radical behaviorism and scientific frameworks · behaviorism of b. f. skinner—radical...

Radical Behaviorism and Scientific FrameworksFrom Mechanistic to Relational Accounts

Mecca Chiesa Applied Social Studies,University of Paisley, Paisley, Scotland

A substantial portion ofB. F. Skinner's scholarship wasdevoted to developing methods and terms for a scientificstudy of behavior. Three concepts central to scientific ac-counts—cause, explanation, and theory—are examinedto illustrate the distinction between mechanistic and re-lational frameworks and radical behaviorism's relation-ship to those frameworks. Informed by a scientific traditionthat explicitly rejects mechanistic interpretations, radicalbehaviorism provides a distinctive stance in contemporarypsychology. The present analysis suggests that radical be-haviorism makes closer contact with the "new world view"advocated by physicists and philosophers of science thandoes much of contemporary psychology.

Approaching the end of the 20th century, there remainsno unified framework or set of principles to define thediscipline of psychology and to guide research. Lack ofunity is more extensive than a simple incompatibility be-tween interpretations of particular experiments, or evenparticular theorists:

it has to do with what counts as the subject matter of psychology,with what questions we should ask about this subject matter,with how we should go about finding answers to these questions,with the status of existing psychological knowledge, and withwhether psychology can be a science. Psychologists do not agreeupon these basic matters. (Lee, 1988, p. 2-3)

A diversity of philosophical approaches gives rise to fun-damental disagreements over the nature of psychology'ssubject matter, leading to variations in methodology, data,and interpretation, and to little generalization of findingsfrom one approach to another.

One principle that continues to distinguish psy-chology from its parent discipline, philosophy (eventhough it fails to unite its various approaches), is a com-mitment to the application of scientific methods to epis-temological questions. As the physical sciences havedemonstrated their power to understand, explain, predict,and control the world around us, psychologists have hopedthat scientific methods will prove equally powerful whenapplied to questions of human psychology. BertrandRussell (1946), among others, expressed this faith in thesuperior explanatory power of science over other methodsof gathering knowledge: "I have no doubt that, insofar asphilosophical knowledge is possible, it is by these methods(the methods of science) that it must be sought. I have

also no doubt that, by these methods, many ancientproblems are completely soluble" (p. 788).

Major shifts have taken place in the philosophy ofscience and in our thinking about science in the courseof the present century. At the turn of the century physicswas thrown into turmoil by evidence that the principlesof Newtonian science previously thought to be universaltruths could not be applied to certain types of physicalphenomena. The philosophers of the Vienna Circle (log-ical positivists) attempted a program of defining the limitsof scientific explanation and the elimination of meta-physics from such explanations. More latterly, theoristssuch as Kuhn (1962) and Lakatos (see Lakatos & Mus-grave, 1970) have swept away popular notions of "abso-lutes" and "ultimate truths" in science by pointing outthat even in the process of validating scientific knowledgethere is a measure of arbitrary decision making. SinceKuhn and Lakatos, it is no longer feasible to argue thatthe world is "just so" because science claims it to be, andthe assumption of "pure" observation (observation in-dependent of theory, uninformed by background as-sumptions) has similarly dropped out of the mainstreamof acceptable opinion (see, e.g., Hanson, 1958). Philos-ophers and scientists alike continue to debate the impli-cations of new views of science and the implications ofthe new views of nature given by contemporary science.The impact of such debates was neatly captured byWoolgar when he stated that "One of the most remarkablefeatures of modern thought is the extent to which ideasabout science have changed" (Woolgar, 1988, p. 9).

Implications of the loss of certainty in science andin the philosophy of science have been especially consid-ered over the past two decades in works such as The Taoof Physics (Capra, 1975); Mathematics: The Loss of Cer-tainty (Kline, 1980); The Death of Nature: Women, Ecol-ogy, and the Scientific Revolution (Merchant, 1982); TheTurning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture(Capra, 1983); Order out of Chaos: Man's New DialogueWith Nature (Prigogine & Stengers, 1985); Mathematicsand the Search for Knowledge (Kline,, 1985); The CosmicBlueprint (Davies, 1987); Chaos: Making a New Science

My sincere thanks go to Derek Blackman and Mike Harries for the timethey gave to make substantive and editorial comments.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toMecca Chiesa, Applied Social Studies, University of Paisley, Paisley PA 12BE, Scotland, United Kingdom.

November 1992 • American PsychologistCopyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/92/$2.00Vol. 47, No. 11, 1287-1299

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(Gleick, 1988); A Brief History of Time (Hawking, 1988);and Does God Play Dice? (Stewart, 1989). With authorsranging from Nobel-prizewinning chemists to sciencejournalists, this debate clearly has multidisciplinary par-ticipation as well as popular interest. The "scientific rev-olution" of the early 20th century has generated a "phil-osophical revolution" at the end of the century. As a sci-entific discipline, psychology must be concerned withissues currently abroad in the philosophy of science whileit continues its internal debates over the nature of its sub-ject matter and appropriate methods of investigation.

Scientific FrameworksA central aspect of contemporary philosophy-of-sciencedebates that has particular implications for psychology,both in terms of internal scientific considerations and itsplace among the sciences in general, is the assertion thatthe mechanistic worldview of Newtonian-Cartesian sci-ence has passed its zenith. The position was most thor-oughly articulated by Merchant (1982) and Capra (1983)who argued that a mechanistic conception of realitydominated the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, when"Matter was thought to be the basis of all existence, andthe material world seen as a multitude of separate objectsassembled into a huge machine. Like human-made ma-chines, the cosmic machine was thought to consist ofelementary parts" (Capra, 1983, pp. 31-32). This mech-anistic vision of natural phenomena, Capra argued, pro-vided a framework that informed methodology and theo-retical interpretation in other sciences: "Whenever psy-chologists, sociologists, or economists wanted to bescientific, they naturally turned toward the basic conceptsof Newtonian physics" (p. 32).

Merchant (1982), referring to machines as "struc-tural models for western ontology and epistemology" (p.227), cogently elaborated this view of the rise of machine-as-metaphor:

The imagery, iconography, and literary metaphor associated withmachines extended the experiences of everyday life to the realmof the imagination, where machines became symbols for theordering of life itself. Out of such symbolic universes evolveconceptual universes as new definitions of reality replace theold. As the machine and clock increased their symbolic poweras root metaphors, in response to society's changing needs,wants, and purposes, the symbolic force of the organism declinedin plausibility and the organic conceptual framework underwenta fundamental transformation. The images and symbols asso-ciated with the machines of everyday life helped to mediate thetransition between frameworks, (p. 227)

Natural phenomena in contemporary physics areno longer seen to consist of separable and discrete "ele-mentary parts" (Capra, 1983, p. 32). Modern physics isno longer underpinned by machine-as-metaphor, but hasmoved to a relational framework for understanding itssubject matter:

In the twentieth century . . . physics has gone through severalconceptual revolutions that clearly reveal the limitations of themechanistic world view and lead to an organic, ecological viewof the world. . . . The universe is no longer seen as a machine,

made up of a multitude of separate objects, but appears as aharmonious indivisible whole; a network of dynamic relation-ships. (Capra, 1983, p. 32)

Psychology, medicine, biology, economics, and other sci-ences that have traditionally modeled themselves afterphysics are called upon to reexamine the usefulness ofthe mechanistic, Newtonian-Cartesian framework in un-derstanding their own subject matter. In the climate ofwidespread calls for a new framework—a nonmechanis-tic, relational framework in sciences other than physics—psychologists are faced with the conceptual task of ex-amining the basic principles, assumptions, and methodsthat constitute their scientific framework.

