Behaviorism and Philosophical Foundations
The worldview
Behavior analysis rests on a specific philosophy of science: determinism (behavior is lawful, not random), empiricism (knowledge comes from observation), parsimony (prefer the simplest adequate account), pragmatism (truth is judged by what works), and selectionism (behavior is selected by consequences at the levels of phylogeny, ontogeny, and culture). Radical behaviorism is inclusive: private events - thoughts, feelings - are behavior subject to the same laws, and they are not causes of public behavior.
The traps
- Methodological vs. radical behaviorism. Methodological behaviorism excludes private events from analysis; radical behaviorism includes them but treats them as behavior to be explained, not as explanations.
- Explanatory fictions and circular reasoning. "He hit because he was frustrated" restates the behavior and adds no independent variable. So does "he tantrumed because he was escape-motivated" when the only evidence is the tantrum.
- Mentalism and hypothetical constructs - inventing an inner agent that does the explaining.
- The seven dimensions (applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptually systematic, effective, generality) are frequent question fodder; analytic requires a demonstrated functional relation, and technological requires a replicable description, not jargon.
Rule of thumb
Dead man's test: if a dead man could do it, it is not behavior. "Sitting quietly" and "not interrupting" fail; "raising a hand" passes. Apply the test before reading the answer options.
When a stem offers an inner-state cause, the best answer usually points to observable environmental variables - antecedents, consequences, motivating operations - that could actually be manipulated.