Talk:Behaviorism
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Wow. Very nice edit of Behaviorism, 12.225.170.144!
Arthur 18:42 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)
Reverted move to Behavior Analysis. Behaviorism is by far the more common name, and it is also more general; Behavior analysis is a term used essentially by subscribers to Skinner's radical behaviorism, and connotes that particular flavour of behaviorism. There are several other flavours, and this article should and does them all - it did last time I looked at it. Trying to make the article cover one flavour only offends against Wikipedia's NPOV rules. If we need a specific article on Skinnerian behaviourism, it should either be under radical behaviorism or under the experimental analysis of behavior, both of which we have. Furthermore, "behavior analysis" and "behavioral science" are in no way synonyms for behaviorism; behaviorism is an approach to psychology, behavior analysis and behavioral science are terms for a field of study, which may or may not be coterminous with psychology. seglea 06:08, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The way the page is now, behaviorism is based upon a proposition that EVERYONE agrees with ("the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research"). That's neither informative nor interesting. It makes it look like everyone but everyone is a behaviorist.
- Please sign your comments, so that a discussion can go on intelligibly. If you haven't got a username, it doesn't take a moment to get one.
- Would that it were true that everyone agreed that behaviour is interesting and worthy of scientific research... It wasn't true in William James's time, and it isn't true now: try talking to some transpersonal psychologists, for example, or a good many cognitive scientists. seglea 04:02, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Bandura's social learning theory
One crucial behaviourist theory which is ignored is Bandura's study on SLT. He used it to explain learned behaviour, aggression and other sorts of behaviour. On the whole, I reckon this is an omission, deliberate or no. How do people feel about including this theory on the page? (I am appealing to expert psychologists here)
- I'm a student and I agree, so I added a mention of it to the Approaches section. Molindo 20:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Change in references
See [1]
Is this vandalism or a correct change? Suspicious since made by anonymous editor and date changed to 2005. Enochlau 12:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Watson was a "S-R" Psychologist; Skinner an "S-R-S" Psychologist -- The Critical "S" is the one after the "R"
It's misleading to say that B.F. Skinner was a "disciple" of John B. Watson -- though it is true that Skinner, a very loyal person, defended Watson throughout Skinner's long career. It is more apt to speak of Clark Hull of Yale University, and his disciples, e.g. John Dollard and Neal Miller, as "disciples of John B. Watson."
Skinner characterized the stimulus-response psychology of Watson and his intellectual offspring as a kind of "push button" analysis, derived from the strictly "push-pull" causation found in traditional (though possibly not post-Einsteinian) physical science. In a very important paper published in "Science," in the early 1980s, "Selection by Consequences," Skinner provided a brief intellectually rigorous elaboration of a kind of causation he claimed affected living matter -- and only living matter -- in addition to the "push button" causation adapted from physics and chemistry by the descendents of Pavlov and Watson.
Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, in one of his many essays seems to depart from his intellectual mentor when he states his admiration for Rene Decartes (See http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/DesDis.html and any other of his essays where Huxley mentions Descartes, cf. Vols I through 9, bottom of that page.) And indeed, in one of those essays, Huxley recognizes that the mechanistic causes and effects of physical science rendered the traditional materialist helpless to explain "consciousness" or "mind." Another kind or order of causation was needed.
The characterization of B.F. Skinner as an "S-R-S" psychologist is found in "Skinner for the Classroom," a very valuable compilation of Skinner's papers by Robert Epstein, a tireless scholarly protegé of this critically important scientist, thinker, and culture critic. Another very valuable link is this 60 minute RealPlayer rendering of a speech, "On Having a Poem," which Skinner gave at the Poetry Center in Manhattan just a few weeks after "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" was published: http://www.bfskinner.org/audio.asp
According the Skinner, the S-R formulation ( "respondent conditioning") of Pavlov and Watson works well for analyzing the action of the smooth muscles and glands; the activity of the striated musculature requires a different, "operant analysis"; "operant conditioning" is what is referred to by the "S-R-S" designation; it covers every thing from a walk across the room to an casual conversation, and to the most abstruse mathematical analysis or the most sublime poem -- but not as recorded conversations, mathematics, or a poem on a page, but as things done.
R.S. Peters, a mid-twentieth century scholarly expert on Thomas Hobbes, once wrote that Hobbes was the "great metaphysician of motion." B.F. Skinner might be said to have been the "great metaphysician of consequences" (or "results") -- except that he was convinced that philosophy -- and metaphysics especially -- were a great waste of time and a fatally tempting digression from the true Baconian scientific precept of "reading nature, not books."
