Epistemological behaviorism: what it is and how it influenced psychology.

A summary of the characteristics of epistemological behaviorism and its philosophy.

Explaining what epistemological behaviorism is is not a simple task.It is not easy to explain what epistemological behaviorism is, since it is intertwined in philosophical concepts that resort, to a greater or lesser extent, to mentalistic terms that the behaviorists did not look favorably upon.

The epistemological foundations of behavioral science have been to legitimize psychology as a science, but doing so in such a radical way that it could even be said to have lost a lot of information along the way, relevant but hidden in the mind. Let's try to understand this issue a little more in depth.

Epistemological behaviorism and philosophical background.

Psychology has fueled the controversy between empiricism and rationalism when it has tried to establish itself as a full science, with the same rights as the all-powerful exact sciences, such as mathematics, physics and chemistry. Before entering into the perspective taken by behaviorism, it is necessary to go into detail about the view of rationalism and empiricism on the attainment of knowledge:

First, rationalism holds the idea that regularities can be found in the world, and that it is from these regularities that we can obtain knowledge.First, rationalism holds the idea that regularities can be found in the world, and that it is from these regularities that universal laws can be established. These universal laws would be obtained by means of reason.

In second place we have empiricism, a philosophical vision that considers that there is no way to reach universality, i.e., that it is not possible to establish universal laws.that is to say, that it is not possible to obtain universal laws in everything since not everything can be presented in a regular way.

Empiricism defends the idea that it is not viable to think any idea that does not come from the impressions of the senses. We learn about the world by means of our impressions; the judgments we make afterwards are not, in fact, a learning proper, but a reflection. Knowledge, understood as general laws, would be nothing more than the generalization of facts from habits of mind.

Hume considered that the principle of causality, that is, relating an event to a subsequent event (cause-effect) was constituted from ideas that are associated with each other thanks to mental activity. But these ideas do not arise in the vacuum of the mind, but come by means of sensory experience.. The mind forms the habit and relates the simple ideas creating complex ideas or reflections. It would be these more complex ideas that would allow us to point out the relation of events under the condition of causality.

The mind, by repeatedly observing events, associates events that occur in succession, and determines that one is the cause and the other is the effect. Thus, it is understood that laws are, in reality, conjectures based on individual experiences and that, although it is believed that they are always conditioned, that they will always manifest themselves one after the other, it does not have to be so.

The sciences, in their pretension to become exact sciences, have made use of the search for any causal relationship but with universal regularities. This has been, according to several authors, the case of experimental psychology. Psychology has found itself in the middle of the empiricist-rationalist debate, seeking cause and effect relationships and, in turn, regularities in every possible place. that could make behavior predictable.

This is where we enter the epistemological foundations of behaviorism. The more classical behaviorists tried to make explanations of human behavior scientific, but first, one must be able to discover regularities that give an explanation. These regularities must come in terms of causes and effects. An event causes the individual to carry out a certain behavior, as the most primitive version of behaviorism indicates.

Behaviorism and associationism

Of the antecedents that marked psychology as a positive science, we can speak of Ivan Pavlov and other scientists who formed the Russian physiology movement. These are the antecedents of a scientific psychology that would become the associationist current, which includes most of the physiologists and experimental psychologists who have had the intention of explaining human behavior.

They based their explanations on the principle of causality, and that is why their explanations have been taken as the antecedents of scientific psychology, related to the experimental current initiated by Wilhelm Wundt. They sought to establish necessary and sufficient relationships between events or facts, in this case, behavior and physiology.. Thus, psychology, understood as a strict science, seeks to explain and account for the variables that control human behavior.

But the concept of causality has been strongly associated in psychology with the behaviorist stimulus-response model. Behaviorism, already in its origins, considered that all behaviors can be analyzed on the basis of concrete and objectifiable movements, each of which is elicited by the effect of a stimulus located in the environment.The problem is, perhaps, that each of them is elicited by the effect of a stimulus located in the environment.

This is perhaps the problem that prevented behaviorism from progressing more successfully over the years, since it was seen as too focused on the stimulus-response model, in addition to ignoring all the internal processes of the subject. If you leave the study of observable behavior, behaviorism, as a current, fails. It is seen as a too limited, deterministic and anti-humanistic psychological current.

About pragmatic behaviorism

There are those who consider that describing behaviorism as a current solely focused on explaining behavior based on causal relationships between two variables is, in reality, a historical and conceptual inaccuracy. It is considered that causality should not be the concept on which the historical development of behavioral science should be described. The premise is that the epistemological foundations of behaviorism should not be based on the notion of causality, but on pragmatism..

Many psychologists consider that behaviorism has its source in empiricism, given that behaviorists use observation as a fundamental tool to get to know human behavior.

However, here they run into a problem, and that is that empiricism did not deny the existence or usefulness of internal processes as the cause of one's own behavior.. In fact, empiricism, in the words of Hume himself, maintains that representation, ideas of reflection, such as pleasure or pain, arise because some events occur above the soul, more modernly understood as mind. This is why, taking into account the behaviorist position on the idea of mind, it is not appropriate to call the behaviorists empiricists.

About Watson and Skinner

The beginning of behaviorism, as a current, is given after John B. Watson published his Behaviorist manifesto ("Behaviorist manifesto") in 1913. In this text, the aim was to to refute the dualistic explanations of a metaphysical nature, typical of René Descartes, which rationalist psychology lacked.that Cartesian rationalist psychology had inherited. Watson gave greater importance to non-mentalistic explanations, based on the objective study of behavior, which was transferred to the whole behaviorist current that would later take shape.

Because of this, behaviorism has been considered, at least in its origins, physicalist, causal and, in a certain way, recurrent to the postulates of logical positivism. It has been argued that all behaviorist epistemology comes from a physicalist scheme, of a causal type of relationship.

However, if one approaches the figure of B.F. Skinner, one cannot fall into the error of thinking that his epistemology as a methodological framework comes from logical positivism. Skinner did not understand the operant as an event occurring in the internal and subjective world of the individual, but understood it in terms of the subjective world of the individual.but understood it in purely behavioral terms.

His methodology is not understood as a mere establishment of causes, something very typical of the older and more classical stimulus-response model, but rather he also carries out a functional analysis of the operant. also carries out a functional analysis of contingencies..

Skinner rejects all metaphysical concepts, he tries to reject Kant's essentialist metaphysics, avoiding the use of terms such as mind, consciousness, spirit, ideas and others that refer to processes that cannot be directly observed. Its epistemology is, in essence, of a pragmatic type, given that it starts from the extent to which the rules that seem to govern, or not, the world are known, seeing them in terms of relations but not of causality strictly speaking.

Bibliographical references:

• Posso-Meza, A. (2018). Ontological and epistemic aspects in B.F. Skinner's behaviorism. Student Journal of Philosophy. 31, 1-12
• Romero-Otálora, C. A. (2012). Epistemological foundations of behaviorism: from modern causality towards pragmatism. Iberoamerican Journal of Psychology: Science and Technology. 5(2): 41-48