Radical Behaviorism and ScientificFrameworksIn the early part of this century, behaviorism generateda major scientific shift within psychology. Many historicaland contemporary figures are listed under this headingin the psychological literature, including of course B. F.Skinner. What is not often noted, however, is that thebehaviorism of B. F. Skinner—radical behaviorism—dif-fers distinctively from other behavioral systems both atthe philosophical level and at the level of its scientificpractice. Much of contemporary psychology belongs toa behavioral tradition, but radical behaviorism is distinctin two major respects. First, it is characterised by a highdegree of internal coherence; its subject matter is partic-ularly carefully defined, and its methods of data collection,analysis, and interpretation generally agreed upon by re-searchers within the field. This level of coherence marksit as "the closest thing to a school or paradigm among allmodern positions" (Hillix & Marx, 1974, p. 264). Second,it is distinct in that its historical influences have led tothe development of a descriptive, observational, and in-tegrative system of inductively derived principles, in con-trast to the theory-driven, hypothetico-deductively de-rived, statistically based principles of most other branchesof experimental psychology.

Defining behaviorism as "a philosophy of scienceconcerned with the subject matter and methods of psy-chology" (Skinner, 1969, p. 221), Skinner devoted a sub-stantial portion of his scholarship to developing methodsand terms for a scientific study of behavior. Throughouthis lifetime, he continually confronted the task of devel-oping empirically valid methods and terms to accountfor behavior, and from his earliest efforts (e.g., Skinner,1931/1972) onward emphasized the power and utility ofan explanatory system that is explicitly relational.

The relational nature of radical behaviorism and theexplanatory system it generates can best be illustrated byexamining three concepts that together compose scientificaccounts: cause, explanation, and theory. These conceptsare central to scientific practice in the sense that causalrelations form the bedrock of scientific explanation (al-though a succinct definition of science is elusive, it wouldbe hard to dispute that causal relations are fundamentalto explanation in this enterprise). Explanations, however,do not simply emerge independently. Rather, they are

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framed, organized, and expressed within a linguistic net-work of related concepts (i.e., theories).

In the process of unravelling these intimately bondedconcepts, it becomes clear that each carries more thanone definition, and that they have different underlyingmeanings related to different scientific frameworks. Alsoin the unravelling, the distinction between radical behav-iorism and mechanistic explanatory systems becomesclear.

Causation in ScienceThe concept of causation, like many other concepts inscience and philosophy, has changed from one historicalera to another as a consequence of shifts in empiricalknowledge and careful philosophical analyses. Hume'sanalysis and positivist developments in science and thephilosophy of science accomplished a relatively recentmajor shift.

The historical significance of Hume's analysis liesin dispensing with notions of "force" or "agency" thatcontinued to haunt the concept of causation. Russell(1946), tracing the rise of science and the developmentof scientific ideas, noted that

"Force" in Newton, is the cause of changes of motion, whetherin magnitude or direction. The notion of cause is regarded asimportant, and force is conceived imaginatively as the sort ofthing that we experience when we push or pull. (p. 524)

However, it gradually became clear that gravitationalequations could be worked out without alluding to forces:

What was observable was a certain relation between accelerationand configuration; to say that this relation was brought aboutby the intermediacy of "force" was to add nothing to ourknowledge, (p. 524)

Russell described this conception of causal force as "thefaint ghost of the vitalist view" of the causes of motion,and with the increasing sophistication of scientific equa-tions "gradually the ghost has been exorcized" (p. 524).

Hume (1777/1975) pointed out that our interpre-tation of causation involves more than simple observa-tions of constant relations. What we observe and learnby experience, he argued, are no more and no less thanrelationships—"the frequent Conjunction of objects" (p.70). What we add to observation is a sense of power oragency on the part of a causal event: "We suppose thatthere is some connexion between them (cause and effect);some power in the one, by which it infallibly producesthe other, and operates with the greatest certainty and thestrongest necessity" (p. 75). This added supposition de-rives from the way we feel when we move about changingthe world by pushing, pulling, lifting, dropping, and oth-erwise manipulating objects, but it is merely a thing ofthought. Cohen and Nagel (1955) described this as "com-mon-sense" causation:

The "common-sense" notion of cause is an interpretation ofnonhuman behavior in terms peculiarly adopted to human be-havior. Thus, "John broke the window," is supposed to express

a causal relation, because there is an agent "John" who producedthe breaking of the window, (p. 246)

Similarly, in a statement such as "moist air rusts iron,"moist air is said to be the cause and rusted iron the effect,in that moist air is believed to produce the rusting: "Inthe popular mind, all changes require causes to explainthem, and when found are interpreted as agents producingthe change" (p. 246). Hume's analysis concluded that no-tions of agency, force, or necessity of connection are su-perfluous. Today the scientific conception of causationrefers to events occurring "as a function of" other eventsrather than in terms of "A exerts a force on B." But asCohen and Nagel pointed out, the popular conceptionretains the notion of agents producing change.

Causal Chains and Causal Networks

A feature of causal thinking that has been more recentlychallenged (Hanson, 1955) is the chain metaphor. In set-ting events in a relation of succession, this metaphor em-braces the relational nature of causation without neces-sarily invoking force or agency on the part of any link inthe chain. Thus, it describes a sequence of events between,for example, administration of a drug and cessation ofpain: Administration of a drug is followed by a changein the constitution of blood, which is followed by a changein the activity of nerve endings, which is followed by areduction in pain. Or, as in a much used example, betweenthe cue ball striking the red ball, which bounces off thecushion and strikes the black ball, which then falls intothe pocket. The chain in these cases has an identifiablebeginning and end, with each event contiguous in spaceand time. Like a chain, the metaphor illustrates causationas a contiguous sequential process. In these examples, thechain is sequentially identifiable from beginning to end,and in these kinds of examples the metaphor may beuseful for practical purposes.

Hanson (1955) pointed out, however, that this con-ception of causation does not take into account the vo-luminous background knowledge tacitly involved incausal accounts. It ignores whole systems of constructsand properties involved in causal accounts that are notsimply given by immediate observation and experience.It ignores the fact that causal accounts are only mean-ingful as such within conceptual networks. Drugs, blood,nerve endings, and so on are conceptual units relatedwithin a network of conceptual units. Without the net-work, the words themselves have no causal significance.It is the background knowledge—the network—that givesthem this significance. The cue ball example, striking inits simplicity, is similarly only meaningful against a con-ceptual background involving knowledge of the move-ment of spheres, of angles of deflection, and of the prop-erties of billiard tables. Especially in such simple cases,familiarity obscures background knowledge, leaving asuperficial impression of one-to-one causal sequences.The chain metaphor ignores the fact that causal termsare more than isolated observations and ignores the con-ceptual systems lying behind those terms, giving themmeaning as causal explanations:

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Genuine causal connexions can be expressed (explicitly or im-plicitly) only in language that is many-levelled in its generalityand its explanatory power. This is why the language of causalityis diagnostic and prognostic, and why the simple tick-tock, click-click, links-in-a-chain view of cause and effect is so artificialand inapplicable. (Hanson, 1955, p. 300)

Causal terms are related, not as links in a chain butas webs or networks, by theories. Causal relations areexpressed within conceptual systems, and it is those sys-tems of background knowledge that distinguish causalrelation from mere contiguity in space and time. Thesimple one-to-one implication of the chain metaphor doesnot properly illustrate the weblike character of causalterms.

