I agree that this post’s introduction to behaviorism is no more than a common mischaracterization. It is the sort of mischaracterization that has spread farther than the original idea, to the point that psychology textbooks (which are more often than not terribly inaccurate) repeat the error and psychology graduates write Wikipedia articles saying that “Behaviorists believe consciousness does not exist”.
Behaviorism is a methodology, not a hypothesis. It is the methodology that attempts to explain behavior without recourse to internal mental states. The basis for this approach is that internal mental states can only be inferred from behavior in the first place, so that they offer no additional predictive power. That said, it may turn out that a certain class of behaviors tend to lump together, and there would be no problem in labelling these “angry behaviors” or “vengeful behaviors” and describing an organism as “angry” when it exhibits angry behaviors. A behaviorist will not hypothesize that there is an internal angry feeling corresponding to this angry state. He will not hypothesize that there is not an internal angry feeling corresponding to this angry state. He will not hypothesize about internal feelings at all, because he has no way of testing his hypothesis if he does.
It may be that modern neuroscience makes certain “internal explanations” testable after all. This does not make behaviorism a bad methodology! It works quite well if you don’t happen to have an MRI scanner on hand. It works a lot better than ascribing a subject’s lashing out to “rage” and, when asking how you know he’s enraged, saying, “Because he’s lashing out.”
I agree that this post’s introduction to behaviorism is no more than a common mischaracterization. It is the sort of mischaracterization that has spread farther than the original idea, to the point that psychology textbooks (which are more often than not terribly inaccurate) repeat the error and psychology graduates write Wikipedia articles saying that “Behaviorists believe consciousness does not exist”.
Behaviorism is a methodology, not a hypothesis. It is the methodology that attempts to explain behavior without recourse to internal mental states. The basis for this approach is that internal mental states can only be inferred from behavior in the first place, so that they offer no additional predictive power. That said, it may turn out that a certain class of behaviors tend to lump together, and there would be no problem in labelling these “angry behaviors” or “vengeful behaviors” and describing an organism as “angry” when it exhibits angry behaviors. A behaviorist will not hypothesize that there is an internal angry feeling corresponding to this angry state. He will not hypothesize that there is not an internal angry feeling corresponding to this angry state. He will not hypothesize about internal feelings at all, because he has no way of testing his hypothesis if he does.
It may be that modern neuroscience makes certain “internal explanations” testable after all. This does not make behaviorism a bad methodology! It works quite well if you don’t happen to have an MRI scanner on hand. It works a lot better than ascribing a subject’s lashing out to “rage” and, when asking how you know he’s enraged, saying, “Because he’s lashing out.”