Abstract
The traditional, and still quite accepted, view of psychological phenomena (e.g., emotions, moods, “propositional attitudes”) holds that they are inner entities of some non-behavioral sort (reducible or not to brain phenomena) that bring about behaviors. Behavioral and related externalist perspectives, on the other hand, oppose (in different ways) this view. There is controversy, however, over how to understand psychological phenomena giving prominence to behaviors. Most versions of the so-called extended mind view, for instance, are very different from behavioral perspectives. This paper aims at contributing to this discussion by outlining a behavioral approach that draws upon Ryle and Skinner, among others. According to this approach, psychological phenomena of different categories are by and large made up of overt and/or covert behaviors and their relations to the environment. This paper starts off by briefly surveying the range of psychological categories and identifying a desideratum for an account thereof, according to which the account should, in general, be consistent with the basic nuances of these categories. It is suggested that the outlined approach fares well in this respect and is virtuously (as opposed to viciously) parsimonious. Also, Rachlin's teleological behaviorism and Clark and Chalmers' extended mind view are very briefly discussed.
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Notes
The terminology of 'cognitive processes' used here is simply a convenient label. As will become clear later on, I am not relying upon any assumptions distinctive of the cognitivist tradition.
I do not understand covert behavior as behavior observable uniquely from (or accessible to) the organism's own vantage point. Rather, I understand it as behavior largely unobservable by simple consideration of what is going on outside the organism's skin, exoskeleton or the like.
I say 'at least partially' not to rule out the participation of non-selective (or neutral) processes in their etiology (e.g., genetic drift in phylogeny and its analogous in the ontogeny of behavior). On this, see Cleaveland (2002).
The view here outlined is nevertheless different from those of Ryle and Rachlin. For example, I consider that covert behaviors make up some instances of psychological phenomena, whereas Rachlin does not. My view is perhaps largely in continuity with Ryle's, but I work with a more detailed characterization of behaviors.
Some authors believe that, like propositional attitudes, these affections have an episodic character in some cases. My previous remark upon supposed episodic propositional attitudes applies analogously here.
The well-known holistic objection to behavioral accounts is no threat to the account here outlined. For one reason, this objection is question-begging, since it assumes that psychological phenomena are non-behavioral inner things that cause behavior. Also, it assumes that such accounts intend to reduce ascriptions of psychological phenomena to ascriptions of behavior without introducing mention to psychological phenomena (Lazzeri & Oliveira-Castro 2010).
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Acknowledgments
Work supported by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brazil, grant #2012/00059-2. The author would especially like to thank Jorge M. Oliveira-Castro, Maria Helena L. Hunziker, Mark Rowlands and Osvaldo Pessoa Jr. for helpful conversations on the subject of this paper in the course of its development. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers and Bryan Roche, associate editor, for helpful suggestions. The content, however, is solely the responsibility of the author.
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A version of this work was written in partial fulfillment of the author's PhD in Philosophy at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
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Lazzeri, F. On the Place of Behavior in the Analysis of Psychological Categories. Psychol Rec 65, 567–577 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-015-0121-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-015-0121-8