Links-in-the-Chain and Mechanistic Thinking

Hanson (1955) traced the illusory power of the chainmetaphor to the same source as did Merchant (1982) andCapra (1983). The simplicity and power of the designedmachine, both inside and outside of the laboratory, itsendurance and stability under changing external condi-tions, give rise to links-in-the-chain causal thinking:

Such machines work with considerable indifference to alterationsin environment. Clocks, anemometers, windmills, water-wheels,etc. are made not to stop for thunderstorms, swarms of bees,the barking of dogs or the crowing of roosters . . . from thisthe temptation grew to construe causal explanation as mechan-ical explanation; that is, explanation of the perseverance ofmanufactured machines. (Hanson, 1955, p. 309)

From this construal, it is only a small step to think aboutnatural phenomena in a similar manner, functioning asmechanical systems.

Hanson (1955) argued that causal explanation isbetter described with terms such as causal theories orcausal laws, because these terms recognize more than theone-to-one relationships implied by causal chain and aremore indicative of the weblike complexity of causal ac-counts. He noted, however, that the chain metaphor re-mains popular.

Causation in Radical BehaviourismSkinner adopted his conception of causation directly fromErnst Mach, whose Science ofMechanics (1893/'I960) inparticular and whose positivist orientation toward sciencein general influenced Skinner in his early years as a grad-uate student at Harvard University (Skinner 1931/1972,1938, 1978; Smith, 1986).

Mach referred to Hume's analysis in opposing whathe considered to be the metaphysical concept of force (towhich Newton remained committed) and replaced causeand effect with functional relation. In the Preface to hisScience of Mechanics, Mach (1893/1960) stated that hisaim was to "clear up ideas, expose the real significanceof the matter, and get rid of metaphysical obscurities" (p.xxii). One of those metaphysical obscurities was preciselythe notion of force lingering on in Newtonian causation.

Influenced by Mach's analysis, Skinner replacedagency, push-pull causality, with Mach's functional re-lations:

We may now take that more humble view of explanation andcausation which seems to have been first suggested by Machand is now a common characteristic of scientific thought,wherein, . . .the notion of function [is] substituted for that ofcausation. (Skinner, 1931/1972, pp. 448-449)

In the Skinnerian system, a cause is replaced with a"change in the independent variable" and an effect isreplaced with a "change in the dependent variable,"transforming the cause-effect connection into a "func-tional relation" (Skinner, 1953, p. 23). Especially impor-tant in relation to causation and human behavior is theelimination of the concept of agency, because althoughit is no longer customary to describe relations in othersciences in terms of internal force or agency, these pre-Humean notions persist in descriptions of human be-havior, even in contemporary social learning theory (e.g.,Bandura, 1977, 1989). As in other contemporary naturalsciences, cause in radical behaviorism is stripped of itsolder connotation of force or agency.

Selection as a Causal Mode

In addition to departing from the popular conception ofcause as a force or agent producing change, radical be-haviorism also departs from the traditional chain meta-phor, which requires that (like a machine) causal relationsbe contiguous in space and time, that gaps between causeand effect be filled by a sequence of events standing in arelation of succession. In the mechanistic framework, ifaspirin alleviates headaches, it is because from aspirin toheadache there is a contiguous, sequential chain of eventsculminating in the cessation of pain. If a mechanical sys-tem breaks down, it is because one or more of the com-ponents of the chain has failed. When the component isremoved, repaired, and restored, the mechanical systemproceeds as normal. Components in mechanical systemsare prepared separately, and the system assembled intoa perfect whole that is the sum of its parts.

The chain metaphor, with its requirement of con-tiguity, dominates many areas of contemporary psychol-ogy. Cognitive psychology is a particularly good example,in which contiguous causality is satisfied by internal sys-tems, machinelike in their organization and predictability.Cognitive psychology considers successive mediatingevents between the outer world of the organism (environ-mental input) and the behavior of the organism (responseoutput). The gap between these two endpoints is reputedto be filled by various components (e.g., a complex mem-ory system comprising several constituent parts, an in-formation processing system also comprising severalconstituent parts, a "cognitive map," or a symbol ma-nipulation system). These components may be relativelysimple in design, or they may involve complex hierar-chically organized structures having multiple functions.Nevertheless, their overall role in the explanatory systemis that they satisfy the chain metaphor's requirement ofcontiguity. Less machinelike and more abstract links inthe chain are provided by other psychological accounts,with components such as expectations, intentions, desires,thoughts, attitudes, and other "mental" states. The com-


mon feature of all of these is that they act as links, theyfill spatial and temporal gaps between one event and an-other, and in doing so they give a machinelike accountof causal relationships. Like a machine, a breakdown isattributed to one or more of the events in the causal se-quence, to a malfunction in one of the components me-diating between two end events.

The earlier statement that much of contemporarypsychology belongs to a behavioral tradition refers to theinfluence of the originator of stimulus-organism-re-sponse (S-O-R) psychology—Edward C. Tolman. Un-happy with Watson's stimulus-response connections asexplanations of behavior, Tolman argued for the inclusionof such theoretical terms as expectations and anticipationbetween input (stimulus) and output (response):

This new behaviorism will be found capable of covering notmerely results of mental tests, objective measurements of mem-ory, and animal psychology as such, but also all that was validin the results of the older introspective psychology. And this newformula for behaviorism which we would propose is intendedas a formula for all psychology—a formula to bring peace, notmerely to the animal worker, but also to the addict of imageryand feeling tone. (Tolman, 1922; in Hillix & Marx, 1974; p.221-222)

Although by 1959 Tolman himself had to some extentlost faith in his system, or "so-called" system, as he putit (Tolman, 1959, p. 152), Bower and Hilgard (1981) havesuggested that his impact has been greater than he antic-ipated: "The sort of program Tolman envisioned seemsnow to be coming to fruition in modern cognitive psy-chology" (p. 351). The cognitive approach is merely oneexample of a standard framework in contemporary psy-chology that concerns itself for the most part with con-tiguous, mediating events between environment (input)and behavior (output). For all its admitted vagueries, Tol-man's behavioral S-O-R formulation continues to pro-vide the framework for mainstream scientific psychology,even though contemporary scientific thinking in otherfields has moved well beyond the interpretive metaphorthat this framework takes as fundamental.

In contrast, radical behaviorism adopts a causalmode that carries no requirement to provide mediatinglinks between one event and another, is not sequential,and does not presuppose contiguity in space and time. Itis a mode that encompasses causation over time (life his-tory, experience) and has been compared with the Dar-winian mode of selection on variation. The Darwiniantemplate appeals to the selection of particular biologicalcharacteristics of a species over time (selection on vari-ation: phylogenetic). Radical behaviorism appeals to theselection over time of characteristics of behavior out ofthe wide range of possibilities available to the individual(selection on variation: ontogenetic). Skinner (1972) notedthat

Selection is a special kind of causality, much less conspicuousthan the push-pull causality of nineteenth-century physics, andDarwin's discovery may have appeared so late in the history ofhuman thought for that reason. The selective action of the con-

sequences of behavior was also overlooked for a long time. Itwas not until the seventeenth century that any important ini-tiating action by the environment was recognized, (p. 353)

Agency in biological creation was once ascribed to God,as agency in human behavior largely continues to be as-cribed to an internal "self" separate from and overridingenvironmental events. Selection on variation, or environ-mental selection, is a causal mode that does not requiregaps within functional relations to be filled by mediatingsequences of contiguous events. Selection occurs overtime, not necessarily in an immediate temporal or spatialrelationship to the repertoire of interest.

