Psycholinguistics: a half century of monologism

The contention of this article is that, since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, mainstream psycholinguistics has been monologistic, that is, has concentrated on monologue as its source of empirical material and has, largely implicitly, involved a monologistic epistemology. The article is not a comprehensive history of psycholinguistics but does attempt to establish a historical perspective. Monologism has been the historical bias of Cartesianism, positivism, behaviorism, and cognitivism. Monologism is concerned only with the person in whom cognition takes place and from whom communication proceeds. It is essentially asocial. By contrast, the merits of dialogism include an openness to the sociocultural, interactive nature of all cognition and communication and an empirical engagement of contextualized discourse situations. Dialogism is presented here not as a supplement to mainstream psycholinguistics but as a radical innovation that construes mainstream psycholinguistics as "strongly misleading if presented as a full theory of communication through spoken interaction" (Linell, 1998, p. 23). Some approaches to dialogism and research on dialogue are critically reviewed.     

Psychological behaviorism and behaviorizing psychology

Paradigmatic or psychological behaviorism (PB), in a four-decade history of development, has been shaped by its goal, the establishment of a behaviorism that can also serve as the approach in psychology (Watson's original goal). In the process, PB has become a new generation of behaviorism with abundant heuristic avenues for development in theory, philosophy, methodology, and research. Psychology has resources, purview and problem areas, and nascent developments of many kinds, gathered in chaotic diversity, needing unification (and other things) that cognitivism cannot provide. Behaviorism can, within PB's multilevel framework for connecting and advancing both psychology and behaviorism.     

Is behaviorism false because there is no such thing as conditioning? Popper and skinner on learning

Sir Karl Popper has claimed that behaviorism is misguided because it holds that conditioning occurs through repetition. According to Popper, there is no such thing as learning through repetition. To the limited extent that philosophers of science have concerned themselves with behaviorism, this attack is one of the most direct and unique in that the battleground is not over the value of mentalism/cognitivism but a bold claim that conditioning—the heart and soul of behaviorism—is fictitious. This paper examines the soundness of Popper's argument against behaviorism by examining whether operant and classical conditioning rely on learning through repetition and suffer from other problems Popper attributes to the notion of conditioning. Although Popper correctly attributes certain properties to classical conditioning, he fails to undermine the empirical evidence that such conditioning occurs. Second, we claim that although B. F. Skinner is never entirely clear, operant conditioning does not rely on repetition nor does it suffer from the other problems Popper attributes to conditioning. Thus, Popper's argument also fails because of his assumption that all conditioning is classical conditioning and therefore his misattributing properties of classical conditioning to operant conditioning. We conjecture that the earlier polemics of John Watson and Watson's sole reliance on classical conditioning probably contributed to Popper's confusion on this point.     

Hypothetical high-level cognitive functions cannot be localized in the brain: another argument for a revitalized behaviorism

A key epistemological difference between behaviorism and cognitivism concerns their respective attitudes toward the analysis of so-called cognitive processes into functional modules. Behaviorists generally say it is not possible. Cognitivists argue that this is an achievable goal. The question has been concretized by recent developments in brain imaging technology. A consideration of the matter suggests that technical and conceptual difficulties abound in the effort to localize "high-level cognitive functions" in narrowly circumscribed regions of the brain. Some of the most serious involve the ambiguous definition of the putative mental components that are to be localized and the generally unacknowledged nonlinear complexity of both psychological processes and the brain. In addition, the imaging techniques themselves are replete with technical difficulties that raise additional questions about this particular application, even though these wonderful machines can make extraordinary contributions to our knowledge of brain anatomy and physiology. The cumulative implication of these difficulties is that the cognitive approach to the study of scientific psychology has once again set out on a search for a chimera. New approaches to behaviorism may be required to set psychology back on the correct track.     

Understanding the “cognitive revolution” in psychology

In this paper it is argued that the “cognitive revolution” in psychology is not best represented either as a Kuhnian “paradigm shift,” or as a movement from an instrumentalist to a realist conception of psychological theory, or as a continuous evolution out of more “liberalized” forms of behaviorism, or as a return to the form of “structuralist” psychology practiced by Wundt and Titchener. It is suggested that the move from behaviorism to cognitivism is best represented in terms of the replacement of (operationally defined) “intervening variables” by genuine “hypothetical constructs” possessing cognitive “surplus meaning,” and that the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950s continued a cognitive tradition that can be traced back to the 1920s. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Conflicts and missed signals in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology

At the turn of the 20th century, European psychologists found themselves in conflict situations with respect to the role that private mental states should play in a scientific psychology. Out of this conflict arose 3 of the best-known schools of the 20th century: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. Each of these schools is discussed with respect to two characteristics. First, the authors discuss the attitude of each school on the meaning of the word unconscious as it was understood around 1900. Second, the authors discuss the influence of each school on the reception accorded to books written around 1900 espousing viewpoints that did not cohere with the school's beliefs. Such books may be considered "missed signals" in the history of psychology. "Hits" associated with each school are also highlighted.     

