A fun little paper reports on B. F. Skinner's Rorschach results. He agreed to be tested as part of a 1953 project psychoanalysing various eminent scientists. The scientists were anonymous at the time but now Norwegians Cato Grønnerød et al have dug them out of the archives (Skinner has been dead since 1990).
Skinner was the world's leading exponent of behaviourism, a school of thought that held roughly that
It was never an especially convincing idea to be honest and behaviourism is now pretty much dead although many of the techniques pioneered by Skinner live on in the form of tests on lab animals to determine the addictiveness of drugs and so forth.
But in the mid-20th century it was very popular and Skinner was a well-known figure, the Jonah Lehrer of his day in many ways although rather more controversial.
Anyway. Grønnerød et al report that when Skinner was asked to describe those famous inkblots -
The most evident feature of the protocol is the huge number of responses, showing a highly productive and creative person. But complexity is sacrificed for quantity... No perceptual distortions are evident, and reality testing and ability to function neutrally are in place. We found no signs of cognitive distortions, although some responses have an idiosyncratic twist... He might be an assertive person with a tendency to view relations as generally competitive and an area for the expression of his own needs, rather than an area of mutual support and belonging.
Although he shows an interest in others, the balance between real and whole humans and other human representation suggests that perception of self and others is based more on fantasies and wishes than on real-life perceptions... “Necrotic looking,” “wounded animal,” and “sheep pushing the two wolves away” might reflect projected aggression. These processes point to more primitive defense mechanisms...Which is exactly the kind of speculation that Skinner spent his career trying to put a stop to. Still, it's an interesting paper, although I think it tells you more about the Rorschach than about Skinner.
Grønnerød C, Overskeid G, and Hartmann E (2012). Under Skinner's Skin: Gauging a Behaviorist From His Rorschach Protocol. Journal of personality assessment PMID: 22731841
24 comments:
The Rorschach has been so thoroughly discredited that I don;t think anyone can make any conclusions about this. Frankly, it's an embarrassment to the procession.
"Skinner was the world's leading exponent of behaviourism, a school of thought that held roughly that it's impossible to know anything about "inner" mental states or thoughts, and that they might not even exist, so all we could do was look at and try to predict behaviour."
You are talking about Watson's Methodological Behaviorism there, not Skinner's Radical Behaviorism.
If you read Skinners "About behaviorism", you´ll find that it (behaviorism) is actually a really good idea, that the standard criticisms are misguided and that behaviorism as a practice is very much alive in all of neuroscience. Remember, fMRI BOLD is just observable behavior of the brain.
"What is called methodological behaviorism limits itself to what can be publicly observed; mental processes may exist but they are ruled out of scientific consideration by their nature......but self observation can be studied, and it must be included in any reasonably complete account of human behaviour. " (B.F. Skinner, 1971)
Skinner's behaviorism is alive and continues to evolve quite well in very diverse applications. I'm sorry to see that you carry this popular misconception on.
For instance, take a look at: http://www.abainternational.org/
http://www.obmnetwork.com/
http://www.contextualpsychology.org/
Relational Frame Theory (RFT, see the last URL) continues the development of Skinner's behaviorism.
Also please have a look at this article about behavioral science contribution to social development:
http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2012/05/rejoinder-to-gary-guttings-doubts-about-the-behavioral-sciences/
And as previously commented, do read something Skinner wrote. I think you will find it quite interesting. About Behaviorism and Beyond Freedom and Dignity would be good starters.
Anonymous # 1 is misinformed. The Rorschach has been re-standardized and extensive studies have been done on reliability and validity. Basically about a third of Exner's ratios are considered to be well-validated measures of various psychological processes. And it is the best measure of disordered thinking and inaccurate perception and, as such, is a very sensitive measure of the kinds of problems seen in psychotic disorders.
pgmj: OK, I was overstating it slightly in my efforts to be brief, I admit.
What I mean is, compared to say the 1950s, behaviourism is a lot less influential now due to the rise of cognitive psychology.
I've actually read quite a lot by Skinner. Walden 2. BFAD, twice actually. I've been considering writing a post on it actually.