Selection, even of very complex behavior, is dem-onstrated in the shaping procedures of operant condi-tioning experiments in which patterns are developed,strengthened, maintained, and extinguished by control-ling both setting conditions and consequences (contin-gencies of reinforcement). Thus, Skinner (1984) noted,"Selection is not a metaphor, model, or concept; it is afact. Arrange a particular kind of consequence, and be-havior changes. Introduce new consequences, and newbehavior will appear and survive or disappear" (p. 503).Selection as a causal mode is not an assumption; it isempirically validated in operant conditioning experimentsthat demonstrate shaping and maintenance of even com-plex behavior by complex contingencies.

Action Over Time

If causation (selection) occurs over time, then a logicalprogression is to study its effects over time. Action overtime is an unusual concept for most of psychology, whichtends to treat its subject matter episodically. Many typesof psychological research examine episodes in the livesof organisms, slices of an ongoing process, and attributecausation to immediate features of the episode. In con-trast, research informed by radical behaviorism allowsfor the examination of behavioral processes as extendedover time and allows for the identification of relationsbetween behavior and other events that also occur overtime. Patterns of behavior can be established over a longperiod of time by patterns of consequences, and withoutthe necessity of contiguity radical behaviorism's causalmode allows for multiple scales of analysis. That is to saythat when behavioral and environmental events do notreveal contiguous relations, the level of analysis may beshifted to the abstraction of patterns: "Just as the powerof a microscope must be adjusted as a function of thephenomenon under study, so too does the level of behavioranalysis need to be adjusted to the functional unit of be-havior-environment interaction" (Morris, Higgins, &Bickel, 1982, p. 119).

When causation is not necessarily contiguous, causalaccounts can refer to properties not ordinarily includedin episodic research. Patterns can be abstracted and ac-counted for with reference to events occurring over timein the organism's environment. The present organism(i.e., as of now) consists of an accumulation of past effects,whereas in episodic research the present organism is di-vided into its behavior and an internal, independent sys-


tem that is said to account for the behavior. Episodicresearch, as Lee (1988) has noted, examines

selected parts of conduct over limited periods of time, often afew minutes. This research seldom approaches psychologicalhypotheses by building a history and by studying the effects ofthis history on subsequent performance. Even when a personalhistory is built, psychologists seldom attribute the results to thehistory. Instead they attribute performance to psychologicalcategories such as knowledge, intention, and so forth, with thesecategories formulated as intervening variables, (p. 162)

Personal history is neglected in the episodic account bya commitment to contiguous causation, whereas thecausal mode of variation and selection draws attentionto the effects of past experience on present behavior. Per-sonal history (experience) is a necessary part of expla-nations of present behavior in the variation and selectioncausal mode.

Explanation and Theory

Description and Explanation: Mach

Another feature of Mach's philosophy of science directlyadopted by Skinner is the proposal to limit or reduce theconcept of explanation to description. To the modernreader, accustomed to thinking of science as an enterprisegoing beyond descriptions to explanation, this proposalseems contradictory to the aims of science. Indeed, Hem-pel and Oppenheim began their classic "Studies in theLogic of Explanation" with precisely this assertion: "sci-entific research in its various branches strives to go beyonda mere description of its subject matter by providing anexplanation of the phenomena it investigates" (Hempel& Oppenheim, 1960, p. 135). Mach's distinction arosefrom two features of his argument: (a) the definition ofdescription, which is related to Mach's views on causation;and (b) Mach's opposition to certain kinds of theories,especially to those grounded in a mechanistic view ofnature that consequently appeal to hypothetical entitiesto bridge temporal and spatial gaps between causes andeffects. This somewhat misleading distinction is derivedfrom a major debate of the 19th century concerning ap-propriate interpretive techniques (theories) in physics anda dispute over attempts to describe natural phenomenain terms analogous to the workings of a "great machine."

Mach asserted that complete descriptions of phe-nomena suffice as explanations. He wrote that

[it] is only possible of events that constantly recur, or of eventsthat are made up of component parts that constantly recur.That only can be described, and conceptually represented, whichis uniform and conformable to law; for description presupposesthe employment of names by which to designate its elements;and names can acquire meanings only when applied to elementsthat constantly reappear. (Mach, 1893/1960, p. 6)

In this passage, Mach made the point later made by Han-son (1955)—that the words used to describe phenomenaare "many-leveled" in their generality and explanatorypower. When refraction of light in water is described, thewords light and water already compact several conceptual

properties that, if need be, can be further described byother words compacting conceptual properties. Mach andHanson agreed that descriptive terms in science implyproperties and relations (Hanson's "background knowl-edge"). Unexplained phenomena are those in which thescientist has not yet discovered simple recurring elements,elements "that amid all multiplicity are ever present"(Mach, 1893/1960, p. 6):

When once we have reached the point where we are everywhereable to detect the same few simple elements, combining in theordinary manner, then they appear to us as things that are fa-miliar; we are no longer surprised, there is nothing new or strangeto us in the phenomena, we feel at home with them, they nolonger perplex us, they are explained, (p. 7)

Descriptive terms in science are embedded withintheoretical frameworks, webs of related concepts that givethem meaning. An explanation of why light refracts inwater is contained in another description, a descriptionof the behavior of a type of wave phenomena (light beingan instance of that type) traveling through optical mediathat are denser than air (water being an instance of thosemedia). In describing relations between conceptual prop-erties (e.g., light and water) in the form of a general law(e.g., refraction), the phenomenon is explained.

"Light refracts in water" as a description of a relationbetween conceptual properties does not, of course, satisfythe question "Why does light refract in water?" Thatquestion is satisfied (the phenomenon accounted for) bya further description of the relation between the propertiesof light and water and the law of refraction. In anothercontext, "Light refracts in water" does function as anexplanation, as the answer to the question "Why doesthis straight rod seem to bend when I put it in the lake?"In this context, "Because light refracts in water" (the samedescription of relations) is an explanation of the phenom-enon observed. At each level of questioning, explanationsare given by describing relations between conceptualproperties—Mach's "functional relations." Often theconceptual properties are so compacted, so familiar, thatthey fade from prominence. Nevertheless, every accountof natural phenomena amounts to a description of rela-tions. Explanations are descriptions.

If explanations are descriptions, what then necessi-tated a distinction? This question raises the second featureof Mach's argument and requires a brief excursion intoone of the major debates of 19th-century physics. Thisdebate's relevance to explanation and theory in contem-porary psychology become clear in following sections.

Explanation and Theory: Mach

Superficial accounts of the atomic debate represent it asa dispute over the reality of atoms and the explanatorypower of atomic theory, with Mach's opposition to certaintypes and certain treatments of atomic theory widelydocumented (e.g., Blackmore, 1972; Bradley, 1971;Cohen & Seeger, 1970; Feyerabend, 1970; Bradley, 1971).Laudan (1981) and Brush (1968), however, argued thatsuch accounts ignore both the context of that debate and


its wider implications for the philosophy and methodologyof science. Laudan stated that: "though the fact of Mach'sopposition to atomic/molecular theories is well knownand widely cited, Mach's specific argumentative strategiesagainst such theories have been less fully explored andunderstood" (Laudan, 1981, p. 202). Similarly, Brush(1968) noted that

When Mach's statements on atomic theory are put in their his-torical context, it turns out that Mach's position is much morecomplex than is generally reported. Moreover, some of the sci-entific questions discussed by Mach are by no means settledeven today, to say nothing of the philosophical or methodologicalones. (p. 193)

Mach was troubled by his era's emphasis on atomicexplanations for two reasons. First, he was disturbed bythe possibility that theories of this sort could distract at-tention from the phenomena they were invented to ac-count for—that hypothetical constructs within the theory,rather than functional relations, might become the focusof attention. Second, he saw such theorizing as an attemptto reduce natural phenomena to mechanical systems andto describe the world as though it functioned as a greatmachine whose whole could be understood by identifyingeach of its parts. In other words, this type of theorizingbelonged to a mechanistic worldview that Mach did notshare with some of his contemporaries.

