behaviourism
nounEtymology From behaviour + -ism.
1
Human sciences, Psychology, Sciences British standard spelling of behaviorism (“an approach to psychology focusing on behavior”).
2
Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences British standard spelling of behaviorism (“statements about mental states are reducible to statements of physical behavior”).
- I come back now to the theory of behaviourism which I spoke of a moment ago. Suppose, e.g., that you are said to believe that there is a train at 10.25. This means, we are told, that you start for the station at a certain time. When you reach the station you see it is 10.24 and you run. That behaviour constitutes your belief that there is a train at that time. If you catch your train by running, your belief was true. If the train went at 10.23, you miss it, and your belief was false. That is the sort of thing that they would say constitutes belief. There is not a single state of mind which consists in contemplating this eternal verity, that the train starts at 10.25.1986, Bertrand Russell, edited by John G. Slater, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and Other Essays 1914-19 (The Collected papers of Bertrand Russell; 8), London: George Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 194:
- One criticism sometimes made of behaviourism is that it fails to make a distinction between someone actually being in pain and someone pretending to be in pain.1995, Nigel Warburton, Philosophy: The Basics, 2nd edition, London; New York: Routledge, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 137:
1 more example
- On both ways of describing behaviourism, it is agreed that (a) mental states are not inner, categorical states of persons, and (b) what makes psychological claims true are subjects’ behavioural dispositions.1997, David Braddon-Mitchell, Frank Jackson, Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, Blackwell Publishers, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 31:
- Derived terms
- neobehaviourism