Behaviorism and Its Critics

Behaviorism is the psychological application of logical positivism. Positivism, whose basis is in the 19th century, yet whose antecedents come much earlier, is designed to force epistemology into a purely scientific context. In so doing, it helped define the scientific method, as well as creating a stir in philosophical circles. This paper will do several things: it will define behaviorism and positivism, it will link the two together as one basic movement, it will detail some of the movement’s critics and finally, look at a possible application of behaviorism.

Positivism and its daughter, behaviorism, derived as a critique of idealism, or, to define this somewhat eccentrically, the idea that mental states are, or can be, expressly determining of human behavior. Historically, such a view was held by such wildly diverse thinkers as Plato, Hume, Fichte, Nietzsche and Freud. While, at the same time, the more positivist and materialist vision of human behavior was held by Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx, both of whom held that material and external explanations of human behavior were wholly adequate to understand motives for action.

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In other words, for the behaviorist, external forces, forces that can be publically understood and witnessed, are fully proportionate to the acts that they cause. Behaviorism, as first defined in an explicitly scientific, psychological context by Watson (1912) is a reaction to idealism, loosely defined, that sought explanations for human action in internal mental states. Watson, at one fell swoop, eliminated consciousness from scientific explanation.

Consciousness was something that could not be analyzed scientifically because it was a private affair, something experienced at an intimate and immediate level, and, hence, could not be the subject of a scientific experiment where all the relevant variables were available for all to see. In essence, Watson held that psychology can only be scientific by holding to the tenets of logical positivism. Psychology must use variables that are easily quantified, public and objective.

Hence, mental states and consciousness as the basis of these mental states are not variables. In fact, Behaviorist Gustav Bergmann (1942) and B. F. Skinner (1978) held that such terms were meaningless, since they referred to nothing that can be quantified. Hence, if such terms were used in a scientific paper, they refer to nothing, and hence, create a question that cannot be solved, since the terms are not properly defined. For Watson and his followers, mankind was, in a psychological sense, no different from animals.

Both humans and other animal species were fully determined by material causes acting on the human being, in terms of social forces and internal behavioral dispositions explainable in material terms. If this is true, then all personal and social behavior can be predicted and controlled (Harzem, 2004, 9). In summary, Watson and his followers were trying to create a form of psychology that could do away with all the ambiguities of the language of the philosophy of mind. Consciousness was not definable in quantifiable categories, and hence, was not scientific.

Psychology then, could only proceed if it relied solely on quantifiable phenomenon and assumed that this was sufficient to give a full account of human behavior. This method of psychology was not without its critics. The main criticism of this approach is that it is simplistic. This criticism has been leveled many times against the logical positivists, not the least among such critics have been Nietzsche, Dostoyevskii and Sartre. For all three of these writers, the human subject is free, which means that physical causes and quantifiable categories do not suffice to complete account for specific human behaviors.

For all of these famed writers, the human ego could detatch itself from its external surroundings and current mental states and hence direct itself. Dostoyevskii goes so far in his Notes From Underground as to say that the deliberate believe that 2+2=5 is justified as a means of preserving one’s freedom of choice from the oppressive, materialistic straitjacket of scientific methods. From the point of view of pure psychology however, the first and most important of Watson’s critics was E. B. Titcherner (1917), who criticized Watson and his ideas on several areas.

First, that the concept of science of the positivists was too narrow. It was an arbitrary Procrustean bed that eliminated some of the most important and intimate of human experience, which is the whole point of psychology in the first place. This has always been the existentialist criticism of positivism, that so much of what makes a human human is eliminated by the arbitrary demand that all relevant variables be quantifiable. It is almost as if the positivists demand to be the gate keepers of not only scientific answers, but also of the questions themselves.

Nevertheless, Titcherner does hold that the positivist critique did some good for the discipline in that it did force psychology out of its older, purely internal methods. Prior to Watson, the discipline was concerned solely with internal mental states, and hence, lacked a certain scientific “rigor” to its conclusions. Furthermore, the clarification of language was also necessary and important. Hence, while he is willing to claim that the behaviorist is too doctrinaire in his views, that school was a necessary addition to the discipline.

Secondly, Titcherner holds that it is arbitrary to say that consciousness cannot be a scientific object of study or explanation. And thirdly, that the positivists were holding that the concept of observation is also too narrow. Observation was somehow confused with quantification. If consciousness is a phenomenon, then science has something to say about it. Quantifiability is not the sine qua non of the scientific approach. The positivists, of whom Watson was an avid follower, eliminated thought, mind, and sensation from scientific study. This was unacceptable from both a scientific and specifically psychological point of view.

Gustav Bergmann (1942), defends Watson’s basic theses a generation later on several counts. First, as a typical positivist, he is concerned wit the construction of a “meaningful” question or proposition. In order for this to be the case, the words in the proposition must be clearly defined and understood. X must mean x, and not x+y; connotation and denotation must be the same thing. Hence, the question is of clarity and public “observation” of the relative phenomena. In his (1942) essay, Bergmann holds that the most significant contribution to scientific discourse in his time was the positivist insistence on the clarification of language.