Although Mach was hostile to interpretations thatimplanted links between functional dependencies, he al-lowed for a heuristic function of unobservable, hypo-thetical properties or entities, such as atoms. As provi-sional helps rather than ontological realities, they may beuseful for generating new questions and establishing newrelations and laws. Temporarily useful props on which tobuild experimentation and suggest new problems, theywere to be abandoned once new relations had been es-tablished:

For Mach, theoretical entities may play an important but in-trinsically transitional role in natural science. Once they havesuggested those empirical connections that are the warp andwoof of scientific understanding, they can be discarded as somuch unnecessary scaffolding. . . . Above all, Mach stressesthat we must not confuse the tool with the job by pretendingthat the model does anything more than establish functionalrelationships between data. (Laudan, 1981 p. 212)

For Mach, theoretical models based on hypotheticalentities did not describe anything in the world; they wereprovisionally useful tools of science to be discarded whenthey no longer lead to the discovery of functional depen-dencies. They were to remain in the realms of the hy-pothetical and not to be given the status of explanations(descriptions). Such theorizing becomes problematicwhen it is elevated to the status of explanation. Mach'sdistinction between description and explanation, then, isa distinction between explanatory systems that integrateand describe observed functional dependencies, and ex-planatory systems invoking hypothetical entities betweenthose dependencies as links in a causal chain. The atomic

debate was less about the question of whether atoms ex-isted than interpretation and causal modes in science.

In his introduction to The Science of Mechanics(Mach, 1893/1960), Karl Menger noted that 18th- and19th-century physics was suffused with attempts to ex-plain gravitation by appealing to mediating entities:

Physicists hypostasized vortices, or tensions in media, or bom-bardments of the bodies by particles traversing space at randomand driving, for instance, a stone towards the earth because thelatter shields the stone against the particles coming from below,(p. vii-viii)

Gravitational attraction or repulsion was attributed inthese accounts to action taking place through a particlemedium or ether. This medium, hypothetical and unob-served, allowed for contact action, a links-in-the-chain ormechanistic causality. If events at a distance show func-tional relatedness (so the mechanist's thinking goes), thenthere must be between those events a sequence of otherevents, some medium, some structure, some mechanism,that connects them. For the mechanist, it is the thing inbetween that explains the relation, even though the re-lation was all that was ever viewed.

Of mechanistic thinking, Mach (1893/1960) wrote,"The view that makes mechanics the basis of the re-maining branches of physics, and explains all physicalphenomena by mechanical ideas, is in our judgement aprejudice" (p. 596). He was critical of the way in whichhypothetical entities often shifted from the status of sci-entific tools to the status of explanations, becoming real-ities in themselves behind the phenomena. He was criticalalso of scientists who, having created theoretical modelsinvolving hypothetical constructs (such as atoms), pro-ceeded to make the constructs themselves into objects ofinquiry, relegating to the background the phenomena thatthe models or constructs were originally developed to ac-count for. He referred to these models as "intellectualmachinery" and cautioned that the machinery of thoughtshould not be mistaken for descriptions of the real world:

A person who knew the world only through the theater, if broughtbehind the scenes and permitted to view the mechanism of thestage's action, might possibly believe that the real world alsowas in need of a machine-room, and that if this were once thor-oughly explored, we should know all. Similarly, we, too, shouldbeware lest the intellectual machinery, employed in the repre-sentation of the world on the stage of thought, be regarded asthe basis of the real world. (Mach, 1893/1960, p. 610)

Mach opposed the practice of elevating hypothetical(invented) constructs to the status of explanation becausethey describe nothing. He also cautioned against thepractice of turning such constructs into ontological real-ities and into the focus of inquiry. Furthermore, he con-sistently opposed a causal mode requiring things in be-tween to connect dependent phenomena, a world-as-ma-chine view.

Description and Explanation: Skinner

Skinner's descriptions take the same form as Mach's, theyare statements of functional dependencies, of regularities


in the relation between dependent and independent vari-ables. Description in this sense differs from narration, inwhich "The story is simply told of something that hasonce happened" (Skinner, 1938, p. 9). A narrative state-ment simply states the occurrence of a single event:

In the narrative form, for example, it may be said that "at suchand such a moment the ape picked up a stick." Here there isno reference to other instances of the same behavior either pastor future. It is not asserted that all apes pick up sticks, (p. 9)

In the refraction example, a narrative statement wouldbe "At time X, this beam refracted through this medium,"which describes an instance without reference to regu-larity. "Light refracts in water," however, expresses a uni-formity, a regularity in the behavior of light in certainmedia. "Apes eat bamboo" similarly expresses a regu-larity, summarizes a uniformity—a relation betweenconceptual properties.

To be explanatory, a description must relate uni-formities between classes or properties. In the Skinneriansystem, descriptions integrate and summarize relations.They do go beyond single instances to uniformities, butdo not go beyond the relations observed. Reflex, for ex-ample, describes a correlation between one event and an-other. When Skinner stated that reflex is "not given localor physiological properties" in his system (Skinner, 1938,p. 44), he referred to the traditional practice of locatingreflex within the organism and ascribing to it physiologicalproperties such as a "neurological arc" bridging a gapbetween its two end-terms, stimulus and response. ForSkinner, reflex describes no more or less than a relation.The term is an abstraction of a reliable uniformity. If areflex is located at all it is located in the relation betweenparticular kinds of stimuli and responses, and not withinthe organism. In the expression of these relations, which"amid all multiplicity are ever present" (Mach, 1893/1960, p. 6), lies explanation. Behavior is explained in thedescription of uniform relations between dependent vari-ables (units of behavior) and independent variables in thecontext in they occur. Explanation, for Skinner as forMach, is description. As with Mach, therefore, the ques-tion of why Skinner sought to confine his system to de-scription is raised.

In the case of Mach and the atomic debate in 19th-century physics, the distinction between explanation anddescription grew out of disputes over interpretive tech-niques (theories) and causal thinking. Similarly, in 20th-century psychology, Skinner's distinction grew out of hisopposition to particular kinds of interpretations of humanbehavior (theories) and to a causal thinking that requirestemporal gaps to be filled by contiguous, mediating eventsor structures.

