Abstract
Although psychology necessarily addresses various conceptual and philosophical dichotomies, for most of them, consensual theoretical solutions have not yet been established. Innatist or environmentalist, monist or dualist, and determinist or indeterminist arguments are examples that permeate the different theoretical mediations or approaches. In short, the presuppositions admitted by each one of the philosophies of science that have been adopted, Radical Behaviorism among them, constitute the thread of continuity of the main epistemological reflections to be found in the context of psychology. In that scenario this essay seeks to underscore the role of relations and especially functional relations in enabling the understanding of human behavior.
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- 1.
In philosophy, for example, it is common to come across dyads like rationalism-irrationalism, materialism-idealism, and theory-praxis and, colloquially in shared areas, physical-psychic, soul-body, interior-exterior, and public-private.
- 2.
Note that here “cultural-behavioral” does not indicate the dual nature of the social phenomenon—social and cultural at the same time—but, just the reverse, it merely indicates the behavioral constitution of the cultural practices.
- 3.
For an analysis of the sense in which the term “Radical” is appropriated in the context of Skinnerian Behaviorism, see Carrara and Strapasson (2014).
References
Carrara, K., & Strapasson, B. A. (2014). Em que sentido(s) é radical o behaviorismo radical? Acta Comportamentalia, 22(1), 101–115.
Carrara, K., & Zilio, D. (2013). O comportamento diante do paradigma behaviorista radical. Revista Brasileira de Análise do Comportamento, 9(1), 1–18.
Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158–177.
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Carrara, K. (2018). Psychology and Dichotomic Thinking. In: Radical Behaviorism and Cultural Analysis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74301-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74301-1_1
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