Thanks for your reply. I forgot to mention this most interesting paper that is under review:
http://evolution-institute.org/files/Evolving_the_future_Under_Review-1.pdf
It connects behavioral science with EvoS and epigenetics.
Glad to hear that you found Walden Two interesting. It has influenced me a lot. I'd suggest having a look at some of these, if you haven't already:
Kuhlmann, H. (2005). Living Walden Two : B.F. Skinner’s behaviorist utopia and experimental communities. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Rakos, R. F. (2006). Review of Living Walden Two: B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Utopia and Experimental Communities. The Behavior Analyst, 29(1), 153–157.
Altus, D. E., & Morris, E. K. (2009). B. F. Skinner’s Utopian Vision: Behind and Beyond Walden Two. The Behavior Analyst, 32(2), 319–335.
Dinsmoor, J. A. (1992). Setting the record straight: The social views of BF Skinner. American Psychologist, 47(11), 1454.
Adams, N. (2012). Skinner’s Walden Two: An anticipation of positive psychology? Review of General Psychology, 16(1), 1–9. doi:10.1037/a0026439
Biglan, A. (1995). Changing Cultural Practices: A Contextualist Framework for Intervention Research. Context Press.
Embry, D. D., & Biglan, A. (2008). Evidence-based Kernels: Fundamental Units of Behavioral Influence. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 11(3), 75–113. doi:10.1007/s10567-008-0036-x
Chance, P. (2007). The Ultimate Challenge: Prove B. F. Skinner Wrong. The Behavior Analyst, 30(2), 153–160.
@Neuroskeptic: "What I mean is, compared to say the 1950s, behaviourism is a lot less influential now due to the rise of cognitive psychology."
(I understand that your comments on behaviorism were more throwaway lines rather than fundamental points that you were trying to make, but the pedant in me demands that I reply, so apologies in advance).
There seem to be a bunch of comments explaining the difference between radical behaviorism and methodological behaviorism, so I won't get into that, but I think it's important to point out here that 'behaviorism' is a philosophy of science, whereas cognitive psychology is a scientific field.
The importance of this distinction is that Skinner's radical behaviorism is what made cognitive psychology possible, as Skinner's contribution to psychology was largely the re-introduction of the mind and the study of cognition, and explaining how it is scientifically possible to investigate these things. This means that cognitive psychology did not replace behaviorism, but it's actually based on it, as the philosophy of cognitivism is simply an extension of behaviorist principles.
Roediger (a cognitive psychologist) wrote a good article on this topic here: What Happened to Behaviorism? (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1540).
I'd be interested in reading a post on the topic if you ever got around to writing one up, and it would certainly be good for the PR of behaviorism to have a high profile blogger correcting some misconceptions of behaviorism (e.g. pointing out that behaviorism rejects blank slatism, that Chomsky's review of "Verbal Behavior" was so mistaken that it had no effect on the field, that behaviorism doesn't reject mental states, etc).
Oops. I think I was confusing the different kinds of behaviourism and misrepresenting Skinner. I have updated the post.
It's certainly true that Behaviourism, both in Watson's original formulation and in Skinner's later revision remain influential in Cognitive science to this day.
Whether it's 'a good idea' or not is still a matter of dispute within Philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science.
Within Philosophy of Science, the foundations of behaviourism - operationalism and positivism- have been torn to pieces in just about every field from physics to biology (unless you count Dawkins perhaps).
In philosphy of psychology, it's certainly true that operationalism is still the core methodology used in most experiments. Arguably, this is why there is so little consensus, so many conflicting results, and so little external validity.
In Cognitive science, many people have seriously challenged Skinner's view of psychology. Skinner suggested, that internal processes can be safely ignored, as a complete explanation of behaviour can be provided by learning history. Not only is this anathema to cognitive science, it is also at complete odds with cognitive neuroscience. This led many leading researchers to challenge the behaviourist paradigm, allowing a new, internal exploration of behaviour through neuroscientific analysis.
Skinner's contribution to psychology was the introduction learning in to psychology in a big way, and that was a positive thing. By concentrating on what was observable, he enforced a level of rigor to the scientific study of behaviour. Unfortunately, he was a kook, and his utopian fixations led psychology to ignore every other important aspect of human behaviour (neural, subjective, cognitive etc.) for decades.
