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ABSTRACT: This paper attempts to suggest some conceptual preliminaries to a definition of behavior. I begin by distinguishing some different senses of the notion, with emphasis upon that of behavior as the occurrence of an organism's action or reaction. Subsequently, I provide a brief survey of different types of definition, and try to pick out those among them that can in principle be suitable for the notion of behavior taken in that sense as well as for theoretical concerns. Then, I offer a list of desiderata for a definition thereof framed in any of the types picked out. Finally, I illustrate how the distinctions here established can help the detection of conceptual difficulties in definitions of behavior (in that sense of the concept) found in the literature and, more generally, how they can help determine what behavior consists of and what it does not.
Key words: behavior, definition of behavior, definitions, teleology, conceptual analysis.
There are many definitions of behavior in the scientific and philosophical literature, and scant consensus (apparently even among the practitioners within particular behavior research programs) as to how to define it (see, e.g., Bergner, 2011; Levitis, Lidicker Jr., & Freund, 2009). To give some examples, Tinbergen (1951) defines behavior as "the total of movements made by the intact animal" (p. 2); several authors (e.g., Davis, 1966, p. 2, p. 4-5; Lehner, 1996, p. 8; Pierce & Cheney, 2004, p. 1) define it as "anything an organism does" (or "what an organism does"); several others define it in terms of any activity in which an organism engages (e.g., Donahoe & Palmer, 1994, p. 3; S. T. Watson & Brown, 2011, p. 221); still others (e.g., Jessor, 1958, p. 172-173; Maturana, 1995, p. 151- 152), in terms of a relation between the organism and its environment; Dretske (1988, p. 1ss) defines it as a process of an inner entity bringing about a bodily movement or environmental outcome; and so on. (For other definitions of behavior, see, e.g., Bergner, 2011, p. 148-149; Hebb, 1958, p. 2; Holt, 1915, p. 371-372; Hornsby, 2006; Levitis et al., 2009, p. 108; Marken, 1982; Miller & Dollard, 1942, p. 59; Millikan, 1993, p. 135ss; Moore, 2008, p. 66-68; Watson, 1919, p. 14). Among these and other...