Comments on Towards a new behaviorism by Peter Harzem

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1 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2000, 1, VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2 (WINTER 2000) 115 Comments to Harzem's article "Towards A New Behaviorism": Comments on Towards a new behaviorism by Peter Harzem Dept of Psychology University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee key words: conceptual analysis, behavior analysis, private events, private language, mental states, dispositions Professor Harzem has provided a provocative paper that thoughtfully addresses important conceptual issues in behaviorism generally and in behavior analysis specifically. The editor has invited me to comment on his paper. I am pleased to do so. In brief, Professor Harzem advocates the conceptual analysis of psychological language. Historically, conceptual analysis is most often associated with the analytic philosophy of such distinguished figures as Ryle (e.g., 1949) and Wittgenstein (e.g., 1953), although the logical/ philosophical behaviorism of the logical empiricists anticipated some of the central themes of conceptual analysis as much as 20 years earlier. The significant claim of conceptual analysis is that statements about mental life do not reflect some epistemologically privileged contact with mental events in another dimension. Rather, statements about mental life are really statements about behavior or dispositions to behave. By behavior is meant publicly observable behavior, and by dispositions are generally meant tendencies to engage in publicly observable behavior. What is the basis for the claim that statements purportedly about mental life are not actually about mental life at all, but rather are Author note: Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to, Ph.D.; Dept of Psychology; UW- Milwaukee; Milwaukee, WI 53201; jcm@csd.uwm.edu. I thank the editor of the journal for his kind invitation to contribute to the discussion. 115 about publicly observable behavior? To answer this question, conceptual analysis often turns to an argument developed by Wittgenstein (e.g., 1953), although he has not been the only one to make the argument (e.g., see Zuriff, 1985, pp. 24, 281 n. 41). Wittgenstein argued that a private language descriptive of mental states could not logically originate. Language is a communication game played according to rules and about events held in common, at least in principle, by both speaker and listener. Language descriptive of events that are not common to both and mental states are by definition not available to both cannot communicate any information. Therefore, the origination of such a language is impossible. If language purportedly about mental states is impossible, because no such language can originate, then it follows that language purportedly about such states must really be about something else, namely, publicly observable behavior, which is something that is common to both speaker and listener. Hence, in the current paper, Professor Harzem states Russell (e.g., 1921), Wittgenstein (e.g., 1953), Ryle (e.g., 1949), and others have shown that what have been labeled mentalistic concepts are not, in fact, the names of enigmatic, unobservable events or entities they could not have arisen in language as names of that sort

2 116 and that how such terms actually function in language can be shown without resorting to mysterious entities. (p. 13) Professor Harzem s overriding concern is to remove conceptual confusions and clarify muddled thinking in contemporary psychology, so that what lays beneath may be dealt with effectively and meaningfully. He frets at the vague ineffectuality of many contemporary approaches in psychology, including those nominally identified as behavioral, for not recognizing what conceptual analysis can contribute. He agonizes that we are not progressing as rapidly as we might in our science, if only we would undertake the serious conceptual analysis of our language. I would think that on his view, the conceptual analysis of behavior analytic language would be more valuable than that of cognitive language, although behavior analytic language would still have room for improvement (see Harzem & Miles, 1978, chapters 5 and 7). Cognitive language might also prove to have something of value, but on the whole it would be hampered by conceptual confusions and muddle headedness. At first blush, much of this approach seems consistent with behavior analysis. Behavior analysis is surely sympathetic with efforts to clarify the usage of terms and remove mentalistic/dualistic meanings that have been smuggled into the psychological vocabulary. I would suggest that behavior analysis goes farther than conceptual analysis, however, precisely because it is prepared to make cause and effect statements about language use, whereas conceptual analysis, because it is a form of philosophical verbal analysis, is not. More importantly, however, conceptual analyses leaves critical questions unanswered, with the door open ironically for mentalism. Let me now try to explain my position in greater detail. It seems to me that the most important conceptual issue associated with Professor Harzem s paper is the fundamental conception of verbal behavior. On a behavior analytic view, verbal behavior is operant