WHAT IS DEFINED IN OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS? THE CASE OF OPERANT PSYCHOLOGY

Behavior and Philosophy, 2003 by Ribes-Inesta, Emilio

Bridgman was quite far from proposing rules for validating concepts or definitions, as customary practice in psychology has suggested. Bridgman commented that operational analysis was an "attitude" towards the use of concepts in science, not a special theory about scientific concepts. Operational analysis stressed that the meaning of scientific terms had to do with the ways in which scientists used them, that is, with the operations, physical and linguistic, carried out during its applications. Bridgman (1927/1953) stated that:

In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations. If the concept is physical, as of length, the operations are actual physical operations, namely, those by which length is measured; or if the concept is mental, as of mathematical continuity, the operations are mental operations, namely, those by which we determine whether a given aggregate of magnitudes is continuous. . . . We must demand that the set of operations equivalent to any concept be a unique set, for otherwise there are possibilities of ambiguity in practical applications which we cannot admit. (p. 36)

Bridgman's operational analysis explicitly acknowledged that concepts were inevitably linked to human experience and that they were equivalent to the actions involved in the formulation (or construction) and use of the corresponding terms. There are no "rules" for prescribing, selecting, or validating operations that identify the properties of objects or events to which concepts are applied. Concepts are equivalent to the practices in which they are employed. Because of this, the operational analysis of concepts is not related to criteria regarding the public verification of properties of events. Operational analysis does not deal with the objective-subjective or public-private dichotomies. Any concept may be operationally analyzed to the extent that we may observe the actions involved in its construction and use. Thus, Bridgman's analysis is akin to Gilbert Ryle's (1949) and Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1953) analyses of the meaning of words and expressions, contrary to frequent misunderstandings of operational analysis, as it is the case of Leahy's interpretation discussed by Grace:

Certainly, Leahy (1980, p. 141) cannot be referring to Bridgman's operational analysis here ["operationism correctly fixes our eyes on the data, but at the cost of drawing them from what we do as scientists"]. In fact. . .the above quotation implies that "operationism" is the exact opposite of what Bridgman intended! For him, operational analysis was "an analysis into doings or happenings, in contrast to the more usual analysis into objects or static situations" (1959, p 522). He emphasized over and over again the importance of analyzing the activities of the scientist, to reflect on the nature of research and thus to improve it. (2001, p. 27)

On the other hand, S.S. Stevens (1935) advocated what he called operationism as a philosophy of science. Stevens adhered to a conception of truth by agreement. Hardcastle (1995) discusses Stevens' views on science by saying that: