THE PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACY OF BEHAVIORISM THE PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACY OF BEHAVIORISM
Edited by
BRUCE A. THYER University of Georgia, Athens, USA
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Coogress Catalogiog-io-Publicatioo Data
The philosophicallegacy of behaviorism I edited by Bruce A. Thyer. p. cm. -- (Studies in cognitive systems : v. 22) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-90-481-5231-5 ISBN 978-94-015-9247-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9247-5 1. Behaviorism (Psychology)--Philosophy. 2. Psychology--Philosophy. 1. Thyer, Bruce A. II. Series. BF199.P45 1999 150.19'43--dc21 99-22918
ISBN 978-90-481-5231-5
Printed an acid-free paper
Ali Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999 No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Series Preface
This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, infonnation, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experi• mental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. In the present volume, Bruce Thyer has brought together an impressive collection of original studies concerning philosophical aspects of behaviorism, which continues to exert considerable influence even in the era of the Cognitive Revolution. From its early origins and basic principles to its analysis of verbal behavior, consciousness, and free-will, determinism, and self-control, this work offers something of value for everyone with a serious interest in understanding scientific method in application to human behavior. Indeed, as the editor remarks, behaviorism is as much a philosophy as it is an approach to the study of behavior. The breadth and depth of this approach receives proper representation in this work devoted to its rich and varied philosophical legacy.
J.H.F.
v
BA. Thyer (ed.). The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism, v. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Table of Contents
Series Preface v Bruce A. Thyer / Editor's Preface ix James Dinsmoor / Foreword 1 Michael L. Commons and Eric A. Goodheart / The Origins of Behaviorism 9 Jay Moore / The Basic Principles of Behaviorism 41 Richard Garrett / Epistemology 69 Ernest A. Vargas / Ethics 89 Jon S. Bailey and Robert J. Wallander / Verbal Behavior 117 Steven C. Hayes, Kelly G. Wilson, and Elizabeth V. Gifford / Consciousness and Private Events 153 Bruce Waller / Free Will, Determinism and Self-Control 189 Roger Schnaitter / Some Criticisms of Behaviorism 209 Subject Index 251 Name Index 257
vii Editor's Preface
Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without (Pavlov, 1906). As the philosophy of a science of behavior, behaviorism called for probably the most drastic change ever proposed in our way of thinking about man. It is almost literally a matter of turning the explanation of behavior inside out (Skinner, 1974, p. 249). When I undertook the editing of this book I approached a fellow faculty member of my university, a distinguished philosopher in his own right, about his suggestions for a possible publisher. His reaction: "Why bother? Behav• iorism is dead". This took me somewhat by surprise, as I had recently returned from the annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, whose program was laden with philosophical papers dealing with various aspects of behaviorism. I knew that the works of B. F. Skinner continued to be cited at a high rate (Thyer, 1991), and that the behavioral publishing industry was a thriving one. The philosophical journal Behaviorism (now titled Behavior and Philosophy) had been in print since 1972 and remained a respected scholarly outlet. Despite my colleague's Nietzsche-like response, I decided to persist in my task of developing this work. Fortunately I was able to recruit an able team of chapter contributors, philosophers and psychologists, with considerable expertise in the subject. Our aim was to produce a collection of original chapters, each one dealing with a major topic of general philosophy - epistemology, ethics, consciousness, language, free will, determinism and self• control, and the result is before you. By way of introduction to this volume, let me define our subject matter. Behaviorism is a philosophy. My office dictionary offers some of the following statements under its definitions of Philosophy: the " ... logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe: included in philosophy are ethics, aesthetics, logic, epistemology, metaphysics, etc ... the general principles or laws of a field of knowledge ... a particular system of principles for the conduct of life .. , a study of human morals, character, and behavior '" " (Guralnick, 1980, p. 1069). It