behavior, like other forms of operant behavior in the sense that it may be analyzed in terms of the contingencies that have promoted it. Hence, on the behavior analytic view, scientific terms are not things that stand for, symbolize, or refer to objects either in the environment or in some subjective dimension unique to the scientist. A given instance of verbal behavior may be under the discriminative control of an object, but no scientific term is a thing or construct that stands for, symbolizes, or refers to another thing. By all rights, the statement that a scientific term is a construct that symbolizes or refers to an another thing ought to be just as odd as the statement that a pigeon s key peck to a lighted response key is a construct that stands for or refers to the light; that the statement perhaps does not sound as odd is ample testimony to the pervasiveness of mentalistic approaches to verbal behavior. Skinner (1945) commented on this topic over 50 years ago: Attempts to derive a symbolic function from the principle of conditioning... have been characterized by a very superficial analysis... Modern logic, as a formalization of real languages, retains and extends this dualistic theory of meaning and can scarcely be appealed to by the psychologist who recognizes his own responsibility in giving an account of verbal behavior. (pp ). Skinner (1957) has also addressed why it is mentalistic to conceive of verbal behavior as a symbolic activity. In this regard, a scientific term such as might occur in psychology is simply an instance of behavior that is under the discriminative control of its antecedent setting, just as the pigeon s response is an instance of behavior that is under the discriminative control of its antecedent setting. The meaning of a scientific term for the speaker derives from the conditions that occasion its utterance. The meaning for the listener derives from the contingencies into which the term enters as a discriminative stimulus (Moore, 1981). We now need to add two final features to our description of verbal behavior from the perspective of behavior analysis. The first feature that we need to add is that some of the antecedent conditions which end up control-

3 Harzem commentary 117 ling behavior are accessible to others; these conditions are said to be public. Other conditions are accessible to only one person; these conditions are said to be private. Thus, behavior analysis has a very important story about how private events are nevertheless behavioral, and how language relating to such events could nevertheless develop by virtue of relations holding in the public context and then be transferred, such that some of the controlling elements in the contingency come to be private, and accessible to only the speaker. The story about how a verbal community with no access to a private stimulus may nevertheless generate verbal behavior with respect to it is available in detail elsewhere (Skinner, 1945, Moore, 1995), and will not be repeated here. Whether any private stimuli do control verbal behavior in any particular instance, and if so, to what extent, are empirical questions. Importantly, we need not suppose that events inaccessible to others have any special properties for that reason. Private events may be distinguished by their limited accessibility, but not by any special structure or nature (Skinner, 1953, p. 257). The second feature we need to add is that as a form of complex behavior, verbal behavior is often under multiple control. Contingencies of several different sorts, with numerous different elements, can control verbal behavior. In this regard, I suggested some years ago that much psychological verbal behavior is controlled (a) partly by operations and contacts with data, and (b) partly by social-cultural traditions (Moore, 1975, 1981). I further suggested that when the proportion of control exerted by the latter classes of stimuli is great, there is trouble, and the resulting verbal behavior could legitimately be called mentalistic. Skinner identified the importance of spurious contingencies affecting the use of scientific terms in psychology, particularly the contingencies that involve a social/cultural tradition, when he talked about the origin of cognitive terms: [T]he reasons for the popularity of cognitive psychology... have nothing to do with scientific advances but rather with the release of the floodgates of mentalistic terms fed by the tributaries of philosophy, theology, history, letters, media, and worst of all, the English language (Skinner in Catania & Harnad, 1988, p. 447). In fact, much of Skinner s later writing was concerned with elucidating the prevalence of this form of stimulus control over the verbal behavior called cognitive (e.g., Skinner, 1989, 1990). Thus, many so-called cognitive terms are more related to inappropriate metaphors, culturally established patterns of speech, a vast vocabulary of ancient and nonscientific origin (Skinner, 1945), and so on, than they are to operations and contacts with data. For Skinner, then, the analysis of verbal behavior is the analysis of the contingencies underlying usage. The validity of a scientific term, for example, would be found in critically assessing the extent to which operations and contacts with data occasion its use, rather than social-cultural traditions. This is what Skinner