Not only did skinner hold psychology back, he justified a narrow minded, reductionist vision of human behaviour that still remains today in many aspects of psychology. I think it's fair to say that he thought that science had no place in explaining subjective states of cognition.
Skinner was a genius, but ultimately he presented ann extreme and divisive view o humanity and psychology. You only need to look at a video of him speaking to see what a rigid, agressive control freak he really was. That's why this article was worth publishing, because his personality (which he reduced to learning histories) probably played a big part the genesis of his views.
Personally, I think you should ununderline those words in the original article!
Thanks for bringing up the issue of philosophy of science. Functional contextualism is the foundation of contextual behavioral science, and builds on behavior analysis.
http://contextualpsychology.org/basic_foundations
http://contextualpsychology.org/recommended_readings
I'd add this to the recommended readings:
Mentalism, behavior-behavior relations, and a behavior-analytic view of the purposes of science
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741891/
@mount analogue: "Within Philosophy of Science, the foundations of behaviourism - operationalism and positivism- have been torn to pieces"
Operationalism is, of course, popular in psychology today because it is so useful. I'm not sure why you attribute this to "little consensus, conflicting results, and little external validity" though, as operationalism solves all of those problems. The only problem with operationalism is, as summed up by Bridgman, that it is sometimes taken as a dogma, rather than a useful heuristic. There is no reason why qualitative data need to be ignored by operationalists, but the scope of its importance and meaning (especially in science) necessarily changes.
The linking of behaviorism with "positivism" is a bit misleading. Whilst true of methodological behaviorism, it is absolutely untrue when applied to radical behaviorism, which is the current accepted philosophy.
"Skinner suggested, that internal processes can be safely ignored, as a complete explanation of behaviour can be provided by learning history. Not only is this anathema to cognitive science, it is also at complete odds with cognitive neuroscience."
I think you've seriously misunderstood Skinner here. His argument was not that we could ignore inner processes and get a complete explanation of behavior. His argument was that a science of behavior is possible without appealing to inner processes, which is true as it's a simple comment on levels of explanation.
Skinner was, however, a big supporter of using mental states and neurological processes to explain causes of behavior though - the former being the basis of his entire philosophy, and the latter coming about later as technology improved. Initially he did warn against researchers attempting to use physiological explanations as causes of behavior, as he was writing in the 20s and 30s, where our understanding of the brain was mostly guesswork and speculation. As imaging technology and neurobiological methodology improved, he (and other behaviorists) became big supporters of neuroscience - hence why a massive field in neuroscience is currently the crossover work between neuroscientists and behavior analysts.
"By concentrating on what was observable"
This is true, but keep in mind that by "observable", Skinner was also discussing things that are indirectly observed, like thoughts and feelings, and other internal states etc. He rejected the methodological behaviorist position of focusing only on observable behavior.
"Unfortunately, he was a kook, and his utopian fixations led psychology to ignore every other important aspect of human behaviour (neural, subjective, cognitive etc.) for decades."
He can be described as a few things, but "kook" certainly isn't one of them. By all accounts, he was one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys you could have the pleasure of meeting.
He never discussed setting up a "utopia", and his ideas on Walden II have long since been misunderstood. His arguments essentially boiled down to: 'There are many aspects of government and society that could be improved by using science, maybe we should do that'. The suggestions he made in the book were just as examples, and if any of them proved to be unworkable or damaging, then he'd suggest they should be dropped.
As mentioned above, he didn't suggest we ignore the neural aspects of behavior, and the subjective and cognitive aspects of behavior were a central part of his philosophy.
(Part 2 because I struggle to be concise).
"Not only did skinner hold psychology back, he justified a narrow minded, reductionist vision of human behaviour that still remains today in many aspects of psychology."
I don't think any of that is fair to say at all. No psychologist would argue that Skinner had a negative effect on psychology, and his emphasis on bringing the mind and subjective states back into psychology, with the methodology to study them, was one of the greatest moves in psychological history.
