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Abstract: B.F. Skinner argued that in a causal chain from an environmental cause, E, to an inner state, I, and then to a behavior, B, the prediction, explanation, and control of B can be achieved better by focusing on the environmental cause, E, than by focusing on the inner state, I. In particular, he claims that the observable relationship of E to B is not affected by whether the inner state, I, exists. The present paper evaluates Skinner's claims and then shifts from a causal chain to a different causal arrangement, wherein two environmental states, E1 and E2, each causally contribute to a behavior, B. In this case, postulating an inner state, I, that is caused by both E1 and E2, and which causes I, affects one's predictions concerning the relationship between environment and behavior.
Key Words: behaviorism, causal chains, screening-off, B.F. Skinner.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
My point of departure is a passage from B.F. Skinner's Science and Human Behavior:
(1) The objection to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis. (2) We cannot account for the behavior of any system while staying wholly inside it; eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the organism from without. (3) Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second link is not lawfully determined by the first, or the third by the second, then the first and third links must be lawfully related.
(4) If we must always go back beyond the second link for prediction and control, we may avoid many tiresome and exhausting digressions by examining the third link as a function of the first. (5) Valid information about the second link may throw light upon this relationship but can in no way alter it (Skinner 1953, p. 35).
I have numbered Skinner's sentences because I want to comment on each.
Proposition (1) characterizes "methodological behaviorism." Unlike logical behaviorism, there is no claim that mentalistic vocabulary can be translated into purely behavioral and physical terms. And unlike the thesis that Skinner (1974, p.16) calls "radical behaviorism," there is no commitment here to the thesis that introspection is an awareness that an organism has of...