What Is Radical Behaviorism?

Traditional behaviorism in American psychology believes that private events (language, consciousness, thinking) are not the object of scientific psychology research, because scientific methods require scientific psychologists to limit their research horizons to open and observable behaviors. However, Skinner's Radical Behaviorism acknowledges that private, conscious events should be included in behavioral theory of behavioral analysis. ^[1]

Skinner's activist epistemological position embraces the study of private events, arguing that knowledge of private events can also become effective knowledge of scientific psychology. Although private events such as language, consciousness, and thinking are much more complicated than observable public behavior, this cannot be a reason for the qualitative difference between private events and public behavior, nor does it hinder the principle of behavioral interpretation, that is, by the environment The selective selection of continuations is used to explain personal events such as language, consciousness, and thinking. ^[2]

In the description that Skinner refers to, hypothetical, inferential constructs have no descriptive value, and they cannot be described as objects with a subject status. Care should be given to the description objects that are of real value, rather than investing energy in the verification of hypothetical principles and propositions, ignoring the functional correlation between the behavior that should be described and the environmental conditions.

Due to their own characteristics, private events give us the impression that their relationship with environmental conditions is relatively hidden. Compared to publicly observable behaviors, how can private events be included in behavioral analysis theories that describe the functional relationship between behaviors and environmental conditions? We can analyze from two aspects. One is that behavioral analysis theories Understanding of environmental conditions; the second is the specific construction method and process of behavior analysis theory.

People traditionally like to think of the environment as something that surrounds us, and often use some organizations, systems, systems, rules and other analysis units to represent the environment. Skinner believes that this kind of understanding from the perspective of the substantive nature of specific structures simply treats the environment as a substantive structure that is independent of the individual's "skin", which makes it easy for the existence of the "skin" to connect the individual with the The environment is structurally understood as being separated, leading to the belief that public behavior can establish a relationship with the physical structural environment independent of the individual "skin" due to its observability. On the contrary, because of its inherent concealment, a private event makes people neglect or even refuse to establish a functional relationship with the physical structural environment independent of the individual "skin", and often turns to resort to the assumption of existence in the "skin" Some innate or acquired functional units, such as structures, components, organizations, systems, etc., believe that private events should be clearly separated from public behavior.

Environmental needs are considered to be made up of many different types of environmental condition effectors-such as: physical stimuli, discriminatory stimuli, artificial planning, social design, cultural control, etc.-. These different kinds of environmental condition effect factors directly select the individual's feelings, perceptions, and simple behaviors to complex behaviors such as language, consciousness, and thinking. That is, from the understanding of the environment to the existence of the physical structure to the existence of functional effects in the way of thinking, that is, from the structural environment to the functional environment. The first step in the concrete construction of behavior analysis theory is to define the concept of behavior from the perspective of relation. Behavior is no longer understood as the local (full) performance map of individual movement, but behavior is understood as the specific relationship that can be experienced between individual movement and environmental conditions. This relationship contains the effects of environmental conditions on individual movement. , And make choices about individual movements (simple forms such as the maintenance or regression of individual movements). Some people regard the core of private events such as language, consciousness, and thinking as a certain structure, organization, or form within the individual, and analyze and explore language, consciousness, and thinking from a non-operational and non-experienced standpoint. However, Skinner's radical behaviorism starts from an operational and empirical standpoint, and believes that language, consciousness, thinking, etc. are also an experience and a relationship with the environmental conditions.

Since behavior is understood as a relationship, in the horizontal state of empirical description, the further work of behavior analysis theory is to develop conceptual terms to describe the shallow manifestation of behavioral relationships with environmental conditions as the core, and then summarize the behavioral relationships. Implied deep kernel. The shallow manifestation of behavioral relationships refers to behavioral performance and its characteristics under environmental conditions. The conceptual terms that describe behavioral manifestations and characteristics that appear as a superficial layer of behavioral relationships are usually: operational behavior, the formation and regression of conditional effects, discriminatory stimuli, reinforcement effects, and so on. The shallow manifestation that describes behavioral relationships is the collection, collection, and systematization of a large number of empirical facts. However, it is more important to conclude the deep core of the behavioral relationship from these systematic empirical factsthe legal consistency between behavior and environmental conditions, that is, to summarize the principle of the environmental selective interaction of behavior. Because Skinner's radical behaviorism emphasizes describing the specific relationship between the behavior that can be experienced and the environmental conditions, rather than investigating an inherent structure or component that triggers the behavior, plus Skinner's activist understanding of the environment And the unique construction methods and processes of behavior analysis theory paved the way for the study of private events.

Skinner's analysis of language is completely guided by the principles of behavioral analysis. From the empirical standpoint, he abandons the practice of interpreting language with the help of abstract structures, minds, and cognitive structures, and analyzes from an operational and empirical perspective. Language phenomenon. Language or speech acts are not grown from some innate structure, nor should they be understood merely as "the use of symbols", "the exchange of ideas" and "the expression of thoughts". Language or speech act is a behavior phenomenon selected in the speech community by the effects of environmental conditions composed of speakers. Therefore, for the study of acquired language repertoires affected by environmental selective interactions, it is necessary to find out various relevant factors in the context of the environmental effect selection of the speech community, and to identify the specific relationship between them and speech acts Make precise descriptions of relationships. Speech acts should not be considered to be caused by some internal cause (such as innate structure) of the individual. In contrast, speech acts are also operational in nature. They are selected by environmental conditions, and the functional relationship between speech acts and environmental conditions can be described in terms of response, reinforcement, and discriminatory stimuli.

Despite the implicit nature of consciousness as part of human experience, Skinner retained the place of consciousness in radicalism and pointed out the uniqueness of the consciousness possessed by man. Human consciousness reflects the loftiness of humans compared to other species. Skinner's radical behaviorism believes that, in terms of awareness of its own living environment, there are many species that can listen, see, touch, and perceive the surroundings as well as humans. However, human activities do not stop at these simple biological survival activities. The sublime of humans over other species is that humans live in a linguistic community environment, and with the help of language, humans can describe what they have done, are doing and will do in the future. That is, people can observe their own behaviors, and can re-react or reflect on their behaviors. The so-called human consciousness refers to the form and content in which a person reacts or reflects on his own behavior. Human consciousness is the product of socialization. Because only after language is used to strengthen and describe behaviors in the verbal community, talents have the basic conditions to re-react or reflect on their behaviors, so that human consciousness is possible. "Only a linguistic society can provide self-descriptive interdependent connections ... a talent can respond to himself and his actions in a certain way." Listening, seeing, touching, perceiving, or other more complicated behaviors in the living environment, if it is not a person living in a speech community environment, not a person who has the ability to form a speech-dependent relationship under the influence of environmental choices , Then these behaviors at best have only biological dimension meaning and no social dimension meaning. Such people are at best only biological person and not social one. In other words, such a person does not have a sublime character than other living things, that is, he does not possess human consciousness. The basic characteristic of human consciousness is society-social-verbal. Human consciousness is actually a kind of behavior in which people react and reflect on their own behaviors in the speech community. In this sense, Skinner said, "What a person feels or introspects is not an 'emotion' or 'mind'," but a state of his body, and people talk about it only in certain words to strengthen the phase. Rely on the connection. "