But it is still fair to say I think that the most potent "S" in Skinner's "S-R-S" psychology is the final one: the consequence or result -- a result furnished by an selectively active environment. (This, incidently, is not teleology or "future causation" -- living creatures only "work for" results because of a history of having do so successfully in their history, in a context of the selective action of their environment; or, if not for that reason, then that of their species' history under the contingencies of Darwinian natural selection.)
[edit] first link to Association, is this the intended page?
the first association link takes you to "Classical Conditioning" wouldn't
Association (psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_%28psychology%29
be better?
A few notes - I don't want to start an edit war, but just a few things about this article are fairly bizarre, in particular at the beginning. I'm not going to attempt to hack this up too much, at least not until there has been some time for others to discuss thoughts (below).
"One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory"
Who says? Which behaviorists? There is no slate on which is written the requirement that a behaviorist must believe that free will is illusory. You can be a compatibilist, for example, and believe that free will is totally legitimate (just not dualistic). Daniel Dennett does not identify as a behaviorist, for example, but others call him one, and it is hard to argue that he is ENTIRELY unlike a behaviorist, especially on issues like determinism - and he wrote "Freedom Evolves," which is very much a compatibilist work. That means he does not say free will is illusory, he just says it's something nonmagical. You can argue whether compatibilism is really possible or desirable, but it just isn't right to use the article on behaviorism to editorialize on these things. Go hack on articles about free will or compatibilism where it is more directly relevant. Free will is really not crucial to any variety of behaviorism I know of.
"Some behaviorists argue simply that the observation of behavior is the best or most convenient way of investigating psychological and mental processes."
Maybe this is true (although it is awfully weaselly; who specifically says this?) However, the article then goes on to discuss EAB, conveniently omitting the E (that's for Experimental.) Skinner, for one example, makes much of the difference between his approach and what he calls "structuralism," emphasizing that his "structuralism" rests on mere-observation and does not involve causal manipulations involved in an experiment. You could maybe justly say that Skinner is beating a straw man, but it certainly is the case that behaviorists (in psychology at least) tend to emphasize experiment, and not just observation. So, perhaps this statement needs to get specific about who is observational, or talk about experimental approach rather than observational one (as this would pretty accurately span from Watson through Tolman, Spence, Skinner, blah blah blah - in general little work in experimental psychology has been purely observational)
Re: Versions. Okay, I don't want to be too harsh, but we seem to have here, for each of a small collection of behaviorisms, a collection of disconnected adjectives a little reminiscent of a wine review. In the description of Theoretical Behaviorism, for example, is the word "dynamic." What does that mean here? Is dynamic an aspect of a philosophy of the science of behavior known as behaviorism, or are theoretical behaviorists dynamic sorts of people, or what? Or maybe theoretical behaviorism as a research project is associated with an interest in dynamic theories, as opposed to static ones like matching.
The opening of the article currently emphasizes "not to be confused with behavioralism in political science." Maybe this is necessary, but if we buy it then we certainly shouldn't later say "Behaviourism has been criticised within politics as it threatens to reduce the discipline of political analysis to little more than the study of voting and the behaviour of legislatures." To my awareness, psychological behaviorism has nothing direct to do with voting behavior or the behavior of legislatures, and behavioralism does. The subsequent rant against behavioralism and about the claim that it is "value free" is not only a rant, but is off topic in an entry on behaviorism.
Toward the end - "what is needed is an understanding of the real-time dynamics of operant behavior, which will involve processes at both short and long time scales." I agree, but this is pretty clearly editorializing. Is that you, JERS?
- yours truly, 12.225.170.144
[edit] Criticism
I think there should be a section on Criticism of the Behaviorial school?
- Probably. Feel free to add one so long as you can add some references. Molindo 20:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
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- I agree. Chomsky has some serious issues with it.
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- Chomsky simply didn't understand what Skinner was saying. That said - I agree - should be a section on criticism.
- I think the focus on external observable behavior while completely discounting the internal processes was criticized. Andries 20:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Vandalism
Hi everybody, if you look at the history page of this article, you can see there is a lot of vandalism since few days. Maybe we could block unregistered users for a while, i don't know how...What do you think about this idea? Frédérick Lacasse 13:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC) (P.S. I a bit new that's why i ask questions instead of doing things by myself)
[edit] Language/Verbal Behavior
I suggest adding a sentence about Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). Skinner didn't reply to Chomsky's review, but someone did. Milktoast 07:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Article needs a better definition
The article starts with Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be studied and explained scientifically without recourse to internal mental states. Is there a way this can be defined more clearly and lucidly, without resorting to a slew of indirect references and prepositions? After all, this is the very first sentence of the article. -76.4.49.201 17:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