Explanation and Theory: Skinner

Several of Skinner's papers were given over wholly ormainly to outlining his views on explanation, description,and theory in a science of behavior, notably "CurrentTrends in Experimental Psychology" (1947/1972), "AreTheories of Learning Necessary?" (1950/1972), "Critique

of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories" (1956), and"The Right from the Laboratory" (1961/1972). Althoughhe has sometimes been interpreted as antitheoretical (e.g.,Westby, 1966), and even atheoretical (e.g., Scriven, 1956),in "Current Trends in Experimental Psychology" Skinner(1947/1972) clearly expressed an opposite view. He ar-gued in this paper that "Behavior can only be satisfactorilyunderstood by going beyond the facts themselves. Whatis needed is a theory of behavior" (p. 301), and that

Whether particular experimental psychologists like it or not,experimental psychology is properly and inevitably committedto the construction of a theory of behavior. A theory is essentialto the scientific understanding of behavior as a subject matter,(p. 302)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, psychology was begin-ning to doubt the claims of its major theorists that a com-prehensive theory of behavior would be forthcoming.Hull's theoretical system had been dominant for sometime but was beginning to flounder, and what has beendescribed as psychology's "Age of Theory" (Smith, 1986)had begun its decline. Taking his cue from Mach, Skinneraddressed fundamental scientific issues in his contributionto the theory debate. In this sense, his analysis continuesto illuminate issues surrounding mechanistic and rela-tional explanatory systems in psychology.

Description, Observation, Integration

Despite some contrary interpretations, it is clear from theexcerpts cited above that Skinner was committed to thedevelopment of a theory of behavior. But the term theoryis somewhat ambiguous, because it can carry at least threemeanings, two of which involve speculation, with the thirdinvolving integration. A theory may be simply a guess—a predictive or explanatory guess such as "I have a theorythat such and such will happen," or "I have a theory thatthis is caused by that," in which the speaker is guessingan outcome or suggesting a causal relation. Theory mayrefer to a model involving one or more hypothetical en-tities constructed in an attempt to account for mysterious,unexplained phenomena. In this sense also, the term in-volves the notion of speculation or guessing. This type oftheory amounts to a tentative explanation that, in scienceat least, is usually required to be submitted to experi-mental test in order to establish to what degree the modelfits empirical data. Theory also may be used to refer toan explanatory system, such as Skinner's, that describesregularities, states general principles, and integrates uni-formities in a given subject matter. These latter kinds oftheories do not carry the same requirement to be sub-mitted to experimental check, because they are "data-driven" (derived from observation) and are not con-structed prior to experimentation. In this sense, integra-tive theories are not speculative: They describe withoutguessing. Theoretical terms in this type of explanatorysystem do not preempt experimentation, but are derivedfrom it. In such a system, speculation does not take placeat the level of explanation but at the level of experimen-tation, when an attempt is made to discover which out


of the multiplicity of variables present in a given contextmay be functionally related. Explanations in this systemdo not refer to processes or entities beyond observation.Rather, the descriptions entailed in explanation are state-ments about observed regularities.

Skinner identified three stages of theory construc-tion. The first and perhaps most important stage is todefine the subject matter. The next step involves devel-oping theoretical terms to express relations within thesubject matter—integrative terms. "Observed relationsof this sort are the facts of a science—or, when a sufficientdegree of generality has been reached, its laws" (Skinner,1947/1972, p. 307). As further regularities appear, theoryconstruction proceeds to a third stage, which involvesadding new theoretical terms to describe these new reg-ularities. "Third stage concepts" (Skinner, 1947/1972, p.307) are additions to the regularities expressed at the sec-ond stage without being additions to the basic data (sub-ject matter). They emerge from regularities without in-voking unobserved or hypothetical properties.

Skinner carefully defined his basic data, his subjectmatter, summarized in the term behavior:

behavior is that part of the functioning of an organism whichis engaged in acting upon or having commerce with the outsideworld . . . by behavior, then, I mean simply the movement ofan organism or of its parts in a frame of reference provided bythe organism itself or by various external objects or fields offorce. It is convenient to speak of this as the action of the or-ganism upon the outside world. (Skinner, 1938, p. 6)

The most significant part of this definition is "in a frameof reference"; the subject matter of Skinner's science ofbehavior (the data to be explained) is not muscle twitchesor lever presses, it is relations between behavior and theworld that the organism is acting upon—behavior in thecontext in which it occurs.

Having defined his subject matter, Skinner developedtheoretical terms to describe those relations. Conditioningand extinction, for example, describe the shaping of be-havior as a function of events in the context in which itoccurs. Operant behavior refers to any behavior emittedby an organism that produces an effect, and an operantrefers to a class of responses having a particular effect. Inexperimental situations with rats, for example, leverpressing is a class of responses having the effect of pro-ducing food. Topography is not important for experi-mental or explanatory purposes. A rat may press a leverwith its paw, its foot, its nose, or its tail, but the topographyof the operant is of less import than its relation to thecontext in which it occurs. In the case of humans, operantsmay be topographically more diffuse. Depending on theexperimental question in hand, an operant can be any-thing from washing dishes to a violent verbal outburst,the common feature being that each is identified as afunctional unit of behavior in relation to its context.

Skinner also developed descriptive terms for depen-dencies between setting conditions and consequences ofbehavior. Discriminative stimulus refers to a discrete as-pect of the setting condition in which an operant occurs

that is functionally related to that operant. Similarly, re-inforcer refers to the effect of a discrete consequence onbehavior. Several consequences may follow an operant,but not all may be functionally related to it. A reinforcingconsequence is one that shapes or maintains an operant.In the case of discriminative stimulus and reinforcer, asin the case of operant, intrinsic properties of objects orevents are of less import than the functional relationsthat those terms describe. A red light is not a discrimi-native stimulus because it is red, but because it is func-tionally related to an operant. Candy is described as areinforcer if and when it shapes and maintains behavior;not because it is sweet, but because it is functionally re-lated to an operant.

At the second stage in the construction of his system,Skinner developed integrative terms to express observedrelations in the subject matter. Those terms are derivedfrom the subject matter itself and do not appeal to as-sumed properties or entities beyond those that are em-pirically given. Relations between discriminative stimuli,operants, and reinforcers may be expressed as a functionof time, of rate of response, of magnitude of reinforce-ment, of rate of reinforcement, of availability of alter-natives, of the presence of verbal behavior, and so on, andit is with the identification of new relations that third-stage concepts emerge. For example, early in his experi-mental career, Skinner observed that response rate andrate of reinforcement were related across a broad rangeof settings. New terms were added to integrate these ob-servations: Variable interval, variable ratio, fixed interval,fixed ratio, concurrent, and differential reinforcement oflow rate all describe patterns in rates of reinforcementthat are reliably related to patterns and rates of behavior.Third-stage concepts emerge out of second-stage relationswithout changing anything in the first stage, the basicdata. Basic data are maintained even as theoretical termsare broadened, and those terms always describe observedregularities.

Nothing in the Skinnerian system is convenientlyinvented or modified to account for data. Behavior is ex-plained by describing functional dependencies within thedata rather than by invoking unobserved properties orentities. When he set out his views on appropriate in-terpretive techniques Skinner stated that

[a theory] has nothing to do with the presence or absence ofexperimental confirmation. Facts and theories do not stand inopposition to each other. The relation, rather, is this: theoriesare based upon facts; they are statements about organizationsof facts. (Skinner, 1947/1972, p. 302)

The theoretical terms of his explanatory system are em-pirically derived (i.e., derived by observation) and do notstand or fall on experimental confirmation. Neither doesthe theoretical system as a whole stand or fall on exper-imental confirmation, because only observed regularitiesform the linguistic basis of the system. Like Mach, Skinnerwas concerned with the way in which particular interpre-tive techniques (theories) divert attention toward thestructure, function, or activity of the hypothetical entities


offered as explanatory accounts. In such theories, theperson fades from prominence as interest focuses insteadon aspects of complex, hypothetical structures andmechanisms. Skinner's opposition to the mechanisticthinking underlying these kinds of theories (which I referto here as models or theoretical models for the purposeof greater clarity) was based on the Machian view of causeand effect as functional dependency. Like Mach, Skinnerfound no discomfort in integrating cause and effect(functional relations) without a mediating structure ormechanism through which action takes place. Accordingto Skinner's view, behaving organisms, human or oth-erwise, are not mechanical structures to be likened totelephone exchanges and networks, information process-ing systems, computer storage banks, and so on. Theyare biological organisms that operate within a contextthat affects their behavior and which they in turn havean effect upon and that are changed by their experiencein that context. As Mach before him rejected a view ofthe world as a great machine, so Skinner rejected machineanalogies in his scientific system and eschewed mechanicalprinciples for describing organisms in their worlds.