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B.A. Thyer (ed.), The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism, ix-xv. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. x Editor's Preface is clear that there is considerable overlap between the subject matter of psychology, and that of philosophy, namely human behavior. From the perspective of the philosophical behaviorist, behavior refers to the actions of the human body. No distinction is made between observable and unobservable activities. Overt actions, peristaltic movements, heart beats, secreting glands, feeling states and brain activities, even those giving rise to the activities called thoughts, dreams, and hopes, are all seen as behavior. Contrary to popular opinion, behaviorism is keenly interested in developing sophisticated, logically sound, and empirically-supported accounts of mental activity and of affective reactions. Where behaviorism departs from alternative approaches to explaining these phenomena lays in its focus, namely the natural external environment in which a person lives. Behaviorism's environ• mental determinism can be distinguished, say, from Freud's mental determin• ism. Likewise, behaviorism is distinct from the biological determinism of the geneticist, the physiologist, or the neurologist. Many disciplines study behavior - the distinguishing feature of behavior analysis is its focus on how behavior arises from transactions between actions and environmental responses. The philosophical antecedents of contemporary behaviorism involve a number of sources, movements, and individuals. Skinner cited Mach, Poincare, and Comte, as among the more pertinent personages (Skinner, 1987), and positivism, logic, parsimony, operationism, and empiricism are among the relevant (but not isomorphic) principles. Behaviorism is a compo• nent of a larger field, called behavior analysis. Behavior analysis itself is comprised of the philosophy of science called behaviorism, a methodological and basic research domain (called the experimental analysis of behavior), and a practical arena (called applied behavior analysis), devoted to solving significant problems of society. Each domain has its derivative journals (e.g., Behavior and Philosophy, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, the Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis) and professional societies (the Association for Behavior Analysis: An International Association; Division 25 (the Experimental Analysis of Behavior) of the American Psychological Association; the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior, the European Association for Behaviour Analysis, etc.). The foundations of behavior analysis are relatively simple and surprisingly easy to understand. 1. People engage in behavior. 2. Behavior consists of everything the body does, public or private. 3. To some (unknown) extent, behavior is a function of fundamental mechanisms of learning, namely respondent conditioning, operant condi• tioning, and learning through imitation. Editor's Preface xi
4. These mechanisms of learning exert their influence through the physical environment in which the person lives, using processes involving the stimuli which precede behavior, the external association of events, and the consequences which follow behavior. 5. To accurately understand (and perhaps predict and control) behavior, one must learn how environmental experiences develop behavior. Once this is known, it may become possible to deliberately alter our environment in order to produce certain desirable behaviors and to reduce undesirable ones. As Skinner put it: "I am not trying to change people, all 1 want to do is change the world in which they live" (B. F. Skinner, 1972, cited in Bjork, 1993, p. 233). What are the implications of these views for philosophy? To understand ethical behavior would require, from a behavioral perspective, the isolation of those learning experiences which give rise to what can be labeled as ethical or unethical comportment by individuals. If this can be done, then by enhancing those environmental conditions which produce ethically-behaving human beings, ethical behavior can be promoted. An early inquiry along these lines was conducted by Risley and Hart (1968). When preschool children were reinforced for saying that they had engaged in 'X' activity (e.g., painting), irrespective of whether or not they actually did engage in 'X' during the day, saying that they participated in 'X' was greatly increased. But, if they were then only reinforced for stating that they did 'X' when they had indeed actually engaged in 'X', then truthfulness (correspondence between what they said and did) increased as well. In other words, when preschool children were reinforced for telling the truth, truthful reports greatly increased. It may be that consistent truthfulness is partially a function of neurochem• istry, of one's genetic endowment, of