Behavior Analysis is Not Contextualistic: What an Absurd Suggestion!

Dermot Barnes-Holmes Yvonne Barnes-Holmes National University of Ireland, Maynooth

World Views
Obscure philosopher writes impenetrable book that baffles behaviorists 50 years later!

Department of Psychology Department of Psychology

Stephen C. Pepper (1942) outlined four world views that may guide the analysis of events.
Formism Mechanism Organicism Contextualism

Three World Views Explicitly Assume An Ontological Reality

Hard green shell; tough, gray wrinkled skin; moves slowly. Must be a tortoise.

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Formism:
All events are instances of specifiable forms, and thus Nerdy human with the purpose of analysis is to magnifying glass; know these forms and name goes around them. The formists' simple naming things. correspondence is nothing Must be a formist. more than the "truth" of common sense language. The formist assumes, without question, the ontological reality of the forms to be known and named.

Three World Views Explicitly Assume An Ontological Reality

Mechanism:
Computers are fascinating; I must dismantle one and find out how it works.

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An extended type of formism and its truth criterion is an Uh oh! Dangerous duck elaborated form of with mallet -- Wants to correspondence. smash me open to find out how I work: The mechanist assumes that the Must be a mechanist. universe is organized a priori into events, relations, and forces, and the truth is found through the construction of verbal formulae that reveal, via predictive verification, the assumed organization of the universe. The mechanist assumes, without question, the ontological reality of the to-be-revealed organization of the universe.
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Three World Views Explicitly Assume An Ontological Reality

Ah! The circle of life. How it all comes together in the end!

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Organicism:

Death

Birth Infancy

Old Age Childhood Mid-Life Adolescence Early Adulthood

The organicist assumes that there is a grand story evolving, in which all apparently contradictory elements will be found to be part of the evolving whole. Such a changing, developing organic system "tells a story" that can either be read correctly or not. Truth is the removal of all apparently contradictory elements so that they are seen to be part of the evolving whole: in a word, coherence. The organicist assumes, without question, the ontological reality of the evolving whole.
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Three World Views Explicitly Assume An Ontological Reality

Im a scientist and I know lots of stuff. . .

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Summary:

Knowledge

In all three of these world views the analyst considers the task of analysis to be one of discovery -- literally, a matter of "taking the cover off" what is already there. The history of the analyst may influence how well the task is done, but it does not change its nature. This means that the analyst need not deal with the difficult issue of values -- of why a particular piece of knowledge is important. The analyst can appeal to the ontological basis of knowledge as a defense.

Reality

Contextualism
Blah, blah, blah. . .

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The Root Metaphor:

The act-in-context is a common sense historical act, alive and in the present. Acts like "going to college to get a degree" have what Pepper calls a satisfaction.

Yippee! Im so satisfied!

Contextualism
Yippee! Im so satisfied!

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Truth

The Truth Criterion:

When we apply this root metaphor to the action of the analyst, it too is related to a consequence. Achieving that consequence is the truth criterion of contextualism. This truth criterion is often referred to as "successful working" or "effective action". Successful is the important word here. Success is an outcome concept: it is a matter of reaching a goal, fulfilling a purpose, or producing a desirable consequence.

Theres something not quite right about this picture.

Successful Working

Contextualism
I dont care about truth. All I want is a carrot.

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The Truth Criterion:

Pepper says it this way:
Serious analysis for [the contextualist] is always either directly or indirectly practical . . . If from one texture you wish to get to another, then analysis has an end, and a direction, and some strands have relevancy to this end and others do not, and . . . the enterprise becomes important in reference to the end" (Pepper, 1942, pp. 250251).

Contextualism
Successful Working

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Yippee! Im so satisfied!

Note that Pepper uses the term "wish." This implies that an analysis is true to the extent that it reaches the end, or takes one in the direction, that was important Thats more like it! before the action of Goals are foundational, analysis. for without them This is a crucial point, successful working because it means that cannot be defined! "successful working" is not foundational in contextualism. What is foundational is a consequence, end, purpose, or goal, in terms of which the truth criterion of successful working can be applied.

Truth

The Truth Criterion:

End/Purpose/Goals

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Contextualism
No goals = No truth. Shit -- thats weird!
Successful Working Truth

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Truth is Psychological:

If goals, consequences, purposes, and the like are foundational, then truth for the contextualist is inherently psychological, rather than ontological. Truth is defined in terms of Now hes worried. reaching a desired end (a If truth is based on goals, then what about psychological event), not in his precious reality? terms of uncovering the nature of reality.

