Radical Behaviorism versus Pragmatism

Abstract

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.