Behaviorism and Its Critics

behaviorism is the noetic masking of synthetic positivism. Positivism, whose basis is in the 19th century, yet whose antecedents come oftentimes earlier, is designed to force epistemology into a strictly scientific context. In so doing, it helped outline the scientific method, as well as creating a stir in philosophic circles. This paper lead do some(prenominal)(prenominal) things it will determine behaviourism and positivism, it will link the dickens together as atomic number 53 ele affable movement, it will power heading some of the movements critics and fin wholey, manner at a possible application of behaviourism.Positivism and its daughter, behaviorism, derived as a critique of idealism, or, to define this somewhat eccentric bothy, the idea that cordial states ar, or do- aught be, expressly determining of serviceman behavior. Historically, such a suppose was held by such wildly diverse thinkers as Plato, Hume, Fichte, Nietzsche and Freud. While, at the s ame time, the more positively charged and materialist vision of charitablee behavior was held by Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx, both of whom held that material and extraneous interpretations of human behavior were in all comely to understand motives for exertion.In other rowing, for the behavioristic, external forces, forces that give the axe be human raceally understood and witnessed, argon blanket(a)y proportionate to the acts that they ca workout. behaviorism, as graduation exercise defined in an explicitly scientific, psychological context by Watson (1912) is a reception to idealism, loosely defined, that sought explanations for human doing in internal mental states. Watson, at angiotensin converting enzyme fell swoop, eliminated sentience from scientific explanation.Consciousness was something that could non be analyzed scientifically because it was a private affair, something experienced at an intimate and immediate level, and, hence, could non be the defea t of a scientific sample where all the pertinent variables were available for all to see. In essence, Watson held that psychological science can simply be scientific by property to the tenets of logical positivism. psychological science essential use variables that are easily quantified, public and goalive.Hence, mental states and cognizance as the basis of these mental states are not variables. In fact, behaviorist Gustav Bergmann (1942) and B. F. Skinner (1978) held that such country were incriminateingless, 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, defecate a oral sex that cannot be solved, since the terms are not properly defined. For Watson and his following, mankind was, in a psychological sense, no different from animals.Both humans and other animal species were unspoiledy determine by material causes acting on the human being, in terms of amicable forces and internal behavioral dispositions explainable in material terms. If this is true, then all in the flesh(predicate) 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 philosophical system of mind. Consciousness was not definable in quantifiable categories, and hence, was not scientific.Psychology then, could solo endure if it relied entirely on quantifiable phenomenon and fictional that this was sufficient to give a full billhook of human behavior. This method of psychology was not without its critics. The main criticism of this flak is that it is simplistic. This criticism has been leveled many times against the logical incontrovertibles, not the least among such critics piddle 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 particular proposition human behaviors.For all of these noted writers, the human ego could detatch itself from its external surroundings and current mental states and hence steer itself. Dostoyevskii goes so far in his Notes From impedance as to say that the deliberate study that 2+2=5 is confirm as a means of preserving unrivalleds freedom of choice from the oppressive, secular straitjacket of scientific methods. From the point of view of pure psychology however, the first and closely authorised of Watsons critics was E. B. Titcherner (1917), who criticized Watson and his ideas on several areas.First, that the judgment of science of the positivists was too narrow. It was an unequivocal Procrustean bed that eliminated some of the more or less important and intimate of human experience, which is the whole point of psychology in the first place. This has incessantly been the existentialist criticism of p ositivism, that so a goodly deal of what demonstrates a human human is eliminated by the arbitrary select 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 detention that the positivist critique did some good for the discipline in that it did force psychology out of its older, strictly internal methods. front 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 indispensable and important. Hence, while he is voluntary to cl need that the behaviorist is too informative 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 deuce-acely , that the positivists were holding that the concept of observation is also too narrow. reflexion was somehow confused with quantification. If consciousness is a phenomenon, then science has something to say n premature it. Quantifiability is not the sine qua non of the scientific show up. The positivists, of whom Watson was an avid follower, eliminated thought, mind, and sensation from scientific study. This was unimaginable from both a scientific and specifically psychological point of view.Gustav Bergmann (1942), defends Watsons staple theses a generation later on several counts. First, as a emblematic positivist, he is concerned wit the twist of a meaningful question or proposition. In order for this to be the case, the words in the proposition must be holdly defined and understood. X must mean x, and not x+y connotation and denotation must be the same thing. Hence, the question is of lucidity and public observation of the relative phenomena. In his (1942) essay, Bergman n holds that the most significant contribution to scientific sermon in his time was the positivist pressure level on the clarification of language.For example, when one speaks of carbon, at that place is a in truth specific, definable and intelligible entity involved. There are not two carbons, and there is no distinction betwixt 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 righteous dispositions, as well as a host of other more nuanced ideas contained in the very general idea of mind,. apt(p) this confusion, it cannot be meaningfully used in a sentence.Skinner (1978) went so far as to attempt to eliminated such words in psychological hash out (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 o f the positivist/behaviorist approach is Peter Harzam. In his (2004) essay, he criticizes behaviorism on several grounds. Following Titcherner, Harzam holds that the hypothesis 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 loath(p) to do so. Materialism is not a scientific view, but kind of 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 room access to later developments in psychotropic drugs, watch and an entire infrastructure of control that is ground on behaviorist ideas, specifically, the idea that human beings can be manipulated like cattle, so long as the elite pick up comme il faut ideas as to what makes humans act.Though Harzam does not explicitly say this, it is a bear and uncomfortable conclusion of Watsons 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 governing 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 deep 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 abstract holds that extra-physical ideas need not be taken into account to have a full understanding, but that such ideas can avail in clarifying the basis, physicalist account of action (Addis, 1982, 401-402).L ike many others, Addis is uncomfortable with Watsons early idea that control and prediction is the aim of science. Here, a rather social and semipolitical 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 affirm upon. A possible use for behaviorism has already developed substantially, that is, the development of chemic alterations of behavior.At best, this approach holds that mental states are wholly physical and hence, can be manipulated by physical means. If one trim down mental phenomenon to chemic causes, then one has reduced the mind to the interactions of chemical substances 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 pur ely positivist in that the language is crystallize so long as it retains the proficient language of chemistry, it is in public 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 psychoneurotic 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 school of thought 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 philosophical system 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 victimize 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 article 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.