a person's 'character', the cognitivist's 'information processing mechanisms', or of the Freudian super-ego. The behaviorist disavows none of these possible (internal) factors as being potentially relevant. Rather, the behaviorist says: Go ahead, study those factors. Try to see how well you can predict and control behavior using those independent variables. Meantime, I will examine the possible role of how one's environment reinforces and punishes telling the truth. I will examine the influence of truthful role models, and other factors derived from social learning theory, to develop an environmentally-based account. If successful, I will then see if it is possible to inten• tionally construct psychosocial and physical environments which promote truthfulness. We shall see who eventually produces the best science and the most effective ways to improve society. This is, of course, a reasonable position for a scientist to take. The geneticist is not criticized because of her focus on hereditarian mechanisms, and of the neglect of operant factors. Similarly, the psychoanalyst largely ignores xii Editor's Preface learning factors in favor of pwported intrapsychic dynamics. For the sociobi• ologist causation is sought via the mechanism of kin selection, and the neurologist looks for diseases of the central nervous system. Does the behavior analyst claim that all human comportment will eventually be explicable in terms of learning theory? Decidedly not! But it is likely that learning mechanisms will be involved to some degree and it seems worthwhile to explore their potential role to the greatest possible extent. This is the role of behavior analysis, aided by the philosophy of behaviorism. There is no claim to an exclusive possession of the "truth", no denigration of alternative perspectives on understanding human behavior in all of its diversity. There is a calm confidence that in the fullness of time, empirical research will slowly reveal nature's truths and the value of the various competing scientific approaches. Behaviorism, while not denying the profound influence that the so-called 'cognitive revolution' has had within contemporary philosophy and psychol• ogy, remains somewhat skeptical that significant advances will be forthcom• ing from this perspective in either field. Skepticism, tempered with a respect for empirical data and rationalism, remains the best safeguard against the premature adoption of any new philosophical position. If genuine progress is made in addressing philosophical issues and psychological problems via cognitive science, these will be welcomed by the behaviorist, irrespective of the implications such advances will have for the behavioral position. For another exarnple related to philosophy, let us take the issue of aesthet• ics: Watanabe, Sakamoto, and Wakita (1995) trained pigeons to accurately discriminate between a series of painting by Monet and Picasso. Then, when the animals were exposed to novel pictures by Monet and Picasso, ones they had never seen before, they retained the ability to successfully tell the difference between the two painters! Moreover, the birds had apparently acquired the ability, not directly trained, to discriminate unfamiliar works of Cezanne and Renoir (Impressionists) from those of Braque and Matisse (Cubists)! How many liberal arts graduates can reliably tell the difference between the works of Monet and Picasso? Such a refined aesthetic sense is regrettably rare these days. Now, no one is claiming that pigeons are art critics, but the fundamental learning processes through which other animals acquire discriminative skills are clearly related to some degree (obviously not completely) to explaining how human beings develop aesthetic capabilities. The topic of self-control is a relevant one to the field of philosophy. How do humans acquire skills in self-control? This touches on the issue of free will, making choices, and other important issues important to understanding the human condition. All things being equal, it seems that people prefer obtaining rewards immediately over delayed rewards. To chose a delayed reward over Editor's Preface xiii an immediate one is an important skill, crucial to success in life. How is this acquired? Schweitzer and Sulzer-Azaroff (1988) provide some leads, using children noted by their teachers for being "impulsive". Initially, before training, the children chose smaller, less delayed reinforcers over larger, delayed ones, when playing a simple game for which they could earn edibles and trinkets. By starting with very small time delays, the children were taught to chose larger delayed reinforcers over immediate smaller ones. At the conclusion of the study, the children were patiently waiting for relatively lengthy periods of time in order to obtain greater amounts of rewards, in stark