I don't believe that B.F. Skinner's behaviorism is completely dead; in fact, I believe it is still used today. I learned about B.F. Skinner in my psychology class and his work with operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is looking at how people's behavior changes with different consequences and whether or not that behavior will be repeated. This type of conditioning can be applied to everyday life and people still study behaviors today. This comment just caught me off guard because I don't think it is true; B.F. Skinners behaviorism still exists but in different forms.
@MikeSamsa
sorry if I ruffled some feathers while letting off steam, and thanks for being so measured and polite in your responses.
I'm not sure why you attribute this to "little consensus, conflicting results, and little external validity" though, as operationalism solves all of those problems.
the reason I attribute many of the problems in psychology to operationalism is that it leads to both methodological and conceptual errors.
In terms of methodology, it defines unobservable constructs in terms of the operations used to measure those constructs. As a result, thousands of different operational definitions are used in a variety experimental contexts to measure the same construct - and this leads to very poor construct validity. in consequence, psychology, cognitive psychology and even neuroscience can appear to work under a scientific consensus when it doesn't.
In conceptual terms, Bridgman went far beyond the use of operationalism as a heuristic - he proposed that the conceptual, metaphysical and theoretical assumptions could be safely ignored by using operational procedures. His work was in a large part a response to Einstein's revolutionary contribution to science, which overturned the scientific consensus of three hundred years. Bridgman's utopian project has since been discarded in Physics (the most mature branch of science), is going out the window in biology (look at the recent debates between Dawkins and Wilson for instance0… and it is long past the time when it should have been discarded in psychology.
Operationalism has strong links to positivism. Both assume that empirical statements can be theory independent. both have been shown to have serious logical problems (c.f. Quine, Popper, Toulmin). Both have been discarded as foundations for scientific understanding for over fifty years outside psychology.
The linking of behaviorism with "positivism" is a bit misleading. Whilst true of methodological behaviorism, it is absolutely untrue when applied to radical behaviorism, which is the current accepted philosophy.
Whilst I agree that Behvaiourism and Positivism are not the same thing, they share important philosophical foundations: a) that it is possible to provide a scientific explanation from observable phenomena b) that explanations limited to observable phenomena can safely ignore theoretical assumptions c) that theoretical propositions that go beyond observation are somehow less scientific
Pt. 2 (even less concise than you)
I think you've seriously misunderstood Skinner here. His argument was not that we could ignore inner processes and get a complete explanation of behavior. His argument was that a science of behavior is possible without appealing to inner processes, which is true as it's a simple comment on levels of explanation.
Right up until the end, Skinner maintained that understanding neurological processes added little to the science of behaviour. There is a fantastic exposition of this in the letters between Skinner and the renowned affective neuroscientist Pankstepp, in Pankstepp's book, Affective Neuroscience. I can't find the book right now (I have to stop lending them out!). If I find the it I'lll post some snippets on this message board.
Skinner was also discussing things that are indirectly observed, like thoughts and feelings, and other internal states etc. He rejected the methodological behaviorist position of focusing only on observable behavior.
Skinner only discussed internal states when they could be operationalized in terms of stimulus and response. In my opinion, this was both his greatest contribution (as it helped psychologists to develop a simple an effective methodology) and most damaging contribution (in that is reduced psychology to the science of behaviour in very limited terms and concepts). It could well be that he provided a very necessary step in the development of psychology as a science, but that doesn't mean that we should continue to practice psychology in his terms when they are limiting, false or logically inconsistent (and if you don't think they are logically inconsistent, you should read Fodor on Skinner… which is very revealing)
He can be described as a few things, but "kook" certainly isn't one of them. By all accounts, he was one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys you could have the pleasure of meeting.
In using the word kook, I meant something akin to crank….. "Crank" is a pejorative term used for a person who holds an unshakable belief that most of his or her contemporaries consider to be false . Perhaps you don't see him as a crank…. but anyone who invented the air-crib (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909996,00.html) can only be, for me, a crank.
As for walden II, it is a book about a group of psychologists who create a perfect society based on the principles of behaviourism. If you don't believe it is a piece of utopian literature, then there is no logical argument I can offer to make you think otherwise. If you don't mind, this is one opinion that I will stick to. Anything else I have argued, I may be completely wrong about.
