Philosophical behaviorism: authors and theoretical principles

In the middle of the 20th century, philosophical behaviorism arose, a movement whose main objective was to denounce the errors of the philosophy and psychology derived from the construct "mind", to which a veracity is attributed not supported by the analyzes scientists. The two fundamental authors in this development were Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In this article we will describe The historical origin and main approaches of philosophical behaviorism. We will focus especially on describing two of the key contributions of these authors: the critique of the concepts of "mind" and "private language", which are opposed to many of the mentalist ideas in force at the time and in the present.

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What is behaviorism?

Behaviorism is a set of approaches to the analysis of the behavior of humans and other animals that focuses on observable behavior. This is understood as the result of the interaction between the organism, including its individual history, and the relevant stimuli in a given situation.

From this orientation a more important role is given to the environment than to heredity in the genesis of behavior. Particularly noteworthy is the role of reinforcement and punishment processes, which increase or decrease the probability that a specific behavior will be performed again in circumstances similar to those of the situation of learning.

Among the authors who had a key influence on this orientation we find Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov, to John B. Watson and Burrhus F. Skinner. His contributions are framed in a historical context in which psychoanalysis dominated our discipline; behaviorism was first and foremost a reaction to the runaway mentalism of the psychology of the time.

Currently the most relevant branch of behaviorism is applied behavior analysis, which is part of the Skinnerian paradigm of radical behaviorism. From this perspective, mental processes are conceived as phenomena equivalent to other behaviors and are studied as such; on the other hand, in methodological behaviorism they were ignored.

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Origin and approaches of philosophical behaviorism

In the middle of the 20th century, a philosophical movement focused on a different conception of language from that defended by the empirical and rationalist traditions arose. The two main authors in this current, which is sometimes called "ordinary language movement" were Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle.

Classic approaches to philosophy tend to focus on language and the artificial constructs derived from it. However, according to the movement of ordinary language, such objects of study are wrong because it is not possible to take words as credible models of reality; therefore, trying to do so is a methodological failure.

Many of the subjects that philosophy and psychology have studied require that they be conceived as correct. concepts such as “knowledge”, “intention” or “idea”. Something similar happens with classic dichotomies such as the distinction between body and mind. Assuming from the outset that these types of approaches are legitimate leads to analyzing them from the wrong base.

The private language fallacy

Although Wittgenstein, Ryle, and the authors who followed them do not deny the existence of mental processes, they did affirm that we cannot know the psychological experience of other people. We use words to refer to abstract internal experiences, so we never transmit them faithfully or completely.

According to Ryle, when we express our mental contents, we are actually referring to the very act of externalizing them. In the same way, we speak of causes in a systematic way to describe the same phenomenon as the supposed consequence; this happens, for example, when saying that someone behaves nicely because he is nice.

The very concept of “private language” is problematic for philosophical behaviorism. Those contents to which we refer with words such as "thought" are, in reality, a series of sensations and internal processes that cannot be translated into words, but have a much broader character and dynamic.

For these reasons, and given the difficulty in extrapolating the psychological constructs handled by a person to other beings. humans, from this perspective the usefulness of the analysis of the self is denied, which includes the methods of analysis of the type introspective. The “private language”, if accessible, would only be accessible to the individual himself.

The problem of mind-body dualism

Gilbert Ryle asserted that the conception of mental phenomena and observable behavior as independent processes is a category error. This means that the debate is posed as if one functioned without the intervention of the other and as if it were possible to separate their biological basis, when In reality, this dichotomy is nothing more than a fallacy..

From this approach is derived the understanding of the mind as devoid of true consciousness. For Ryle, the term "mind" refers to a very broad set of phenomena, mainly of two types: externally observable behaviors and unobservable behavioral predispositions, generated through conditioning.

According to this author, therefore, the mind would only be a philosophical illusion that we have inherited from the philosophy of René Descartes. However, from a logical point of view it is a misconception; Consequently, the contributions of the so-called "philosophy of mind" would also be included, in which a large number of proposals of psychology would be included.