contrast to their initial behavior of immediately choosing to get small rewards. Such studies have implications for understanding the development of self• control by human beings as a part of natural developmental processes. Analogous situations arise quite naturally in everyday life, wherein children can chose rewards 'now' or 'later'. It would seem reasonable that children fortunate enough to be exposed to situations wherein delayed choice resulted in greater rewards would develop apparently "naturally occurring" self• control, in contrast to children not exposed to such learning experiences. There can be little doubt that Pavlovian processes have some bearing on the development of the preferences and aversions of humans, that exposure to role models influences how one behaves, and that the consequences of one's verbal behavior influences what and how we learn to speak. The point of origin for behavior is consistently sought for in the natural environment in which a person lives. The behaviorists' niche in science is the careful examination of such environmentally-based learning experiences. These causes of behavior are assumed to reside in a natural world, a monistic world untroubled by Cartesian dualisms, teleology, or vitalism. Ultimately, behavior analysis may be seen as ecology: "that branch of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environments ... the complex of relations between a specific organism and its environment" (Guralnick, 1980, p. 442). Thus, when the subject matter of behavior analysis begins dealing with ethics, values, language, consciousness, making choices, and arriving at logical decisions, we have arrived at the domain of philosophy. Some of Skinner's earliest works provided conceptual behavior analyses of topics such as (these are chapter titles) "Emotion", "Self-Control", "Thinking", "The Self', "Religion", and "Personal Control" (see Skinner, 1953). His interest in such matters continued until his death. Among his final essays were such titles as 'The origins of cognitive thought' (Skinner, 1989), and 'Outlining a science of feelings (Skinner, 1987). His sketch for a behavioral epistemology remained one of his unfinished works (cf. Wiener, 1996). While Skinner is no longer with us, his intellectual legacy remains. His students, and their own successive generations of students, are continuing to xiv Editor's Preface work at expanding the explanatory power of empirically-based learning theories as applied to the various fields of philosophy. In the present volume, Michael Commons and Eric Goodheart provide us with an overview of the philosophical origins of behaviorism, while Jay Moore describes the basic principles of the field. Richard Garrett addresses behavioral perspectives on epistemology, while Earnest Vargas describes a behaviorological look at ethics. Jon Bailey and Robert Wallender tackle the difficult subject of verbal behavior (akin to, but not the same field as, "language"), logically followed by a related chapter dealing with the philosophical field of ontology, Hayes, Wilson and Gifford's treatment of consciousness and private events. Bruce Waller reviews behavioral perspectives on free will, determinism, and self• control, and to add balance to the previous seven chapters, the final essay by Roger Schnaitter provides a critical analysis of behaviorism as a philosophy. All of these chapters are original contributions commissioned especially for this book. As such, it is hoped that they illustrate the ongoing vitality of behavioral perspectives on contemporary and perennial philosophical issues, and will serve as a springboard for future research, empirical and conceptual, on the contributions of behaviorism to the field of philosophy. To large extent, the value of a particular point of view lies in its ability to predict and control behavior. A pertinent quote from Karl Marx is inscribed on his tomb in Highgate Cemetery in London: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however, is to change it". From such a perspective, behaviorism is alive and thriving.
Bruce A. Thyer The University of Georgia Athens, Georgia U.S.A.
REFERENCES
Bjork, D. (1993). B.F. Skinner: A Life. New York: Basic Books. Guralnick, D.B. (1980). Webster's New World Dictionary (second college edition). Cleveland, OH: William Collins. Pavlov, I. P. (1906). Scientific study of so-called psychic processes in the higher animals. [cf. J. Kaplan (Ed.). Bartlett's familiar quotations (16th edition, p. 558). Boston: William Brown]. Risley, T. R. and Hart, B. (1968). Developing correspondence between the non-verbal and verbal behavior of preschool children. Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis, 1,267-281. Schweitzer, J. B., and Sulzer-Azaroff, B. (1988). Self-control: Teaching tolerance for delay in impulsive children. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 50,173-186. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Free Press. Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York: Knopf. Editor's Preface xv
