I think this post contains too little context about why we should care. Is the behaviorist doctrine sillier than other scientists’ descriptions of their methodologies? Did it damage their research? I imagine that it played a bigger role in status games than most descriptions of methodology, but a lot of inappropriate things play such roles. Maybe this one had more collateral damage than usual, but I see no reason to conclude that.
If you push most scientists, they will start reciting Popper, but this recitation has very little to do with what they actually do. I think it would be better if they could verbally describe what they’re doing and verbally reason about it, but I think most discussions (eg, this post) of what scientists do and should do are too trusting of the verbalizations. What they need is more behaviorism.
Richard Kennaway,
the denial of visualization predates behaviorism, FWIW. see, eg, the pro-visualization F Galton, Statistics of mental imagery, Mind 5 (1880) 301-18, jstor
I think this post contains too little context about why we should care. Is the behaviorist doctrine sillier than other scientists’ descriptions of their methodologies? Did it damage their research? I imagine that it played a bigger role in status games than most descriptions of methodology, but a lot of inappropriate things play such roles. Maybe this one had more collateral damage than usual, but I see no reason to conclude that.
If you push most scientists, they will start reciting Popper, but this recitation has very little to do with what they actually do. I think it would be better if they could verbally describe what they’re doing and verbally reason about it, but I think most discussions (eg, this post) of what scientists do and should do are too trusting of the verbalizations. What they need is more behaviorism.
Richard Kennaway, the denial of visualization predates behaviorism, FWIW. see, eg, the pro-visualization F Galton, Statistics of mental imagery, Mind 5 (1880) 301-18, jstor