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JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR 1988, 501,97-111 NUMBER 1 (JULY) FINDING THE PHILOSOPHICAL CORE: A REVIEW OF STEPHEN C. PEPPER'S WORLD HYPOTHESES: A STUDY IN EVIDENCE' STEVEN C. HAYES, LINDA J. HAYES, AND HAYNE W. REESE UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA-RENO AND WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY Behavior analysis has always had significant the grand scheme of philosophy, abstracted conflicts with other psychological perspectives. from the details of particular positions. At their most fundamental level, these conflicts The book is at once simple and difficult. are often philosophical, concerning such issues In some areas, Pepper focused on the debates as the nature of the human and the purposes of his own time and particular history, and of science. Why are these the conflicts? What, thus emphasized distinctions that do not seem if anything, can we do about them? Can we to have withstood the test of nearly half a resolve them? Can we avoid them altogether century. In general, however, the book is by simply abandoning philosophy? amazingly contemporary. It is like a series To answer these questions, we must be of colored spotlights cast on a complicated clear about the philosophy underlying be- scene. Irrelevant details of various philo- havior analysis compared to those of other sophical positions disappear like so many perspectives. To be clear is difficult, however, shades of blue under a blue spotlight. Fun- because the assumptions and postulates of damental differences leap out, now from one the position are not deliberately and un- angle, now from another. Although the book ambiguously laid down. Fundamental as- is not about psychology, it exposes the philo- sumptions, specific theories, and historical sophical sources of current conflicts within accidents are too often discussed concurrently behavior analysis and the nature of its conflicts and without adequate differentiation in be- with other psychologies. havior-analytic expositions. Skinner's philo- To make Pepper's position understandable, sophical writings are especially prone to this we must summarize some parts of the book difficulty, perhaps because he is so extensively fairly extensively. To show its value for a involved with so many nonphilosophical as- field he never analyzed, we must interpret pects of the field. it and extend it. Our purpose is not to promote In 1942 Stephen C. Pepper, a philosopher the use of Pepper's conceptual categories per and aestheticist, published World Hypotheses: se; it is to use them to illuminate the conceptual A Study in Evidence. His central insight was categories of modern behavior analysis and that philosophical systems cluster around a of competing psychological systems. few core models, or "world hypotheses," drawn from common sense. His strategy was to ignore details and personalities, and instead to present THE NATURE OF WORLD the central tenets of each world view in a HYPOTHESES general way. He used his own terms to describe A world hypothesis is a model of the uni- most of these tenets, avoiding excess or pa- verse of observations and inferences. (We will rochial meanings. He quoted and cited very also use the term "world view" as a synonym little. His style permits an understanding of for "world hypotheses" to emphasize that Pepper's use of the term "hypothesis" in this Pepper, Stephen C. (1942). World hypotheses: A study context is not precisely what psychologists in evidence. Berkeley: University of California Press. vii mean by a "hypothesis" in a scientific context.) + 348 pp. World hypotheses differ in scope (i.e., the Linda J. Hayes is the former Linda J. Parrott. Reprint requests should be sent to Steven C. Hayes, range of events incorporated) and precision Department of Psychology, University of Nevada-Reno, (i.e., the scarcity of alternative interpretations Reno, Nevada 89557-0062. made of the events incorporated), and their 97 98 STEVEN C. HAYES et al. adequacy is a matter of the degree to which its underlying metaphor becomes empty and each obtains. Ideally, a world view has un- meaningless. limited scope and is so precise that it permits one and only one interpretation of every event. In practice, all reasonably adequate current THE RELATIVELY ADEQUATE world views fall short of this ideal. Scope WORLD VIEWS and precision tend to be inversely related: Pepper identified four relatively adequate A model that specifies precisely how to in- current world hypotheses: mechanism, form- terpret a given event will tend not to in- ism, organicism, and contextualism. Mech- corporate as many events as a model that anism and formism are analytic: The whole permits viewing a given event in a number is reducible to its parts. The parts are basic, of different ways. the whole derived. Organicism and contex- Pepper argued that each world hypothesis tualism are synthetic: The whole is basic, is autonomous. As an attempt to provide a the parts derived. Formism and contextualism complete view of the world, each world hy- are