Skinner, B. F. (1987, May 8). Outlining a science of feeling. The Times Literary Supplement, p. 490, 502. Skinner, B. F. (1989). The origins of cognitive thought. American Psychologist, 44, 13-18. Thyer, B. A. (1991). The enduring intellectual legacy ofB. F. Skinner: A citation count from 1966 - 1989. The Behavior Analyst, 14,73-75. Watanabe, S., Sakamoto, I., and Wakita, M. (1995). Pigeons' discrimination of painting by Monet and Picasso. Journal of the Experimental Analysis ofBehavior, 36, 165-174. Wiener, D. N. (1996). B.F. Skinner: Benign Anarchist. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
RECOMMENDED FuRTHER READINGS
Catania, A. C. and Hamad, S. (Eds.). (1988). The selection of behavior - The operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner: Comments and consequences. New York: Cambridge Univer• sity Press. Chase, P. N., and Parrot, L. I. (Eds.). (1986). Psychological aspects of language. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Hayes, L. J. (1991). Dialogues on verbal behavior. Reno, NY: Context Press. Hayes, S. C. (Ed.). (1989). Rule-governed behavior: Cognition, contingencies, and instructional control. New York: Plenum. Hayes, S. c., and Hayes, L. I. (Eds.). (1992). Understanding verbal relations. Reno, NY: Context Press. Julia, P. (1983). Explanatory models in linguistics: A behavioral perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lee, V. L. (1988). Beyond behaviorism. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Leigland, S. (Ed.). (1992). Radical behaviorism: Willard Day on psychology and philosophy. Reno, NV: Context Press. Newman, B. (1992). The reluctant alliance: Behaviorism and humanism. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Rachlin, H. (1991). Introduction to madern behaviorism. New York: Freeman. Sagal, P. T. (1981). Skinner's philosophy. Lanham, NY: University Press of America. Wann, T. W. (Ed.). (1964). Behaviorism and phenomenology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zuriff, G. E. (1985). Behaviorism: A conceptual reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press. JAMES A. DINSMOOR
Foreword
For most people, I think, the history of psychology divides into two parts. Certainly this has been true in my own case. Even though my entry into graduate school came about midway through the hundred-odd years that have passed since the founding of the American Psychological Association, to me the fIrst half of that century has always seemed like "history," and of the ancient variety at that, and the second half entirely contemporary. I suspect that the same kind of division holds for later generations as well. What we have directly experienced seems immediate and important, but what we have only heard about or read about seems very remote and much less relevant. As a result, there may be profound and far-reaching differences between the generations in our perception of what has gone on. Behaviorism, as described by the sources available when I began my graduate work, involved a redefInition of the subject matter of psychology. It arose in reaction to the structuralism of Wundt and Titchener, and it sought to place our discipline within the framework of the natural sciences. "It implies ... a willingness to study human reactions exactly as other events in the natural world are studied" (Heidbreder, 1933, p. 238). Its program included three major planks. First, at the philosophical level, the behaviorists rejected the structuralists' attempt to distinguish between the world of physical events and the world of conscious states (philosophical dualism); they were steadfast materialists. Second, at the methodological level, the behaviorists abjured introspection, preferring to deal only with things the scientist can observe directly, without the mediation of another organism. "States of conscious• ness," said Watson (1919, p. 1), " ... are not objectively verifiable and for that reason can never become data for science." (Incidentally, I can find no conflict between this statement about data and Skinner's comments on private events.) Finally, the goal of the behaviorists was not the analysis of conscious states but the prediction and control of behavior. It might be disingenuous to insist that the theories constructed and the empirical data gathered by individual behaviorists be completely excluded from this characterization, but they are not part of the definition, and it should be noted that in this regard there has been a wide range of variation from one individual to the next. The writings of Pavlov or Watson, for example, cannot be used as a guide to the positions taken by Skinner.