Another feature of Skinner's opposition to modelsincluding terms not derived from data was a practicalargument. Theoretical models require experimental test-ing to establish the best fit between competing modelsand data, and as such, they are wasteful of valuable energyand resources. Data obtained from testing models areonly considered valuable if they conform to predictionsdeduced from the model, if they are positively in favorof the predictions. If results do not conform to predictions,the model is either rejected or undergoes extensive mod-ification leading to further experimentation, but the datathemselves are useful only insofar as they demonstrateproblems in the model.

Because the process of constant experimental checkusually leads to the decline of one model and the rise ofanother (either a modified model or a competing one), alarge part of the research associated with the testing ofmodels is discarded:

Research designed with respect to theory is also likely to bewasteful. That a theory generates research does not prove itsvalue unless the research is valuable. Much useless experimen-tation results from theories, and much energy and skill are ab-sorbed by them. Most theories are eventually overthrown, andthe greater part of the associated research is discarded. (Skinner,1950/1972, p. 71)

Mechanistic Thinking in Psychology

As noted, much of contemporary psychology continuesTolman's tradition of providing mediating events betweenenvironmental input and behavioural output, the S-O-R template. Links between functional dependencies areoften characterized as systems or mechanisms, and oth-erwise as less tangible components such as mind, inten-tions, beliefs, attitudes, attributions, stress, knowledge,theory of mind, and so on. Mechanistic thinking pervadesscientific psychology's explanatory systems.

The input-system-output view of environment,persons, and their behavior, and the consequent divisionof persons into multiple internal faculties or components,has been opposed from a number of directions and for anumber of reasons. Costall (1984), for example, has drawnattention to the compatibility between J. J. Gibson's(1966, 1979) argumentative strategies in favor of an ac-tive-interactive perspective on visual perception and thoseofB. F. Skinner:

Both insist that behavior presents a primary datum for psy-chology which is not to be treated as a mere symptom of un-derlying structures of either the cognitive or physiological kind.They recognize that the description of behavior is neverthelessdifficult, and they promote a molar and functional classificationof behavior rather than muscle-twitch psychology or classicalreflexology. (Costall, 1984, p. 114)

He noted also that Gibson's ecological perspective andSkinnerian accounts are committed to the view that re-lations between organisms and their worlds can only belinguistically expressed interdependently, that causalevents cannot be identified independently of the relationitself (p. 113).

From another perspective, Neisser (1982) opposedthe reification of a hypothetical construct, memory, onthe grounds that it has diverted researcher's attention fromsuch variables as the conditions under which people re-member, the kinds of details they remember, and the waysin which they use aspects of the past (memories) in presentsettings. Theories of memory have become self-sustaining,according to Neisser. Detailed and elegant memory the-ories and their accompanying experiments allow re-searchers to demonstrate their substantial methodologicalskills. Nevertheless, memory research has contributedlittle that is new to our overall understanding of remem-bering: "The opposite is more often the case. When aparticular experimental result seems to contradict an es-tablished principle, a dozen psychologists leap into thebreach to restore it" (Neisser, 1982, p. 7). In addition toadvocating the study of natural contexts and everydayremembering in preference to the static, structural, andtraditional memory experiment, Neisser suggested thatthe concept of memory itself belongs to a traditional viewof the subject matter of psychology that may be less usefulnow than it had once seemed.

[Memory] is a concept left over from a medieval psychologythat partitioned the mind into independent faculties: 'thought'and 'will' and 'emotion' and many others, with 'memory' amongthem. Let's give it up and begin to ask our questions in differentways. (p. 12)

Watkins (1990) concurred with Neisser in the viewthat, although memory research has generated a vast lit-erature of elegantly designed and executed experimen-tation, memory theorizing has done little to improve ourunderstanding of remembering. Watkins like Skinner,approached the issue of theorizing from a philosophy ofscience perspective, arguing that the crucial flaw in thefield of memory research, the flaw that generates a pleth-ora of theories, is mediationism:


I believe that the sorry state of memory theorizing is a directresult of adopting the mediationist doctrine. Were we to disregardthe doctrine, we would be less prone to indulge in personaltheorizing, we would rid ourselves of the essential cause of ourcommunication difficulties, and we would clear the clutter thatmore than anything else stands in the way of a better under-standing of the nature of memory, (p. 329)

Watkins further noted that the appeal of mediationismis closely allied to the appeal of mechanism as a mode ofexplanation: "The memory trace bridges a temporal gapbetween an event and its recall and thereby provides anaccounting of memory in mechanistic terms, without re-course to the concept of action at a distance" (p. 334).Memory theorizing thus continues to provide a clear focusfor debate on issues of scientific frameworks and the use-fulness of mechanistic accounts. Indeed, memory theo-rizing—its process, form, and function—provides a clearexample of the scientific concerns of both Mach andSkinner.

Whereas Mach cautiously allowed for a heuristicfunction of theories containing hypothetical entities, heconsistently argued against elevating such theories to thestatus of explanation because nothing is described by thelinguistic terms referring to hypothetical entities. Oncesuch theories have assisted in establishing previously un-known functional relations, the additional linguistic termsshould be abandoned in favor of terms that describe thoserelations. Skinner was less sympathetic to theoreticalmodels on the grounds that they divert attention fromthe behavior they are attempting to explain and that theyare wasteful of energy and resources, as theoretical modelsnormally decline with the production of new evidenceand the rise of competing models.

The model of "working memory" (Baddeley &Hitch, 1974), for example, may well have functioned asone of Mach's "tools of thought," as a useful heuristicfor establishing previously unknown functional relations.Indeed, the model has experimentally established severalimportant functional relations. The phonological simi-larity effect is a relation between phonological propertiesofletter sequences and people's ability to reproduce lettersequences—"the more phonologically similar the se-quence is, the harder the subject will find it to reproducethe sequence" (Baddeley, 1982, p. 415). The word lengtheffect is a relation between the length of words in a se-quence and people's ability to reproduce the sequence—"Memory span for words is a simple function of the spo-ken duration of the constituent words" (p. 415). The un-attended speech effect is a relation between the simulta-neous presentation of visual and aural material and peo-ple's ability to recall the visually presented material—"Ifa subject is required to remember a sequence of visuallypresented items, then his performance will be markedlyimpaired if irrelevant material is spoken at the same time"(p. 415). Articulatory suppression (dispensing with ref-erences to subvocal rehearsal and memory span) is a re-lation between material presented to a subject at the sametime he or she is required to speak and the subject's abilityto report the material presented—"If subjects are pre-

vented from subvocally rehearsing material by requiringthe subject to utter some irrelevant speech sounds suchas the word 'the' then their immediate memory span isimpaired" (p. 415).

