<philosophy of mind, psychology> the theory according to which mental states can be analysed in terms of observable behaviour or dispositions to engage in such behaviour.
Behaviourism is now widely, but not universally, believed to have been discredited. The recent work of some researchers who focus on the dynamic, interactive, situated behaviour of cognitive systems have been re-exploring ideas central to behaviourism. Historically, behaviourism had two mains forms:
1. Methodological behaviourists, also called "psychological behaviourists', claim that the proper domain of psychology is the study of behaviour. Appeals to unobservable inner states are both methodologically intractable (e.g. the inconsistent first person reports of introspectionists), and unnecessary (we can control and predict behaviour by appeal to external variables that systematically induce behavioural responses as a consequence of conditioning or reinforcement histories). This position was spearheaded by J. B. Watson and most influentially defended by his student, B. F. Skinner. Sometimes methodological behaviourists express agnosticism about the existence of inner mental states, and sometimes they express scepticism, comparing such states to phlogiston, caloric acid, and other posits of discredited theories. Methodological behaviourism dominated American psychology between 1913, when Watson wrote his seminal defence, and 1957, when Chomsky published a devastating review of Skinner's behavioural analysis of language.
2. In its strongest form, philosophical behaviourism, also called `analytic behaviourism" and "logical behaviourism', is the view that psychological terms can be translated without loss of meaning into behavioural terms. Weakened versions replace translatability with weaker forms of semantic correlation (e.g., co-extensionality), and include neural and other physical terms among those in terms of which mental states can be characterised. Philosophical behaviourism is associated with the Logical Positivists (most notably, Hempel), who endorsed the verifiability principle, according to which the meaning of a term is given by its conditions of verification. Since statements ascribing mental predicates are verified by observing behaviour, behavioural tests enter into the meanings of those mental predicates. A similar position was influentially defended by Ryle. Some subsequent critics of logical positivism continued to endorse their semantically motivated scepticism about inner mental states and their preoccupation with observable behaviour (e.g., Quine and Wittgenstein), but such scepticism waned considerably with the rise of the psychophysical identity theory and functionalism in the 1950s and '60s.
References
Jesse Prinz <jesse@twinearth.wustl.edu>
Chris Eliasmith - [Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind] Homepage
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