dispersive: Facts are related when they pothesis creates its own field of play. Within are found to be so, not by assumption. Chance, that field of play "competing" world views therefore, is not denied in these hypotheses. can be interpreted but cannot compete directly. Mechanism and organicism are integrative: This argument anticipates the similar views Facts are related by assumption and order of Kuhn (1962) among others (there are good is categorical. As such, chance is denied. Dis- reasons to believe that many of Kuhn's ideas persive world views tend to be higher in scope were derived from Pepper's work; Efron, than in precision; integrative world hypotheses 1980) and has several implications. First, tend to be higher in precision than in scope. using the categories of one world view to Describing psychological systems in Pep- analyze and criticize another is illegitimate per's terms organizes them into coordinated and inherently useless. Second, no world hy- sets of related propositions and concerns. The pothesis can be strengthened by revealing likely conflicts between particular psycho- shortcomings in another. The weakness of logical systems may then be derived, and one world view in no way implies strength solutions to these conflicts proposed. For this in another. Third, eclecticism, if it involves reason, examining each of Pepper's four rel- combinations of distinct world hypotheses, is atively adequate world views seems potentially inherently confusing. Each world hypothesis worthwhile to an analysis of psychological entails a different set of conceptual categories, systems. many of which are mutually contradictory across different world hypotheses. No coherent Mechanism combination of currently popular world views The root metaphor of mechanism is the seems likely and none has yet succeeded. This machine. Any common-sense machine is com- does not mean that forms of integration are posed of discrete parts related to other parts not possible, but if Pepper were correct, suc- in some systematic way. Relations among the cessful integration could come only by com- parts do not change the nature of the parts, binations based on yet another coherent world however, because the parts exist independently hypothesis. A single exception exists in stra- of those relations. Further, in any common- tegic integrations of world views subordinated sense machine, some sort of force or energy to a single world view. As discussed later, is exerted on or transmitted through the system such an integration is possible in only one to produce predictable outcomes. of the relatively adequate world views. A simple example is the lever. A lever is According to Pepper, world hypotheses are composed of two discrete and independent derived from "root metaphors." A root met- parts-a lever and a fulcrum. When they aphor is a common sense conceptualization are related in a particular way (e.g., the lever of a domain, in accordance with which cat- is placed on the fulcrum), a force exerted egorical concepts have been constructed. The on one end of the lever produces a predictable root metaphor structures an understanding effect at the other end according to the amount of the technical categories. A technical con- of force, length of the lever, placement of struct sustaining no conceptual contact with the fulcrum, and so on. In more complicated BOOK REVIEW 99 machines, the history of forces applied may or theory. Scientists cannot use the corre- also be relevant to the operation of the ma- spondence between a verbal construction of chine. In this context, history means that one the machine and the facts as a test of the part may not function until other parts have adequacy of the construction if the very same functioned, or that various parts have worn facts serve both as the source of the con- down. For example, a clock does not strike struction and as the means of its verification. until the spring controlling the hourhand has Truth is best established by examining the been wound and has operated for a pre- correspondence between the verbal construc- determined period of time. To take a more tion and a variety of new facts implied by contemporary example, a computer does not the construction. In line with the integrative operate until a code has been placed in its quality of mechanism, the more derived and "memory" chips and software in its read-only indirect these predictions are, the better (Er- "memory." icsson & Simon, 1984). Hypothetico-deductive According to the world hypothesis of mech- research methodology exemplifies this logic; anism, the entire universe is like a machine. many mechanists gravitate toward it. Different machines yield different variants of mechanism. The hydraulic statuary of the Formism Middle Ages leads to one theory, the computer The root metaphor of formism is similarity. model leads to another. Nonetheless, the key The kind of similarity implied here is the elements of common-sense machines and their recurrence of recognizable forms: blades of means of operation are always present.
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