No psychologist would argue that Skinner had a negative effect on psychology, and his emphasis on bringing the mind and subjective states back into psychology, with the methodology to study them, was one of the greatest moves in psychological history.
I'm a psychologist. I argue the Skinner had a positive and negative effect on psychology. And I don't' see how he did anything to bring subjective states back into psychology. It was Aaron Beck , Miller, and Chomsky that brought internal states back into Cognitive Psychology, and they had to fight Skinner to do it.
@mount analogue: (Sorry, I may have replied before you made edits and changed your comments..)
"sorry if I ruffled some feathers while letting off steam, and thanks for being so measured and polite in your responses."
No feathers ruffled at all, it's just a topic I enjoy discussing :)
"As a result, thousands of different operational definitions are used in a variety experimental contexts to measure the same construct - and this leads to very poor construct validity.
This can be a potential problem, but the whole point of operationalism is to clearly describe a working definition of a phenomenon that we can all agree to. At the very least, where disagreements arise, we can point to clearly defined conceptual differences which could explain discrepancies in our results.
Every way you look at it, it has to be a positive move forward. The only problem is when it's applied in absolute near-positivistic terms, where the idea is that a concept has to be operationalised or it's useless.
"a) that it is possible to provide a scientific explanation from observable phenomena b) that explanations limited to observable phenomena can safely ignore theoretical assumptions c) that theoretical propositions that go beyond observation are somehow less scientific"
Your point (A) is surely accepted by all of science, and behaviorism rejects (B) and (C). The idea that behaviorism is atheoretical generally comes from Skinner's initial warnings of not putting the cart before the horse - he suggested that to start the science of psychology properly, we should start from the absolute beginning and just describe. Once we build up a range of valid and consistent descriptions, we can start coming up with explanations and theories, as Skinner so often did.
And of course behaviorists don't argue that propositions that go beyond observation aren't scientific, otherwise all of the behaviorist work in areas like attention, signal detection, cognition, etc would be useless. In other words, it seems strange that a field that supposedly rejected unobservable propositions would create the idea of the "cognitive map".
"Skinner only discussed internal states when they could be operationalized in terms of stimulus and response."
Untrue. Skinner rejected stimulus-response psychology, and historically he was the one who deconstructed that problematic aspect of psychological history.
"and most damaging contribution (in that is reduced psychology to the science of behaviour in very limited terms and concepts)."
This is misleading. Skinner described "behavior" as everything an organism does, which includes cognition and all the things that cognitive psychologists study. That is, he doesn't treat cognition as an epiphenomenon of external/observable behaviors, but treated cognition as a form of "behavior" itself (i.e. it was something that had causes and effects, and could be studied scientifically - this is what he means by 'behavior'). He treated cognition in the exact same way that cognitive psychologists treat cognition today, because cognitivism is based on behaviorist thinking.
(Part 2)
"and if you don't think they are logically inconsistent, you should read Fodor on Skinner… which is very revealing"
Fodor's comments on Skinner and behaviorism are as faulty, flawed, and ridiculous as Fodor's attacks on evolution and natural selection.
"but anyone who invented the air-crib (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909996,00.html) can only be, for me, a crank."
The air crib was a hugely important invention. It started the whole movement of environmental enrichment, which is a staple for all developmental psych theories. It was so successful, that it's now a common feature in most households - except now the maker is usually someone like Fisher-Price (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I2UJ0Q?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwww1stbab-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000I2UJ0Q).
"As for walden II, it is a book about a group of psychologists who create a perfect society based on the principles of behaviourism. If you don't believe it is a piece of utopian literature, then there is no logical argument I can offer to make you think otherwise. If you don't mind, this is one opinion that I will stick to. Anything else I have argued, I may be completely wrong about."
The problem is that he wasn't describing a utopia - he wasn't looking for 'perfection', just hoping to improve society through the application of science. Yes, he used behaviorist techniques as an example, because that's what he knew, but he never intended for the book to be taken literally, and rather he wanted to highlight the importance of basing societal decisions on evidence.