On the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology

This discussion presents the viewpoints of five well-known psychologists on the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology. The article is a condensed version of a symposium presented at the 1978 annual APA convention.     

心灵如何被感知:从松果体到镜像神经元

文章从笛卡尔的身心交感论开始,探讨了松果体在身心交互中的重要地位,并分心理主义、行为主义、认知主义三个阶段,描述了心理学回答"心灵如何被感知"的两条途径:心灵内省与行为反映。最后,文章特别描述了新近发现的镜像神经元,认为它可能是当代心理学体系内的"笛卡尔式松果体",是沟通身体活动与心理状态、自我与他人心理状态的桥梁。未来,镜像神经元在心理学研究中的地位,可能与松果体在笛卡尔体系内的地位一样重要。     

Philosophical behaviorism: a review of things that happen because they should: a teleological approach to action, by Rowland Stout.

Mentalistic terms such as belief and desire have been rejected by behavior analysts because they are traditionally held to refer to unobservable events inside the organism. Behavior analysis has consequently been viewed by philosophers to be at best irrelevant to psychology, understood as a science of the mind. In this book, the philosopher Rowland Stout argues cogently that beliefs and desires (like operants such as rats' lever presses) are best understood in terms of an interaction over time between overt behavior and its overt consequences (a viewpoint called teleological behaviorism). This book is important because it identifies the science of the mind with the science of overt behavior and implies that the psychologists best equipped to study mental life are not those who purport to do so but those who focus on the experimental analysis of behavior.     

Making IBM's Computer, Watson, Human

This essay uses the recent victory of an IBM computer (Watson) in the TV game, Jeopardy, to speculate on the abilities Watson would need, in addition to those it has, to be human. The essay's basic premise is that to be human is to behave as humans behave and to function in society as humans function. Alternatives to this premise are considered and rejected. The viewpoint of the essay is that of teleological behaviorism. Mental states are defined as temporally extended patterns of overt behavior. From this viewpoint (although Watson does not currently have them), essential human attributes such as consciousness, the ability to love, to feel pain, to sense, to perceive, and to imagine may all be possessed by a computer. Most crucially, a computer may possess self-control and may act altruistically. However, the computer's appearance, its ability to make specific movements, its possession of particular internal structures (e.g., whether those structures are organic or inorganic), and the presence of any nonmaterial "self," are all incidental to its humanity.     

The evolution of beasts and babies: recapitulation, instinct, and the early discourse on child development

The field of "child study" emerged at the end of the nineteenth century with the purpose of disclosing children's "nature" for the benefit of parents, educators, psychologists, and other interested groups. Borrowed from the biological sciences, narratives of biological recapitulation were common in the discourses about child development during this period. Such theories often measured children against "savages," but they also suggested that the study of childhood offered clues into the evolutionary relationships between humans and animals. By emphasizing the relevance of children's "instincts," observers of child development explained child behavior as the tissue that linked humans and animals.     

The Cinderella of psychology: the neglect of motor control in the science of mental life and behavior

One would expect psychology--the science of mental life and behavior--to place great emphasis on the means by which mental life is behaviorally expressed. Surprisingly, however, the study of how decisions are enacted--the focus of motor control research--has received little attention in psychology. This article documents the neglect and considers possible reasons for it. The hypotheses considered include three that are raised and then rejected: (a) no famous psychologists have studied motor control, (b) cognitive psychologists are mainly interested in uniquely human functions, and (c) motor control is simply too hard to study. Three other hypotheses are more viable: (d) cognitive psychologists have been more interested in epistemology than in action, (e) psychologists have disfavored motor control because overt responses were the only admissible measure in behaviorism, and (f) psychologists have felt that neuroscientists have the market cornered when it comes to motor control research. There are signs that motor control's Cinderella status is changing.     