End/Purpose/Goals

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Contextualism
No reality? Oh God, I feel sick -- I want to sit down.
Successful Working Truth

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Truth as Psychological:
Again, in Pepper's words:
. . . events can[not] correspond without an active operational juncture of one with the other, and there is [no] integration in any sense prior to the act of integrating there. [It is wrong to imply] that truth is a relation independent of the act of verifying. (Pepper, 1942, pp. 277)

Time to go -I think hes gonna throw up.

End/Purpose/Goals

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Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Ah, thats much better. Now I can see whats really going on.

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

The first three world views provide each type of analyst with a privileged or priest-like position, from whence the ontological reality of the universe may be glimpsed using the appropriate analytic methodology. Is this view consistent with behavior analysis? Apparently not. . .

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Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Hey, Fred -- I bet you never managed to condition a tortoise?

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

It would be absurd for the behaviorist to contend that he is in any way exempt from his analysis. He cannot step outside of the causal stream and observe behavior from some special point of vantage, 'perched on the epicycle of Mercury.' In the very act of analyzing human behavior he is behaving. . . (Skinner, 1974, p. 234)

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Interesting behavior; I must analyze it.

Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Interesting behavior; I must analyze it.

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

According to Skinner, scientific activity does not involve discovering the fundamental laws of nature or developing an increasingly accurate picture of an ontological reality; instead, scientific activity itself is subject to a behavior analysis.

Interesting behavior; I must analyze it.

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Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Thanks Fred. That gravitys a killer!

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

Again, in Skinner's words:
Scientific laws ... specify or imply responses and consequences. They are not ... obeyed by nature but by men that deal effectively with nature. The formula s = 1/2 gt2 does not govern the behavior of falling bodies, it governs those who correctly predict the position of falling bodies at given times. (1969, p. 141)
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As I recall, I first came up with the idea for an operant chamber when I was hit on the head by a tortoise that had escaped from one of Tolmans mazes.

Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

I spent hundreds of hours pecking at your stupid little keys, and you have the gall to say that you dont really care about what I do!

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

In behavior analysis, therefore, the output from a cumulative record, for example, is not a representation of what the subject "really" did in the operant chamber, but is rather a discriminative stimulus for a particular "scientific" response, such as "scallop" or "break-and-run", that has been differentially reinforced in the presence of that pattern.

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Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Come back my loyal subject. I was merely making a philosophical point to avoid the absurd.
Farewell, heartless Harvard behaviorist. . .

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

If the verbal utterances of a behavior analyst are viewed as behavioral events (i.e., as emerging from the personal history of the scientist), it would be absurd to insist that those utterances also correspond to an ontological reality. It is this absurdity that forces behavior analysis into contextualism.

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Prediction and control -- thats all I want!

Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Prediction & Control Truth

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

little man you are.

When confronted with this absurdity in behavior analysis, the most typical response is to argue that behavior-analytic truth is defined simply in terms of achieving the goals of prediction and control, with Thats all you want? sufficient scope, precision, and What a sad depth.

End/Purpose/Goals

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I dont care about reality!

Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Prediction & Control Truth

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

To define truth as "useful in achieving certain goals" is to define truth behaviorally (e.g., having a particular goal and trying to achieve it are behavioral events). The truth of a behavior-analytic statement must, therefore, be defined within a particular behavioral stream, and as such a truth statement is always inherently historical and contextspecific. From this perspective, ontology is simply irrelevant because the behavior analyst has no grounds on which to speak of hidden essences and underlying realities.

Youll care about reality if I bite your toe!

End/Purpose/Goals

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But I dont want you to bite my toe!, So, I can talk about that ontologically to stop you.

Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

Prediction & Control Truth

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

That does not mean that ontological talk must be abandoned, however, because it may be useful at times to speak ontologically. With that caveat, the pragmatic behavior analyst takes the view that we cannot Neat trick take ontological talk (or any Contextualist. talk) literally as it applies to You guys are really an underlying philosophy of slippery! science or an underlying reality, because truth is just successful working -- no more and no less.

End/Purpose/Goals

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Behavior Analysis and Contextualism

You know, Steve, Im not so sure about this contextualism stuff. Do you think its wise to associate behavior analysis with such a weird philosophical view? To be honest Fred Ive been so worried about that, most of my hairs fallen out.

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Behavior Analysis and Ontology:

The absurd is avoided if it is made explicit that behavior analysis is not in the business of uncovering the nature of an ontological reality. And in adopting this strategy, behavior analysis finds itself to be contextualistic. The only other alternative would be to adopt the Mystic world hypothesis, but then one is left with nothing to say, and I would not have achieved my goal today -- to talk with you about behavior analysis and contextualism.
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