Why the “Hoax” Paper of Baldwin (2018) Should Be Reinstated

In 2018, a peer-reviewed article was published under the name of Richard Baldwin in which the author presented a critique of fat exclusion and advocated “fat bodybuilding” as a sport. Some months later, it became apparent that the article was intended as a hoax written to raise awareness to, or “expose”, a certain ideology promoted by some academics. As a result, the editors retracted the article. Using the principles of methodological behaviorism, and other hoax or hoax-like articles, I will argue that the thoughts and opinions held by any author are not important to the argument they present. I will also argue that this form of reflexive ethnography is too problematic to serve as a method of enquiry. I will therefore conclude that the Baldwin article should be reinstated.

A reply to “the unfolding argument”: Beyond functionalism/behaviorism and towards a truer science of causal structural theories of consciousness

In their recent article, the unfolding argument, Doerig et al argue that a theory of consciousness cannot be based in the characterization of the physical structure of the brain. They argue that such theories must be “either false or outside the realm of science”. Instead, they prefer theories of consciousness based only on “input-output” descriptions. By their implicit treatment of phenomenal structure as impossible to study, the authors seem to be advocating for a new mode of extreme methodological behaviorism. We take issue with their view, and describe an alternate approach to consciousness science. We clarify some ambiguities in Doerig et al’s argument, critiquing three of their four premises, leading to different conclusions. We then explain what makes causal structure theories of consciousness empirical and falsifiable. Specifically, we propose that consciousness science must work on ways to consider phenomenal structure - i.e. to derive the structure of experience from reports, and to search for isomorphism between physical and phenomenal structures. In essence, we argue that to really take consciousness seriously as an object of study, it is unavoidable that both phenomenal structure and the causal structure of a system must be central to any theory of consciousness.

METHODOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM

Early approaches to psychology assumed that mental life was the appropriate subject matter of the new science, and that introspective verbal reports and reaction times were the appropriate methods to support inferences about that subject matter. The problem was that these early approaches were vague, unreliable, and generally ineffective. Methodological behaviorism arose as an attempt to deal with this problem by asserting that theories and explanations in psychology, as well as the concepts they deployed, should be agreed upon. The key to agreement was that psychologists should talk only about observables, although talk of mental unobservables was later permitted if they were designated as theoretical constructs that were operationally defined through their relation to observables. This later view remains prominent in traditional psychology. The radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner’s behavior analysis offers an alternative based on a critical analysis of the behavioral sources of control over a given term. In particular, the radical behaviorist concept of private behavioral events provides a unified account of nature in behavioral terms. Key words: verbal behavior, methodological behaviorism, radical behaviorism, operationism, prediction and control, private behavioral events, covering law, scientific method