Radical behaviorism and the rest of psychology: A review/precis of Skinner's About Behaviorism

Behavior and Philosophy, 2001 by Malone, John C Jr, Cruchon, Natalie M

Talking to Oneself and Eating to Oneself

We have no difficulty using the expression, "I was talking to myself," or "thinking to myself," when referring to covert activity-things that happen "inside my skin," or "privately." Others cannot know such things unless I tell them or give myself away through my actions! But can I say that "I am eating to myself?" Why not?

* "I am hungry" may be equivalent to "I have hunger pangs" ... I am eating actively.". . . "It has been a long time since I have had anything to eat"... "I feel like eating" ... I have felt this way before when I have started to eat". . . "I am covertly engaging in behavior similar to that involved in getting and consuming food . I am fantasizing eating". . . "I am thinking of things I like to eat". . . I am eating to myself." (pp. 32-33)

The Social Origin of Private Experience

All that we know about our private experience comes from the teaching, not necessarily explicit, of the society in which we live-and that society does not have a clear idea of what our experience is. It has to rely on clues that it can see and hear and touch-what George Romanes called "the ambassadors of the mind" (1882/1912, 1888).

* Self-knowledge is of social origin. It is only when a person's private world becomes important to others that it is made important to him .... A person who has been "made aware of himself"by the questions he has been asked is in a better position to predict and control his own behavior. (p. 35)

* There is an old principle that nothing is different until it makes a difference, and with respect to events in the world within the skin the verbal community has not been able to make things different enough. As a result, there is room for speculation, which over the centuries has shown the most extraordinary diversity [as various descriptions of mind]. (p. 35)

Natural Selection and the Nominal Fallacy

Skinner opposed explanations in terms of reflexes or instincts simply because he felt that they explained nothing-they only named things. Naming is not explaining, which is why it is called the nominal fallacy. But evolutionary theory was clearly the model for both species-typical behavior and for operant behavior as well.9 For the last 30 years of his life, Skinner became increasingly sure that variation and selection of behaviors was the key, just as it is in the origin of species.

* To say that a baby breathes or suckles because it possesses appropriate reflexes is simply to say that it breathes or suckles, presumably because it has evolved in such a way that it does so. (p. 38)

* Selection is a special kind of causality that is not properly represented as a force or pressure. To say that there is "no obvious selection pressure on mammals that explains the high level of intelligence reached by primates" is simply to say that it is hard to imagine conditions under which slightly more intelligent members of a species would be more likely to survive. (p. 41)

Contingencies of survival are more easily imagined... if the contingencies prevail over long periods of time. Conditions within the body ... and some features of the external environment, such as the cycles of day and night, or the seasons, or temperature, or the gravitational field, are long-lasting. And so are other members of the same species, a fact that explains the prominence given by ethologists to courtship, sex, parental care, social behavior, play, imitation, and aggression. But plausible conditions of selection are hard to find in support of such an assertion as that "principles of grammar are present in the mind at birth," since grammatical behavior can hardly have been sufficiently important for survival, for a long enough time, to explain its selection. (p. 42)