had in mind when he talked about operational analysis (e.g., Skinner, 1945). Private stimulation may occasion some psychological terms, but we may again point to the importance of understanding contingencies in the control of verbal behavior: public or private, multiple or otherwise. As Skinner has said over the years, We may quarrel with any analysis which appeals to... an inner determiner of action, but the facts which have been represented with such devices cannot be ignored. (1953, p. 284) No entity or process which has any useful explanatory force is to be rejected on the ground that it is subjective or mental. The data which have made it important must, however, be studied and formulated in effective ways. (1964, p. 96) It is often said that an analysis of behavior in terms of ontogenic contingencies leaves something out of account, and this is true. It leaves out of account habits, ideas, cognitive processes, needs, drives, traits, and so on. But it does not neglect the facts upon which these concepts are based. It seems a more effective formulation of the very contingen-

4 118 cies to which those who use such concepts must eventually turn to explain their explanations. (Catania & Harnad, 1988, p. 390) What does all this have to do with conceptual analysis? It seems to me that according to conceptual analysis, words are but things that gain their meaning by referring to or symbolically representing other things. More specifically, mental terms are things that gain their meaning by referring to or symbolically representing publicly observable behavior. Verbal behavior is not behavior under the control of antecedent discriminative stimulation and contingencies, public or private, multiple or otherwise. Rather, it reflects in its essence underlying processes of symbolism and reference. This is simply mentalism. Moreover, the continual matter of making mental terms meaningful by referring to publicly observable behavior is reminiscent of orthodox methodological behaviorism. Consequently, it seems to me that by virtue of this fundamentally mentalistic conception of verbal behavior, conceptual analysis does not pave the way for a new behaviorism at all. In fact, it is just the same old thing renamed. As noted above, behavior analysis agrees that it is impossible for language that is descriptive of states accessible to only one individual to originate de novo, for reasons that are essentially compatible with Wittgenstein s. However, behavior analysis recognizes that language descriptive of states accessible to only one individual could develop as the consequence of specific processes, starting with the public and then transferring to the private. My point is that I do not believe conceptual analysis can accommodate anything like this. Thus, it seems to me the net effect is that conceptual analysis is left in an exceedingly curious position. For instance, Professor Harzem asserts that for a given phenomenon to count as behavior it must be publicly observable, and that private or covert events must therefore be treated as physiological, rather than as behavioral: It is best for conceptual clarity to retain the word physiological for events inside the body, and the word behavior for actions of the body. For these reasons, it is well to abandon the private event notion and instead scientifically to focus on behavioral phenomena, including linguistic behavior (p. 14). He claims that by treating them as behavioral Skinner is returning to the mentalism he himself has rejected: Radical behaviorism, on the other hand, has proposed to ban the so-called mentalistic concepts from the language of scientific psychology, on the belief that the phenomena they name are non-existent. But then, having banned these terms, it readmits them in the guise of private events. (p. 13) But Professor Harzem s treatment strikes me as exactly wrong. Skinner (1964) commented that An adequate science of behavior must consider events taking place within the skin of the organism, not as physiological mediators of behavior, but as part of behavior itself. It can deal with these events without assuming that they have any special nature or must be known in any special way. The skin is not that important as a boundary. Private and public events have the same kinds of physical dimensions (p. 84). I submit that it is conceptual analysis, not behavior analysis, that leaves one at the doorstep of mentalism, by virtue of its reference theory of language and its failure to recognize the behavioral nature of private events. Indeed, it is Skinner s behavioral analysis that shows the path away from that doorstep. To see how this follows, consider the matter of dispositions. Dispositions may be taken as referring to the physiological microstructure of the organism, in the sense of Aristotle s material cause. As such, they are certainly relevant, but not reducible to other kinds of causal forces, such as contingencies, just as Aristotle s material causes are not reducible to efficient causes. Unfortunately, the tendency is to convert dispositions into conceptual causes in their own right when framing causal explanations. Ironically, then, an analytic perspective that appeals to dispositions in causal explanations can be legitimately called mentalism (see also the discussion of dispositional analyses in Moore, 1999, pp. 63 ff.).