1
B.A. Thyer (ed.). The Philosophical Legacy of Behaviorism. 1-8. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2 Dinsmoor
The story as told by cognitive psychologists is that behaviorism had come to dominate psychology by the nineteen-fifties, only to be overthrown by a counter-revolution in the nineteen-sixties. At one level, this may be true, but at another level I see a great deal of continuity. Something very like cognitive psychology has always been with us. When I entered graduate school in 1943, it was painfully evident that psychologists who claimed to be "scientific," let alone those who proclaimed themselves to be "behaviorists," were a decided minority within the profession. Clinical psychologists were usually Freudian, or at least "psychodynamic," in their orientation. Although several historical "schools" of psychology were still featured in our textbooks, most academic psychologists had no such ideological affiliations. If questioned, they might have replied that they simply relied on ordinary common sense, meaning that the concepts they used in their work were not very different from those that prevailed among the general population. In terms of intellectual prestige, to be sure, the distribution was entirely different. This is the scene described by historians of psychology when they write about the dominance of the behaviorists. The pages of the Psychological Review, which was virtually the only outlet for theoretical material in psychology, were filled with articles on the language and the logic of science, as applied to psychology, and on the niceties of theory construction. As it was primarily the behaviorists who were concerned with these issues, it is not surprising that they dominated the discussion. Most of the empirical data in what was then known as "experimental" psychology (a label used in those days to distinguish basic research from such categories as clinical, abnormal, social, educational or industrial psychology, which rarely used experimental methods) appeared in one or the other of two journals, the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the Journal of Com• parative and Physiological Psychology. A large part of the content of those journals was devoted to the competing theoretical systems of Edward C. Tolman, who described himself as a "cognitive behaviorist" (note which was the adjective and which was the noun) and Clark L. Hull, who championed "reinforcement theory." In the years before his death, Hull's was without any question the leading name in experimental and theoretical psychology. (Skinner was a respected but at that time still relatively minor figure.) This is not just my recollection. It can be supported by survey data. In an obituary written shortly after Hull's death, Kenneth Spence (1952) - Hull's lieutenant and an important theorist in his own right - noted that during the decade from 1941 through 1950, 40% of all studies appearing in the two experimental journals (70% of those in learning and motivation) cited at least one article by Hull. Similarly, Hovland (1952) found that 40% of the articles in the previous two years of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, and the Psychological Foreword 3
Review cited Hull, while in another survey Ruja (1956) found that even in the Journal ofAbnormal and Social Psychology from 1949-1952 Hull's Princi• ples of Behavior was cited 105 times and its runner-up only 25. To my generation, the choice between learning theorists like Hull, Tolman, Guthrie (another behaviorist), Spence, and Skinner was a real one; it generated a great deal of thinking and no little debate about the respective merits of their competing points of view. It was clear that behaviorism included a variety of approaches. Within that tradition, some of us felt that Skinner represented the most viable current, but his views were those of a mere mortal, not sanctified by an overpowering reputation. They were subject to debate. The result is that I did not and do not think of behaviorism exclusively in terms of Skinner's particular precepts, worthy though they may be. After the deaths of Hull, Tolman, Guthrie, and Spence, however, their followers appeared to lose direction, and their programs faltered, but Skinner's influence grew. Although they did not convene every year, Conferences on the Experimental Analysis of Behavior began meeting in 1947 (Dinsmoor, 1987); the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior began publication in 1958. Behaviorists like I. P. Pavlov (who, despite his protestations to the contrary, I place in this category), J. B. Watson, N. E. Miller, E. R. Guthrie, and O. H. Mowrer, had long held an interest in practical applications, and soon the terms 'behavior modification' and 'behavior therapy' began to appear in the literature and in the titles of academic journals. In Great Britain, the inspiration came mainly from Hull (see Eysenck, 1964) but in the United States it came primarily from Skinner (see Goodall, 1972; Martin and Pear, 1978; Ullman and Krasner, 1965). The Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis began publication in 1968. By that time, Skinner had emerged as the best known although not the only important behaviorist. Wright (1970) asked a random sample of members of the American Psychological Association, many of whom were clinicians, to list the names of those who had most importantly influenced