Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind by Gang Joshua;

Author:Gang, Joshua;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Behaviorism and Dualism

In the early days of behaviorism, mind-body dualism wasn’t much of a concern. Watson’s “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” (1913) was largely dismissive of its relevance to psychological study—much as he was dismissive of philosophy more generally. “Those time-honored relics of philosophical speculation,” he wrote, “need trouble the student of behavior as little as they trouble the student of physics. The consideration of the mind-body problem affects neither the type of problem selected nor the formulation of the solution to that problem” (166). Insofar as behaviorism was only interested in overt behavior, the Cartesian distinction between being “a thinking, non-extended thing” and “an extended, non-thinking thing” (Selected Philosophical Writings, 114–15) was beside the point.

But by the time Behaviorism was published in 1924, Watson’s attitudes toward dualism had changed. It was also in Behaviorism that we see behaviorism’s epistemological critique of dualism begin to distinguish itself from materialism’s ontological critiques of dualism. In Judeo-Christian religion, Watson explained, believers are taught that

there is a fearsome God and that every individual has a soul which is separate and distinct from the body. This soul is really a part of the supreme being. This concept has led to the philosophical platform called ‘dualism.’ All psychology except behaviorism is dualistic. That is to say we have both a mind (soul) and a body. This dogma has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience. (4)

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