"I'm a psychologist. I argue the Skinner had a positive and negative effect on psychology. And I don't' see how he did anything to bring subjective states back into psychology. It was Aaron Beck , Miller, and Chomsky that brought internal states back into Cognitive Psychology, and they had to fight Skinner to do it."
Sorry but that's absolutely wrong. Skinner's radical behaviorism was 'radical' precisely because it brought the mind back into science, as a serious object worthy of study. As mentioned above, it was the behaviorists like Tolman who introduced the concept of the 'cognitive map' - which would seem like a strange thing to do, if they didn't accept internal states and had to be fought to bring them back.
Also, Chomsky was so confused on the issue of behaviorism that he was fighting himself for the most part. Take his infamously embarrassing attempt at reviewing "Verbal Behavior", where he spends the majority of the article attacking methodological behaviorism, stimulus-response psychology, blank slatism, and black box approaches - even though Skinner had destroyed such notions decades before. I recommend reading MacCorquodale's "On Chomsky's Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1333660/) where he essentially apologises for nobody replying to Chomsky sooner, but it just took the behaviorists years to try to figure out who or what Chomsky was trying to attack since his article was one big strawman.
(Part 3)
"Right up until the end, Skinner maintained that understanding neurological processes added little to the science of behaviour. There is a fantastic exposition of this in the letters between Skinner and the renowned affective neuroscientist Pankstepp, in Pankstepp's book, Affective Neuroscience."
And his reply to Pankstepp in that book demonstrates that he accepts the role and importance of neuroscience (on pages 11 and 12, available on Google Books). You seem to be making the same mistake as Pankstepp here though, as Skinner states that a science of behavior does not need neuroscience, but rather neuroscience (as Skinner puts it) fills the gaps between stimulus and response, and reinforcement and the resulting behavior.
Skinner is making an argument about the levels of explanation. In other words, chemistry does not need to wait for physics to figure out what physical laws allow for the structure of certain chemicals to form, as they can still mix chemicals and reach conclusions. It doesn't mean physics is useless or irrelevant to the study of chemistry, just that it adds an extra level of explanation.
But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that Skinner was in fact staunchly anti-neuroscience. This isn't a problem, as Skinner was only the creator of radical behaviorism, not the god or ruler of behaviorists. Hence why many strict radical behaviorists pride themselves in their neuroscientific work (e.g. Palmer, O'Donahue, and not to mention the early behaviorists like Hebb and Lashley).
@MIkeSamsa
That's all very interesting, and I'm happy take some of your points on board, but I still remain deeply unconvinced by your arguments.
Fodor's criticism of Darwinism wasn't flawed, as such, but really just attacks against a straw man. In other words, he was attacking claims that no serious Darwinists or even neo-Darwinists make these days.
I don't think the same is true for his attacks on Behaviourism, in that he is attacking a claim that behaviourists (or Skinner at least) actually made: That antecedent and consequent environmental conditions constitute a complete causal explanation of behaviour, whereas internal states (i.e. neuroscience + cognitive science) merely fill in the details of how stimulus and response are related together.
In Skinner's words:
“Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second [neurological] link is not lawfully determined by the first [environmental stimuli], or the third [behavior] by the second, the first and third links must be lawfully related.....Valid information about the second link may throw light on this relationship but can in no way alter it. (It is) external variables of which behavior is a function.” (Skinner (1953) Science and Human Behaviour)
It's kind of weird - almost as if we are talking about the a different person. For me, the whole purpose of Skinner's approach was to avoid the cognitive constructs that Cognitive science relies on. That was what led to the 'Cognitive Revolution' As George Miller, one of the most famous cognitive psychologists of the 20C wrote in 2003:
"Psychology could not participate in the cognitive
revolution until it had freed itself from behaviorism,
thus restoring cognition to scientific respectability."
(http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rit/geo/Miller.pdf)
Anyway.... that's about where I stand so far, for better or worse. Thanks for your comments/criticisms. I'll be happy to let you have the last words, if you can tell me how behaviourism brought cognition back to psychology. :)
"Fodor's criticism of Darwinism wasn't flawed, as such, but really just attacks against a straw man. In other words, he was attacking claims that no serious Darwinists or even neo-Darwinists make these days."