For example, when one speaks of carbon, there is a very specific, definable and understandable entity involved. There are not two carbons, and there is no distinction between the connotation and denotation of carbon. The word “mind,” however, is very different. It can mean mental states, it can mean behavioral characteristics, it can mean personality, it can men general moral dispositions, as well as a host of other more nuanced ideas contained in the very general idea of mind,. Given this confusion, it cannot be meaningfully used in a sentence.

Skinner (1978) went so far as to attempt to eliminated such words in psychological discourse (quoted in Addis, 1982). In other words, the positivist critique is not so much obsessed with quantification, but with clarity of language and scientific discourse. An important critic of the positivist/behaviorist approach is Peter Harzam. In his (2004) essay, he criticizes behaviorism on several grounds. Following Titcherner, Harzam holds that the assumption of materialism that undergirds behavioral methods is a non-scientific assumption.

Materialism is one of those “nonsense” words that positivism must reject, though it is almost always reluctant to do so. Materialism is not a scientific view, but rather a metaphysical one. Secondly, he is suspicious as to who the media and government establishment loved Watson so much. It seems that he opened up the door to later developments in psychotropic drugs, surveillance and an entire infrastructure of control that is based on behaviorist ideas, specifically, the idea that human beings can be manipulated like cattle, so long as the elite have adequate ideas as to what makes humans act.

Though Harzam does not explicitly say this, it is a clear and uncomfortable conclusion of Watson’s teachings. And third Harzam holds that consciousness can be a scientific variable precisely on the grounds that it is experienced as the ground of experience, and therefore fits into the older, purely empirical scientific model of inquiry. Another critic of this regime is Laird Addis, who in his (1982) essay deals with the history and struggles of the behaviorist paradigm.

Addis criticizes the behaviorist school in its large number of assumptions that it brings to psychology, namely that of materialism (again), and the basic notion, central to all who call themselves behaviorists, that all human actions whatever have an adequate cause that is quantifiable and material, that is, independent of consciousness or its objects. He wants to make a key clarification, however, and say that the positivist analysis holds that extra-physical ideas need not be taken into account to have a full understanding, but that such ideas can assist in clarifying the basis, physicalist account of action (Addis, 1982, 401-402).

Like many others, Addis is uncomfortable with Watson’s early idea that control and prediction is the aim of science. Here, a rather social and political agenda has invaded the rarified air of positivist science. It is truth and adequacy that is at the center, not the eventual control over human behavior that Watson and Skinner seem to insist upon. A possible use for behaviorism has already developed substantially, that is, the development of chemical alterations of behavior.

At best, this approach holds that mental states are wholly physical and hence, can be manipulated by physical means. If one reduced mental phenomenon to chemical causes, then one has reduced the mind to the interactions of chemicals and their synthesis in specific actions. If this is done, then certain drugs can be developed and administered that can alter the chemical interactions by adding new ones, and hence, affect the reaction of the person.

The chemical approach to psychology is something purely positivist in that the language is clear so long as it retains the technical language of chemistry, it is publically understood since chemical interactions can be replicated in a laboratory, and the concepts of consciousness and thought are eliminated as causal variables. Hence, the development of drugs to deal with obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and bi-polarity derive from the Watsonite approach.

To conclude, it is clear that the Watsonite theory of human behavior is simply a positivist approach to the philosophy of mind. It approaches this discipline by negating it. Its basic ideas are that a) for any human act x, there is a completely adequate explanation y. b) y is always reducible to clear, quantifiable, and publically understood language. c) if not, then y is not completely adequate. Hence, there is an intersection of the clarity of language with that of quantifiability.

Words in scientific discourse can only mean one thing, and cannot have the shades of meaning that make denotation different from connotation. Hence, many followers of Watson insist that their movement is based solely in the clarification of language rather than a elimination of concepts tout court. References: Addis, Laird. (1982). Behaviorism and the Philosophy of the Act. Nous, 16, 399-420 Bergmann, Gustav. (1942) An Empirical Schema of the Psycho-physical Problem. The Philosophy of Science, 9, 72-91. Harzam, Peter.

(2004). Behaviorism for the New Psychology: What was Wrong with Behaviorism and What is Wrong with it Now. Behaviorism and Philosophy, 32. 5-12. Watson, JB. (1913). Psychology as Behaviorism Views It. Psychology Review 20, 158-177. Titchener, EB (1917). On ‘Psychology as Behaviorism Views It. ’ The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 53, 1-17. Skinner, BF. (1978). Reflections on Behaviorism and Society. Prentice Hall. Dostoyevskii, Fydor. (2006). Notes from Underground. Waking Lion Press.

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