Behaviorism

Abstract

I should like to begin by characterizing in a very preliminary way my own conception of behaviorism. Before beginning this characterization, there is something I want to say about the kind of definition I expect to develop. It is philosophically important to be quite clear about the kinds of things or concepts for which it is possible to offer a precise definition and those for which it is not. Consider, for example, the definition of a physical concept like that of mass. It depends on an exact characterization of mechanics or some other branch of physics. On the other hand, the problem is quite different if we are asked to give a definition of physics or of psychology. The source of difficulty in the latter kind of case is that we do not have a well-defined and sufficiently large and flexible formal framework within which we can formulate a definition of physics or of psychology. Of course, it is not simply a problem of the breadth or flexibility of our general framework, but also a problem of the very vagueness and looseness of what we want to mean by physics or psychology. The concept of behaviorism is in many respects much closer to the vague concept of what is physics or what is psychology than to the much more precise concept of mass or of a prime number. For this reason, I shall not attempt in this preliminary discussion of behaviorism to sketch a possible formal definition. I shall, however, have something to say about the characterization of behaviorism as a formal theory.

This paper has not been previously published. Except for minor revisions it was written during the period 1963–65.