural selection to produce a nonnatural free will. This may be a powerful reason that some religious groups oppose the theory of evolution; conversely, it is an equally powerful reason to exclude free will from scientific accounts of behavior. In fact, the whole reason for our discussing these arguments against free will is really to show that scientific accounts of behavior exclud- ing free will are possible. The arguments aim to defend the science of behavior against the claim that human behavior cannot be understood because people have free will. Behavior analysis cautions against the use of the concept in arenas where it has unfortunate consequences, such as in the judicial system (chapter 10) and government (chap- ter 11). Behavior analysis omits free will, but it places no ban on using the concept in everyday discourse or in the spheres of religion, poetry, and literature; clerics, poets, and writers often talk of free will and free choice. A science of behavior might seek to explain such talk, but in no way forbids it. In this book, however, we explore how to understand behavior without mysterious concepts like free will.
Summary
All behaviorists agree on one central idea, that a science of behavior is possible. This science has come to be called behavior analysis. Behaviorism is properly viewed as philosophy about that science. All the sciences originated in and broke away from philosophy. Astronomy and physics arose when scientists turned from philo- sophical speculation to observation. In so doing, they dropped any concern with supernatural things, observing the natural universe and explaining natural events by referring to other natural events. Sim- ilarly, chemistry broke with philosophy when it abandoned hidden inner essences as explanations of chemical events. As it became a science, physiology dropped the inner vis viva in favor of mechanistic explanations of the body’s workings. Darwin’s theory of evolution was widely perceived as an attack on religion because it proposed to explain the creation of life forms with natural events only, and with- out the supernatural hand of God. Scientific psychology, too, grew out of philosophy and may still be breaking away from it. Two movements,
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events arise only from other natural events. This scientific view of behavior argues against applying the idea of free will to law and government, contexts in which it produces poor consequences for society, but remains neutral about (and might explain) the use of the idea in everyday discourse, religion, poetry, and literature.
FURTHER READING
Boakes, R. A. 1984: From Darwin to Behaviorism: Psychology and the Minds of Animals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This is an excellent his- torical account of the rise of early behaviorism. Dennett, D. C. 1984: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. This book includes a thorough discussion of free will and an example of a compatibilist theory. Sappington, A. A. 1990: Recent psychological approaches to the free will versus determinism issue. Psychological Bulletin , 108, 19–29. This article contains a useful summary of various positions about determinism and free will. Watson, J. B. 1913: Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review , 20, 158–77. Watson laid out his original views in this classic paper. Zuriff, G. E. 1985: Behaviorism: A Conceptual Reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press. This book is a compendium and discussion of various behaviorists’ thinking from the early twentieth century until around 1970.
TERMS INTRODUCED IN CHAPTER 1
Anthropomorphism Behavior analysis Caloric Comparative psychology Continuity of species Determinism Dualism Introspect Just-noticeable difference Libertarian free will Methodological behaviorism Objective psychology Phlogiston Psyche Radical behaviorism Reaction time Vis viva