twentieth-century psychology. The name most frequently mentioned was Freud, to be sure, but Skinner came second on the list, followed, in order, by Watson, Pavlov, and Hull. The same four names, plus that of Tolman, appeared in a different order in a survey of 91 departmental chairmen conducted by Seberhagen and Moore (1969). In a poll of 2,340 graduate students and 368 graduate faculty pub• lished by Lipsey (1974), Skinner was favored as the individual they "most respected," far outrunning his nearest competitor. My first contact with the cognitive revolution, as it is sometimes called, came from a book entitled Cognitive Psychology, written by Ulric Neisser (1967). In 1968, George Miller, a psycholinguist who wrote about "the 4 Dinsmoor processing and storing of information," was elected President of the American Psychological Association. Aware that a significant trend was developing, I began preparing for the debate. I tried to find a meaning to attach to the word 'cognitive'. One of the senses in which it was used, of course, was with reference to thinking and related processes (e.g., attention, verbal behavior, perception, memory, and problem solving) as a content area, but it was evident that its proponents were promoting it as something more than that, as a point of view. I asked a number of people who now professed to be cognitive psychologists what distinguished their approach from that of other psychologists but failed to hear any answer that was either consistent or that corresponded to empirical fact. Computers were becoming available for psychological research. They were useful not only in programming behavioral contingencies of considerable complexity but also in presenting sophisticated visual displays, timing responses, and accumulating detailed data on sequences of events. Computers were far more interesting than memory drums, and for many cognitive psychologists, they became a metaphor or model for the living organism. Elaborate flow charts began to appear in the literature, representing the hypothetical workings of the human mind, with a variety of carefully labelled rectangles linked by arrows pointing from one to the other and sometimes back again. When I criticized the cognitive approach in a journal that regularly publishes "peer commentaries" on its main or "target" articles (Dinsmoor, 1983), the authors of several of the commentaries suggested that it was the use of mediating states or processes that distinguished it from behaviorism. For me, however, this was the wrong line of cleavage. To anyone who is familiar with the history of the field, such a distinction does not make sense. It is true that after once laying claim to having anticipated Tolman in the use of intervening variables (Skinner, 1938/1991), Skinner in particular has held them to a minimum. But to one of my generation Skinner does not embrace all of behaviorism. Pavlov, for example, phrased almost all of his conclusions in terms of hypothetical events in the nervous system, and Hull, Tolman, and Spence all made intervening variables the primary objects of their inquiry. The fact that the mediating variables proposed by the cognitive psycholo• gists have other names and other functions than those postulated by Hull and Tolman does not lead to the conclusion that they stem from a different philosophy of science. Although Hull and Tolman did not refer to short-term memory, for example, or to information processing, storage, and retrieval, the two assemblages of hypothetical links they proposed were very different from one another. Tolman even included "representations," a term which has remained very popular with the cognitive nonbehaviorists. Foreword 5
One possible distinction between the cognitivists and the behaviorists is that the Hullians, at least, were all extremely careful to define their constructs in terms both of their establishing operations and of their effects on behavior. As Hull himself put it, they "anchored" their intervening variables at both their ends to empirical observations. Although Tolman was not as rigorous as Hull in his definitional structure, he accepted the same principle. The best of the cognitivists have followed suit, but a great many seem entirely oblivious to the issue, and I worry that the second group may simply have discarded scientific standards, along with those who have promoted them. If so, that seems more like a step backward than a step ahead. The moment of illumination came when a candidate for a position in our department gave a colloquium to the assembled faculty. After trying and failing to account for his data in concrete detail, he concluded that it might be necessary to turn to a cognitive explanation - and on this note ended his talk. Apparently he believed that adopting a cognitive approach absolved him of any need for specificity. Over the years, I have searched persistently for the tenets of cognitive psychology and I have found none. As far as I have been able to determine, the word "cognitive" serves primarily as a magic wand that transforms mice into horses, a pumpkin into a stagecoach, and Cinderella's rags into a gown for the ball. It is like a vial of holy water that one can sprinkle over one's manuscript. It has no substantive content, but it demonstrates that one is au courant with the latest fashion in psychology. This is not to imply that no worthwhile data have been collected by cognitive psychologists. My