Four demonstrated functional relations can be de-scribed in the following terms: Remembering is a functionof phonological similarity; remembering is a function ofword length; remembering is a function of simultaneouspresentation of different kinds of material; and remem-bering is a function of simultaneous presentation of ma-terial and speaking. Terms such as central executive, visuo-spatial scratchpad, and articulatory loop (Baddeley &Hitch, 1974) are unnecessary in describing these relations,because what or how much a person remembers is shownto be a direct function of aspects of the stimulating en-vironment (word lengths, list lengths, phonemic similar-ities, acoustic similarities, simultaneous listening andspeaking, etc.), and no amount of additional, internal,theoretical references alters those relations. If the termsof the model are allowed to fall away in the expressionof functional relations, then Mach would not have dis-puted its usefulness and would have applauded its abilityto lead to the establishment of new relations. Further-more, as the concept of explanation was understood byMach and Skinner, the maintenance of these additionalreferences contributes nothing to a scientific explanationof remembering. Their maintenance, as Watkins (1990)has noted, satisfies a mechanistic conception of expla-nation by providing mediating links between functionalrelations and by bridging temporal gaps between inde-pendent and dependent variables.

Additional theoretical terms become particularly ir-relevant in applied settings (i.e., in contexts in which be-havior has somehow "gone wrong" or in which effortsare made to strengthen or weaken desirable or undesirablebehavior, respectively) for, as a simple matter of logic,how does a clinician, educational psychologist, or teachermanipulate hypothetical components? For example, ex-amining the processes of normal and dyslexic reading,Baddeley (1982) found that poor readers "show muchless evidence of the influence of phonemic similarity thando good readers, suggesting that they are not fully utilizingthe articulatory loop" (p. 416, italics added). When agroup of dyslexic boys demonstrated the functional re-lations described above as the phonological similarity ef-fect, the word length effect, and articulatory suppression,Baddeley concluded that "this indicates they were indeedusing the articulatory loop, but does not necessarily meanthat the system was functioning as efficiently as in nor-mals" (p. 416, italics added). In this case, the theoreticalcomponent does not fall away in the expression of func-tional relations, but is referred to as a defective ontologicalsystem. Aside from the philosophical difficulties involvedin granting ontological status to hypothetical components,how is reading capability to be strengthened if the sourceof the problem is said to lie in a malfunctioning articu-latory loop? How would a clinician, educational psy-chologist, or teacher restore to full and proper functioninga hypothetical component?


This complex, multicomponent model was devel-oped because an older and simpler model—Atkinson andShiffrin's (1968) two-component model—could not ac-count for "the plethora of information processing capa-bilities of complex organisms, especially humans" (Mor-ris, 1986, p. 281); since its original formulation, the modelhas been updated on a number of occasions (Morris,1986). The components of the model, like the humanbehavior they are said to account for, are extremely com-plex in both their form and function, and the model issummarized in the following way:

The central executive which formed the control centre of thesystem was assumed to select and operate various control pro-cesses. It was assumed to have a limited amount of processingcapacity, some of which could be devoted to the short-termstorage of information. It was able to offload some of the storagedemands onto subsidiary slave systems of which two were ini-tially specified, namely the Articulatory Loop, which was ableto maintain verbal material by sub-vocal rehearsal, and theVisuo-Spatial Scratch Pad, which performed a similar functionthrough visualization of spatial material. (Baddeley, 1981; citedin Morris, 1986, p. 281)

What is of interest here is not so much the form orfunction of the components of the model, as it is thedevelopment and function of the model itself. A two-component model has developed into a more complexmodel comprising at least three components as the dataon human remembering have become more complex, anda review of research generated by the model (Morris,1986) is concerned primarily with implications for struc-tural aspects of the model's components. For example,statements such as "The slave systems have proved to bemore complex entities than was at first imagined, andtheir number is proliferating" (p. 293), and "The futureof working memory seems to be heading towards furtherfractionation of the system" (p. 293) refer to unimaginedcomplexity of aspects of the model rather than to thecomplexity of behavior (in this case, remembering). Themodel has taken on characteristics of the behavior it wasinvented to explain, and the behaving person has beenrelegated to secondary status relative to the model. Thehypothetical nature of the model's components allows forthem to be modified and multiplied at will, taking onwhatever features or properties the scientist decides. AsWatkins (1990) has noted, "Mechanistic theories are nei-ther compelled nor constrained by the data" (p. 334).

Linguistic terms referring to hypothetical constructscontinue to be retained even after the establishment offunctional relations. The model described provides a use-ful illustration of Mach's and Skinner's concerns regard-ing the concepts of cause, explanation, and theory in sci-entific practice. This model, however, is only one exampleof how mechanistic theorizing in psychology can resultin a proliferation of personal theorizing, can lead to afocus on the structure and function of hypothetical com-ponents, and thus to a relegation of behavior and thebehaving person, and can hamper the development ofpractical techniques for changing problematic behaviorand strengthening weak behavior.

ConclusionMach's participation in the 19th-century dispute over in-terpretation and causal modes in physics was echoed bySkinner's natural science concerns in 20th-century psy-chology. It has been pointed out that Mach's concernsrelating to mechanistic explanatory systems were notconcerns over the ontological status of hypothetical con-structs (e.g., atoms, vortices, particles, and other me-diating entities postulated by physicists of his time) butwere broader scientific, philosophical, and methodologicalconcerns (Brush, 1968). Similarly, debates over psycho-logical structures or events are often mistaken today forontological disputes—such as whether memory, mind,and mental states in general exist. However, when viewedfrom a philosophy-of-science perspective, these debatestake on a new form. They become debates about themeaning of explanation, about the conception of causa-tion employed, and about the pragmatic value of theoriesand theoretical models.

Radical behaviorism's explanatory system focuseson relations between behaving persons (or other organ-isms), the setting conditions of behavior, and its conse-quences—behavior in its context. Persons are illustratedin this system as indivisible wholes, active in and inter-active with their environments, changing and changed bythe context and consequences of their behavior—a con-cept identical to Capra's (1983) "network of dynamicrelationships" (p. 32) in the world of contemporary phys-ics. Relations between organisms and their world are thefocus of causal accounts, expressed in integrative theo-retical terms that explain behavior over time without theneed for mechanistic links between functionally depen-dent events.

A commitment to scientific method continues todistinguish psychology from philosophy, a view fromwhich few psychologists would dissent. Clearly, however,psychologists are not all committed to the same kind ofscience. Skinner's commitment was to a descriptive, ob-servational, and integrative science that did not requiremediating structures or mechanisms to account for cause-effect relationships, that was informed by a relational viewof its subject matter (contained in its definition) and aphilosophy that did not separate persons into behaviorand internal systems, and that sought to describe (explain)how persons and environments interact, the effect thatpersons have in producing consequences in their envi-ronment, and the effect the environment has in shapingand maintaining behavioral repertoires. Few psychologistsare committed to this kind of science, for the majorityconceive of causation as contiguous and sequential, de-manding of links in the chain to account for behavior.

If psychologists are to heed the call for a new sci-entific framework, and relational accounts are to be agoal for modern psychology, then a careful examinationof Skinner's philosophy of science can assist in the con-ceptual analysis required. Throughout his lifetime, B. F.Skinner continually confronted the task of developingempirically valid methods and terms to explain behavior.He consistently advocated a relational framework for the


subject matter of psychology, thoroughly and patientlyworking out how this might be achieved within a scientifictradition. Radical behaviorism today provides a stableand coherent philosophical position within psychology.Its technological applications continue the relational, in-tegrative, contextual scientific program advocated bySkinner. The success of his methods across a broad rangeof applied settings is the harvest of his careful labor.

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