I agree with that, and I'll point out that he does the exact same thing with behaviorism. Just as he attacks the evolutionary biologists based on the mistaken belief that they are solely adaptationists who argue that natural selection is the only process that is necessary to explain evolution, he attacks behaviorism based on the false belief that they argue that behavior can be accounted for by conditioning and learning.
"That antecedent and consequent environmental conditions constitute a complete causal explanation of behaviour, whereas internal states (i.e. neuroscience + cognitive science) merely fill in the details of how stimulus and response are related together."
This is certainly not a description of Skinner's position. For starters, he argued that behavior cannot be understood by appealing to the environment alone, and that we first had to understand the biology and evolutionary pathways behind a behavior, before we could look at the environmental variables - he framed this as the importance of phylogenetic and ontogenic factors. Basically, on the issue of 'nature vs nurture', Skinner was explicitly and adamantly a supporter of the fact that it was necessarily both, and neither component could be ignored.
Secondly, he didn't rule out internal states as causes of behavior at all. The entire purpose of his philosophy was to include them. To argue that radical behaviorism rejects internal states is to argue that radical behaviorism doesn't exist. It's like attacking natural selection because it ignores the role of differential reproduction.
He did point out that neurological explanations were a different level to behavioral explanations, and were not necessary at that level of explanation (e.g. we can explain what causes certain behaviors and thoughts without appealing to neurons or neurotransmitters), but that's not a controversial issue at all.
"It's kind of weird - almost as if we are talking about the a different person. For me, the whole purpose of Skinner's approach was to avoid the cognitive constructs that Cognitive science relies on. "
Yes, it's a common misperception of Skinner. It's because he chose to associate himself with 'behaviorism', which initially sought to ignore cognitions and internal states, but his brand of behaviorism was considered 'radical' because it sought to include these variables into psychology.
In psychological history, it is simply undeniable that the core component of Skinner's work was to bring cognitions and inner states back into scientific study.
Where people often get confused, after mistaking his approach for the methodological behaviorist approach which argued we should only focus on observable behaviors, is when they misread his comments on the use of cognitions as explanatory fictions. That is, he often attacked cognitive science and the use of hypothetical constructs, but not because they invoked cognitions or internal states, and rather because they were functionally useless. For example, explaining why a rat works for water by suggesting it was 'thirsty' sounds reasonable, until we consider how we reach the conclusion that it's thirsty. Well, it's thirsty because it worked for water, and it worked for water because it's thirsty. Such (highly simplified) explanations hold no predictive value, and it is precisely this that Skinner argued against.
The significant part of his work was how he then went on to explain how cognitions and internal states should be studied - in a way that is scientifically rigorous and meaningful.
(Part 2)
"That was what led to the 'Cognitive Revolution' As George Miller, one of the most famous cognitive psychologists of the 20C wrote in 2003:"
The existence of the 'cognitive revolution' is debatable, and it seems that it's either based entirely on misunderstandings, or was (as Leahey argues) essentially a tool for promoting their own particular 'brand' of the time.
Either way, the arguments made during the time of the 'revolution' were based on major misunderstandings of behaviorism. Chomsky, of course, being a great example here, where he is often heralded as either single-handedly, or playing a significant role, in taking down behaviorism. But, as we know, his criticisms of behaviorism were absurd and ridiculous, and had no effect on the field at all because Skinner had already made the same attacks against methodological behaviorism decades prior.
There is no conflict between behaviorism and cognitivism, so it seems strange for us to believe that was some kind of 'revolution' that required one to overthrow the other. Just look at all the cognitive and behavioral psychologists working together now, or all the cognitive psychologists who actively refer to themselves as behaviorists.
The idea of a 'cognitive revolution' simply makes no sense.
"if you can tell me how behaviourism brought cognition back to psychology"
Well, I've already pointed out above that Skinner's entire work was based around the importance of an 'inner life', so we just need to keep in mind that before him psychology was largely ruled by the methodological behaviorists, who tried to argue that it was scientifically unsound to postulate inner states. His influence produced the concept of cognitive maps, produced CBT to monitor and manipulate thoughts, and has played a vital role in the research behind attention, signal detection, altruism, etc etc.
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