On some common objections to a behavioral approach to psychological categories

Abstract

This paper addresses several objections that have been leveled against a behavioral approach to psychological categories. It reconstructs and critically assesses (a) the so-called causal objection; (b) alleged counterexamples whereby one can exhibit the typical behaviors associated with a psychological phenomenon without exhibiting the latter, including Lewis’ “perfect actor” case and Kirk’s “zombie”; (c) alleged counterexamples whereby organisms can exemplify psychological phenomena without exhibiting any behavior associated with them, including Armstrong’s imagined brain in a vat, Putnam’s “super-super-spartans” scenario, and related cases; and (d) the holistic objection. Mistaken assumptions in each of these objections are pinpointed. The paper starts with a brief characterization of behaviorism about psychological categories and a summary of the particular version thereof supported here, which draws upon Ryle and Skinner, among others.

Keywords:

• Behavior
• behaviorism
• covert behavior
• embodied and enactive views
• psychological categories
• psychological phenomena
• objections to behaviorism

Acknowledgments:

This work was supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brazil [grant #2012/00059-2]. The content, however, is solely the responsibility of the author. A version of this paper was written in partial fulfillment of the author's Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Sao Paulo.

Notes

¹ This is not an exhaustive list of objections, but rather a representative sample of the most common ones. Another objection, for instance, can be found in Block (1981), which, I think, is nicely addressed by Ben-Yami (2005) and Rachlin (1994). Still another, which concerns the so-called systematicity and productivity of language and thinking, can be found in Fodor (1987), and I believe has to a significant extent been met by empirical behavioral research (including research on verbal behavior). I shall limit myself to the objections (a) to (d) here.

² By psychological categories, I mean propositional attitudes (roughly, the class of phenomena expressed in the form ‘x M that p’, where x is an agent, p a fact which may or may not obtain, and M an attitude verb like believing or intending), sensations (e.g., tickles, itches), emotions (e.g., fear, jealousy), moods (e.g., sadness, cheerfulness), appetites (e.g., hunger, thirst), skills (e.g., knowing how to play the piano, knowing how to speak a certain language), cognitive processes (e.g., reasoning, remembering, perceiving), and character traits (e.g., to be someone skittish, courageous). On this, see Lazzeri 2012; also Lazzeri 2015b.

³ A token of, say, an emotion (e.g., fear), is a singular, unrepeatable event or phenomenon, exhibited by a singular organism during some (short or long) span of time. I say all (instead of some) tokens of all or some psychological categories because otherwise I would be classifying as a behavioral approach, for example, the extended mind view, advanced by Clark and Chalmers (1998; also Clark, 2008), Menary (2006), and Rowlands (2010), among others. The extended mind view (in different versions) holds that some (but not all) tokens of certain psychological categories are made up of behaviors contingently. According to it, some tokens of any psychological category can be entirely non-behavioral happenings inside an organism’s body. In other words, although it rejects that psychological phenomena are in general confined to an organism’s insides, it is still quite mentalistic.

⁴ Thus, according to this rendering, some recent ontologies of psychological categories—in particular, the strongest embodied and enactive approaches—in the context of the philosophy of cognitive science have a behavioral character. Behaviorism and cognitivism are not necessarily (even though they often are) inconsistent when it comes to the ontology of the mental. That is, unless one wants (as in Aizawa, 2015) to restrict cognitive approaches to, say, those that take psychological phenomena of different categories—or the category of cognitive processes in particular—to be always or in some cases non-behavioral inner causes of behavior.

⁵ Nonetheless, one may support the adoption of an alternative theoretical framework for reasons other than the eliminativist’s. For example, one may even hold on to a variety of the former kind of behavioral viewpoint (as described above) while preferring a more rigorous vocabulary for the purposes of experimental research.

⁶ Rachlin (1994, 2012) makes a somewhat similar claim. However, while sharing several commonalities, the behavioral approach I favor and his have a few important differences. For instance, his approach does not have a place for covert behaviors. See Lazzeri 2015b.

⁷ Yet, I do not consider the phenomenal qualities of perceptual processes, such as colors and sounds, to be inside the organism, but rather as properties of the surrounding environment in relation to our position in it, under conditions of illumination, humidity, and so forth (Genone, 2011; Noë, 2012).

⁸ This definition is akin to Skinner’s (1953) way of understanding behavior.

⁹ For details and support, see Lazzeri 2013b, 2014b. This characterization has the virtues of, among other things, ruling out from the extension of the concept of behavior the bringing about of mere incidental happenings (e.g., the typical cases in which an organism brings about shadows or attracts the attention of a predator) and things that happen to the organism entirely because of the immediate external environment (e.g., having a limb entirely raised by someone else or falling down).

¹⁰ I do not mean to say, however, that all calculating, let alone all thinking, is made up of just covert behaviors. To my view, some tokens of thinking are made up of overt behaviors. Likewise for tokens of other psychological categories: they are constituted by overt or covert behaviors. Not all physiological activities, however, count as behavior (except in a rather different sense of the concept), but rather only those which are under the influence of sensory stimuli. Regular breathing, regular blood flow, and digestion, for example, are presumably ruled out from the extension of the concept.

¹¹ Behaviorism is sometimes accused of relying upon a view of behavior as external bodily movements (Hacker, 2012; Hamlyn, 1953). Yet, arguably, few behavioral proposals (e.g., Hempel, 1980; Hull, 1943) have subscribed to such a narrow view of behavior (compare Kitchener, 1977). In particular, my understanding of behavior is a far cry from the narrow view. See Lazzeri 2013b, 2014b.

¹² For more details on operant behavior and operant selection or reinforcement, see Catania, 2012.

¹³ See also Baum (2005) and Rachlin (1994). However, unlike at least the latter and in line with Skinner (1953, 1976), I do not dismiss covert behaviors.

¹⁴ The expression ‘brain in a vat’ is (as far as I know) Putnam’s (1981), not Armstrong’s (1968). Putnam imagines a similar scenario, but not as an objection to BEH. Moreover, Putnam ends up claiming that the the scenario is inconsistent (though for reasons other than mine).