Behavior analysts and cultural analysis: Troubles and issues

THREE STRATEGIC SUGGESTIONS ARE OFFERED TO BEHAVIOR ANALYSTS WHO ARE CONCERNED WITH EXTENDING THE INTERESTS OF OUR DISCIPLINE INTO DOMAINS TRADITIONALLY ASSIGNED TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: (1) to expand our world-view perspectives beyond the boundaries commonly accepted by psychologists in general; (2) to build a cultural analytic framework upon the foundations we have developed for the study of individuals; and (3) to study the works of those social scientists whose views are generally compatible with, and complementary to, our own. Sociologist C. Wright Mills' distinction between troubles and issues and anthropologist Marvin Harris's principles of cultural materialism are related to topics raised by these three strategies. The pervasiveness of the "psychocentric" world view within psychology and the social sciences, and throughout our culture at large, is discussed from the points of view of Skinner, Mills, and Harris. It is suggested that a thorough commitment to radical behaviorism, and continuation of interaction between radical behaviorism and cultural materialism, are necessary for maintaining and extending an issues orientation within the discipline of behavior analysis and for guarding against dilutions and subversions of that orientation by "deviation-dampening" contingencies that exist in our profession and in our culture at large.     

Science education,conceptual change and breaking with everyday experience

Science educators and those who investigate science learning have tended, for good reason, to focus their attention on students' conceptual development, Such a focus is, however, too narrow to provide full and proper understanding of the complexities of original science learning. Recently developmental cognitive psychologists have called on the work of postpositivistic philosophers of science, especially Thomas Kuhn, to bolster their research into conceptual development in science acquisition. What these psychologists have not recognized is that Kuhn's position is actually a derivative of Wittgenstein's methodological nominalism, a viewpoint far more favorable to behaviorism than cognitive psychology. After drawing out some of the consequences of this fact for the developmental cognitive psychologist program for studying science learning, we suggest our own radical alternative. Drawing on Floden, Buchmann and Schwille's idea of Breaking with Everyday Experience we propose an alternative notion of original science learning in terms of Alfred Schutz's modification of Williams James' many worlds thesis. The many worlds thesis will allow us to better understand students' difficulty in learning idealized worlds such as science, worlds that represent a discontinuous break with ordinary everyday practical experience.     

John B. Watson remembered: an interview with James B. Watson

Little is known about the personal life of John B. Watson, and this interview aims at capturing the personality of the founder of American behaviorism through the eyes of his son, James B. Watson. Today, psychologists and other social scientists increasingly realize that there is an intimate link between the biography of a psychologist and the kind of psychology he or she founds. Thus biographical information about a founding psychologist can help researchers make explicit this essential link.     

Psychopathology according to behaviorism: a radical restatement

This article is a radical restatement of the predominant psychopathology, which is characterized by nosological systems and by its approach towards a neurobiological conception of the so-called mental disorders. The "radical" sense of this restatement is that of radical behaviorism itself. As readers will recall, "radical" applied to behaviorism means total (not ignoring anything that interests psychology), pragmatic (referring to the practical sense of knowledge), and it also derives from the Latin word for "root" (and thus implies change beginning at a system's roots or getting to the root of things, in this case, of psychological disorders). Based on this, I introduce the Aristotelian distinction of material and form, which, besides being behaviorist avant la lettre, is used here as a critical instrument to unmask the hoax of psychopathology as it is presented. The implications of this restatement are discussed, some of them already prepared for clinical practice.     

The return of the repressed. Psychology's problematic relations with psychoanalysis, 1909-1960.

When psychoanalysis first arrived in the United States, most psychologists ignored it. By the 1920s, however, psychoanalysis had so captured the public imagination that it threatened to eclipse experimental psychology entirely. This article analyzes the complex nature of this threat and the myriad ways that psychologists responded to it. Because psychoanalysis entailed precisely the sort of radical subjectivity that psychologists had renounced as unscientific, core assumptions about the meaning of science were at stake. Psychologists' initial response was to retreat into positivism, thereby further limiting psychology's relevance and scope. By the 1950s, a new strategy had emerged: Psychoanalytic concepts would be put to experimental test, and those that qualified as "scientific" would be retained. This reinstated psychologists as arbiters of the mental world and restored "objective" criteria as the basis for making claims. A later tactic--co-opting psychoanalytic concepts into mainstream psychology--had the ironic effect of helping make psychology a more flexible and broad-based discipline.     

Against Moral Intellectualism

This paper argues that non‐cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under‐explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine‐grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non‐cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non‐cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non‐cognitivism in the first place. One significant pay‐off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non‐cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates.