B.F. Skinner and World Behavior Analysis Day

The World Behavior Analysis Day was held in 2021 for the first time, raising the public awareness about this actively developing scientific discipline. This date, March 20 was chosen to commemorate the birthday of Burrhus Frederick Skinner, an outstanding psychologist of the XX century, the founder of behavioral analysis and radical behaviorism.

RADICAL BEHAVIORISM VERSUS PRAGMATISM

Some behaviorists consider positivism to be an obsolete scientific philosophy and advocate for pragmatism or a tenet thereof, contextualism, as the appropriate philosophical world view for the study of behavior. I argue that pragmatism is just as flawed as positivism and for essentially the same reason: they both stem from the same source – British empiricism. I distinguish between empirical and empiricism, the former, the inductive experimental approach put forth by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and exemplified in the work of B. F. Skinner; the latter, a problematic epistemology founded by John Locke (1632–1708) leading to ambiguity and confusion about the connection between sensation and material reality, and eventually to the proliferation of mentalistic/cognitive constructs that appear in the behavioral literature today. I also examine the ambivalent role of Ernst Mach’s philosophy of science, one that strongly influenced such notable scientists as Einstein and Skinner but also had the retrograde effect of establishing positivism as a school of philosophy. Finally, I argue that the term radical behaviorism should be replaced with behavioral materialism as the designation for the scientific philosophy underlying behaviorology, a philosophy that is aligned with scientific materialism, not with pragmatism or contextualism.

Selected Views on Human Nature and their Implications on Education

Even though evolution of time and scientific knowledge have provided humanity with the latest understanding on the concept of man, nevertheless man is too complicated to be comprehended in his entirety through any single study carried out on him. As for this reason, the study on man has become perennial in nature. Human nature as a topic more popularly discussed in psychology has caught the attention of many concerned parties from other fields of research. Perhaps some of the most interested people in the study of man will be theologians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, biologists, etc. It is highly improbable for parents, psychologists, counselors and teachers to render their best help and services to their subjects without having the proper understanding on the concept of man. Due to this fact, this qualitative study was conducted to analyze some selected views on human nature. Ideas provided by Psychoanalysis, Radical Behaviorism, Humanistic and Islamic psychologies were analyzed. Upon analyzing the different concepts on human nature, the researchers examined the implications and possible outcomes when such concepts are applied in the field of education. The textual-analysis method was employed in interpreting the relevant data of this study.

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

An Introduction to Whitehead’s New View of Learning and Its Relation to Traditional Learning Theories

Alfred North Whitehead, although probably known best for his collaborative work with Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica, also developed an original theory of learning and instruction which has much to offer for our times. His theory will be discussed in this paper. In order to do so, two criteria are first developed which in their combination give rise to five categories: radical behaviorism, cognitivism, and radical constructivism, with the intermediary categories of moderate behaviorism and moderate constructivism. A great number of educational researchers are ascribed to one of these five categories. After discussing the shortcomings of the three major philosophical proponents of these three major educational approaches (Hume, Kant, and Berkeley), the basic assumptions of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism are presented, and his assumptions concerning learning and teaching are discussed in view of it. Finally, it is shown that Whitehead’s organismic philosophy is able to offer a frame for integrating Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, thereby solving a long standing scandal of education.