mentors, Fred Keller and Nat Schoenfeld, may have been systematic in their interpreta• tion, but they were eclectic in their compilation of empirical findings (e.g., Keller and Schoenfeld, 195011995), and I try to be the same. About 1970 I began teaching sections of the undergraduate learning course at Indiana University, including some material on verbal learning. To locate the data I needed to present to my students, I read current textbooks in the area, which frequently went out of their way to attack behaviorism. I was interested in that material, because only if I could locate and understand the criticisms would I be able to compose a relevant response. Space does not permit a detailed survey to prove my point, but my conclusion was that these authors had little contact with the actual writings of any behaviorist, ancient or modem. What they presented were not the living beings but scarecrows of their own devising. It was not scholarly analysis but naive bashing. My next thought may seem radical to some, but I believe that the cognitive revolution did not represent an intellectual challenge but rather an emotional backlash against the intellectual domination of psychology by the behaviorists. To a substantial extent, it was fueled by a revolt of those who did not want to 6 Dinsmoor be bothered by the responsibilities of science. Although some people grow up more tough-minded than others, none of us are behaviorists by birth. We all begin with a set of concepts promulgated by seemingly omniscient parents and backed in large part by our educational institutions, religious and secular. In order to become scientific students of behavior, we have to learn to slice the world up in different ways than other people do, and that takes training. In the years prior to World War II, the best of the graduate departments were reasonably successful in instilling in their students a respect for scientific standards. The editors of the Psychological Review and other journals maintained the pressure. Consequently, those willing to learn acquired a considerable degree of sophistication. But science is hard work. It requires definition of terms, analytic thinking, and writing according to certain rules. Many students resented the criticisms they received from their professors, and many contributors chafed at the restrictions imposed by more scientifically minded editors. When the authors of 13 textbooks in the history of psychology were polled concerning important trends within the profession, "the contributions of B. F. Skinner" and "the increasing influence of cognitive psychology" tied for second place. But the first thing on these authors' list was the remarkable growth in the number of people trained in psychology (Gilgen, 1981). In the years following World War II, the membership of the American Psychological Association, which serves as a rough index to the total number of psycholo• gists in the country, underwent an enormous increase. When I was a graduate student, it was about four thousand; by 1994, the latest figures I have available (Fowler, 1995), it was 132,400. The influx of students was too great for our graduate departments to handle. The sheer number of those entering psychol• ogy each year overwhelmed the established departments, and the new programs launched by smaller departments were not always of the same caliber. Many of the newcomers were applied in their interests and not greatly impressed with the importance of theory construction. The federal government began issuing grants in support of academic research, and in the ensuing competition for funds both the faculty and the students at our best institutions began to concentrate on the highly specialized information that was necessary for the conduct of their research, letting broader concerns fall by the wayside. There may also have been a change in values. When I first entered academia, and indeed until fairly recently, it seemed to me that graduate students, certainly, and sometimes their professors, were a dissident lot, alienated from the world of commerce and industry (see Hogan and Schroe• der, 1981). Who else would enter an occupation so devoid of opportunity for economic advancement? When more money became available for academic pursuits, however, the composition changed. Increasingly, our universities Foreword 7 began to resemble business enterprises, and the search for profit began to displace the search for truth as a governing principle. Inner-directed idealists have to some extent been replaced by other-directed careerists (see Riesman, 1950). Clearly, the behaviorists are in the minority. But they have always been in the minority, both within the discipline of psychology and, perhaps more importantly, within the world at large, which exerts a profound influence on what transpires within psychology. Sometimes I compare behaviorism to a vessel laden with great treasure making its way across a vast sea of popular belief. We have to keep the bilge pumps operating. But citation analysis indicates we are still afloat (Friman, Allen, Kerwin, and Larzelere, 1993), and when I compare the large institutional structure of my particular brand of behaviorism today with the small band of enthusiasts that gathered in 1947 (Dinsmoor, 1987), I am not disheartened.
Department of Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana
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