5 Harzem commentary 119 In addition, consider the matter of how one gives a causal explanation of introspective statements, given that one rejects the possibility that statements about events accessible to only one person actually might genuinely pertain to those events? How does one come to say that one has a pain that is sharp or dull? Are we to believe that people making such introspective statements are given to saying things that are deliberately muddled and bereft of conceptual clarity? Are we to believe that they deliberately say things that are not meaningful? Are we to rule such statements out of bounds for science unless they can be related to something publicly observable that can be agreed upon? If the latter, then the position is clearly methodological behaviorism. As Skinner (1945) said, I see no reason why an objective and operational science cannot consider the processes through which a vocabulary descriptive of a toothache is acquired and maintained (p. 294). To be sure, some mental terms may well be occasioned by publicly observable behavior. Other mental terms may well reflect dispositions, where by dispositions one means probabilities of behavior in particular circumstances. In these cases behavior analysis is generally consistent with conceptual analysis, although for different reasons: The mental terms are occasioned by publicly observable behavior or dispositions to behave, and they do not symbolically represent them. However, not all terms are so occasioned, and this is where the richness of behavior analysis parts company with conceptual analysis. On a behavior analytic view, some instances of mental terms may be under the functional control of deprivation associated with particular reinforcing consequences, rather than antecedent conditions. Two examples are hypochondria and malingering. Other instances of mental terms are occasioned in large measure by social and cultural traditions of the sort Skinner (1989, 1990) mentioned when talking of the origin of cognitive language. Still other instances of mental terms may well be occasioned by covert stimuli and responses. The control they exert has been derived from public circumstances. Presumably, we learn to label pains as sharp because they are the pains that are caused by sharp objects. Dull objects cause dull pains. It seems to me that conceptual analysis does not recognize terms occasioned by covert stimuli and responses, equating them all with publicly observable behavior. Finally, although conceptual analysis might assert that no mental terms are actually about the mental, it seems to me that strictly speaking, conceptual analysis takes no position on whether the mental might well exist in an ontological sense and cause behavior, even though one cannot talk about it. Behavior analysis does: The position is not genuinely operational because it shows an unwillingness to abandon fictions... What is lacking is the bold and exciting behavioristic hypothesis that what one observes and talks about is always the real or physical world (or at least the one world) and that experience is a derived construct to be understood only through an analysis of verbal (not, of course, merely vocal) processes... How can we account for the behavior of talking about mental events? The solution must be psychological, rather than logical, and I have tried to suggest one approach in my present paper. (Skinner, 1945, pp ) To be sure, when dealing with others, even behavior analysts can only deal with that to which they have access: the publicly observable behavior as a function of publicly observable variables. Thus, at present, behavior analysts do have to deal inferentially with the private events of others: The radical behaviorist may... consider private events (inferentially, perhaps, but none the less meaningfully). (Skinner, 1945, p. 294) In studying behavior we may have to deal with the stimulation from a tooth as an inference rather than as a directly observable fact. (Skinner, 1953, p. 258) The present analysis... continues to deal with the private event, even if only as an inference... The verbal response

6 120 is a response to the private event and may be used as a source of information about it. (Skinner, 1953, p. 282) However, Skinner (1953) also noted the line between public and private is not fixed. The boundary shifts with every discovery of a technique for making private events public. Behavior which is of such small magnitude that it is not ordinarily observed may be amplified. Covert verbal behavior may be detected in slight movements of the speech apparatus. Deaf-mutes who speak with their fingers behave covertly with their fingers, and the movements may be suitably amplified. There is no reason why covert behavior could not be amplified so that the individual himself could not make use of the information himself for example, in creative thinking. After all, this is only what the individual does when he thinks publicly by scratching notes on paper or by manipulating an artistic medium. The problem of privacy may, therefore, eventually be solved by technical advances. But we are still faced with events which occur at the private level and which are important to the organism without instrumental amplification. How the organism reacts to these events will remain an important question, even though the events may some day be made accessible to everyone. (p. 282) That is, private events are important because if we recognize them as covert behavioral events, we can take steps to facilitate their development. We may well be able to teach people to think faster and more accurately, to solve problems faster and more accurately without the aid of paper and pencil, to compose music better in their heads, to avoid migraine headaches, and so on. I don t see how conceptual analysis can accommodate such possibilities, precisely because of its epistemological stance. If it can t, then it is in an unfortunate position indeed. References Harzem, P. & Miles, T. R. (1978). Conceptual issues in operant psychology. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Moore, J. (1975). On the principle of operationism in a science of behavior. Behaviorism, 3, Moore, J. (1981). On mentalism, methodological behaviorism, and radical behaviorism. Behaviorism, 9, Moore, J. (1995). On introspections and verbal reports. In S. C. Hayes, L. J. Hayes, M. Sato, & K. Ono (Eds.), Behavior analysis of language and cognition (pp ). Reno, NV: Context Press. Moore, J. (1999). The basic principles of behaviorism. In B. Thyer (Ed.), The philosophical legacy of behaviorism (pp ). Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer. Russell, B. (1921). The analysis of mind. London: Allen and Unwin. Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchison. Skinner, B. F. (1945). The operational analysis of psychological terms. Psychological Review, 52, , Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Skinner, B. F. (1964). Behaviorism at fifty. In T. W. Wann (Ed.), Behaviorism and phenomenology (pp ). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skinner, B. F. (1989). The origins of cognitive thought. American Psychologist, 44, Skinner, B. F. (1990). Can psychology be a science of mind? American Psychologist, 45, Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Zuriff, G. E. (1985). Behaviorism: A conceptual reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press.