The New Behaviorism

This groundbreaking book presents a brief history of behaviorism, the dominant movement in American psychology in the first half of the 20th Century. It then analyzes and criticizes radical behaviorism, as pioneered by B.F. Skinner, and its philosophy and applications to social issues. This second edition is a completely rewritten and much expanded version of the first edition, published nearly 15 years earlier. It surveys what changes have occurred within behaviorism and whether it has maintained its influence on experimental cognitive psychology or other fields. The mission of the book is to help steer experimental psychology away from its current undisciplined indulgence in "mental life" toward the core of science, which is an economical description of nature. The author argues that parsimony -- the elementary philosophical distinction between private and public events, even biology, evolution and animal psychology -- all are ignored by much contemporary cognitive psychology. The failings of radical behaviorism as well as a philosophically defective cognitive psychology point to the need for a new theoretical behaviorism, which can deal with problems such as "consciousness" that have been either ignored, evaded or muddled by existing approaches. This new behaviorism provides a unified framework for the science of behavior that can be applied both to the laboratory and to broader practical issues such as law and punishment, the health-care system, and teaching.

This ground-breaking book presents a brief history of behaviorism, along with a critical analysis of radical behaviorism, its philosophy and its applications to social issues. This third edition is much expanded and includes a new chapter on experimental method as well as longer sections on the philosophy of behaviorism. It offers experimental and theoretical examples of a new approach to behavioral science. It provides an alternative philosophical and empirical foundation for a psychology that has rather lost its way. The mission of the book is to help steer experimental psychology away from its current undisciplined indulgence in "mental life" toward the core of science, which is an economical description of nature: parsimony, explain much with little. The elementary philosophical distinction between private and public events, even biology, evolution and animal psychology are all ignored by much contemporary cognitive psychology. The failings of radical behaviorism as well as a philosophically defective cognitive psychology point to the need for a new theoretical behaviorism, which can deal with problems such as "consciousness" that have been either ignored, evaded or muddled by existing approaches. This new behaviorism provides a unified framework for the science of behavior that can be applied both to the laboratory and to broader practical issues such as law and punishment, the health-care system, and teaching.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

John Staddon's entertaining book begins with a brief history of behaviourism and goes on to explain and criticize radical behaviourism, its philosophy and its application to social issues.

The basic book about the controversial philosophy known as behaviorism, written by its leading exponent.

This volume examines the scientific basis of reductionist approaches to understanding visual perception. The author makes the provocative argument that contemporary neuroscience and cognitive science have gone off on a wild-goose chase in the search for reductionist explanations of perceptual phenomena. This book considers some specific and general examples of this misdirection and suggests an alternative future course for science. It reviews the successes and failures of the sciences' efforts to explain perceptual and other mental functions in the terms of either internal cognitive mechanisms, formal models, or the neural structures from which the brain--the organ of the mind--is constructed. Although this is an iconoclastic and minority view, the book shows how many contemporary perceptual scientists have qualified their thinking with regard to what their data and theories mean even while generally accepting the empirical findings. It is, without question, an attempted refutation of some of the primary assumptions of contemporary theory. Summing up the author's convictions concerning some of the most important questions of human nature, this book is a statement of a point of view that has provided a framework for his personal answers to some of these important questions of human history.

From the mid-1960s until his death in 1989, Willard Day wrote and spoke on two central themes: the distinctive characteristics of Skinner's scientific philosophy, and the implications of Skinner's work for the development of scientific methods relevant to verbal behavior. Only some of this work made its way to publication. Edited by Sam Leigland, this book brings together in one place the most important papers, published and unpublished, of the leader in behavioral philosophy.