Teaching the history of behavior analysis can be approached in many ways. One is to embed history in courses on the field’s discipline and subdisciplines (e.g., its basic and applied sciences and their conceptual foundations) and practice. Another is to teach courses on the histories of the discipline and subdisciplines and practice. Still another is to teach a stand-alone course that includes these approaches and more (e.g., their integration, relations with other sciences, the influence of U.S. history and culture). The purpose of this article is to foster teaching the stand-alone course. It has four sections. The first addresses structural considerations: course titles, catalog descriptions, curricula, certification, and accreditation. The second addresses contextual considerations: purposes of teaching history; distinctions between history and historiography; and starting points in selecting textbooks. The third addresses functional considerations: course content organized by topics and their required and recommended readings. The fourth discusses how the course might be revised by eliminating topics (e.g., the Middle Ages), expanding topics and subtopics (e.g., the behaviorisms, philosophy of science) and adding topics and subtopics (e.g., institutional history; diversity, inclusion, and equity). Given the field’s continuing development as a science, system, and practice and the rapid growth in its number and variety of its members, its history is becoming its common core—and a means of teaching it. The course elucidates the field’s integrity; incorporates the entirety of its community of students, scientists, scholars, and practitioners; and advance its coherence as a cultural practice. 

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Teaching a Course on the History of Behavior Analysis

This article outlines a graduate-level course on the philosophical, conceptual, and historical (PCH) foundations of radical behaviorism, which is the philosophy of science that underlies behavior analysis. As described, the course is for a 15-week semester, and is organized into weekly units. The units in the first half of the course are concerned with the influences of other viewpoints in the history of psychology on the development of behavior analysis and radical behaviorism. The units in the second half are concerned with the PCH foundations of eight basic dimensions of radical behaviorism. Throughout, a course examining the foundations of radical behaviorism is seen as compatible with related courses in the other three domains of behavior analysis-the experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis, and service delivery-and as integral to the education of all behavior analysts. 

Conceptual Foundations: Teaching the Historical Development of Radical Behaviorism as a Philosophy of Science

Pragmatism is a decidedly American viewpoint in philosophy whose development in the late nineteenth century is often attributed to Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey (Menand, 2002), and whose influence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is often attributed to the late Richard Rorty. As is well known, James and Dewey contributed to psychology as well as to philosophy. Indeed, pragmatism was instrumental in the development of American functionalism at the close of the nineteenth century, and is often linked with the development of behaviorism during the twentieth century. In regard to behaviorism, Leigland (1999), Moxley (2001, 2001/2002, 2002), and more recently Schoneberger (2016) have reviewed the relation between pragmatism, for example, as represented by Peirce and Rorty, and the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, known as behavior analysis. The present paper seeks to continue the discussion of the relation between pragmatism and behavior analysis, and for purposes of illustration to compare the pragmatic dimensions of behavior analysis with those of cognitive science.Pragmatism as a Philosophical OrientationPragmatism has been described in many ways by many commentators, sometimes as much in terms of what it opposes as what it advocates. The following passage from Dewey (1926) is illustrative:[Philosophy's] primary concern is to clarify, liberate, and extend the goods which inhere in the naturally generated functions of experience. It has no call to generate a world of "reality" de novo, nor to delve into secrets of Being hidden from common sense and science. It has no stock of information or body of knowledge peculiarly its own; if it does not always become ridiculous when it sets up as a rival of science, it is only because a particular philosopher happens to be also, as a human being, a prophetic man of science. Its business is to accept and to utilize for a purpose the best available knowledge of its own time and place. And this purpose is criticism of beliefs, institutions, custom, policies with respect to their bearing on good. This does not mean bearing upon the good, as something itself formulated and attained within philosophy. For as philosophy has no private store of knowledge or of methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge of facts and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are suffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.... (pp. 407-408, italics in original)Dewey here clearly continued in the tradition of Peirce and James by challenging the dominant philosophical thinking of his time and suggesting an alternative approach. Absent was an emphasis on a metaphysics that extended beyond the domain of human affairs. In its place was a firm commitment to analyses grounded in human experience and behavior.A second and more modern illustration of pragmatism is the work of Richard Rorty. Much as Dewey had, Rorty (e.g., 1979, 1991) emphasized that pragmatism is therapeutic instead of constructive. It is therapeutic in the sense that it argues the job of philosophers is to clarify and refine an understanding of the processes according to which humans interact with the world, often in causal ways. For Rorty as for Dewey, the meaning and value of philosophical terms invoked in this endeavor follow from their implications and consequences with respect to human experience and behavior. Rorty rejected the idea that philosophers should be concerned with constructing a metaphysical story about how human minds create the world in which humans live, and then with justifying how this story reflects a reality that philosophers know in some privileged way. Rorty employed the umbrella term "antirepresentationalism" in conjunction with his pragmatic views. …

Behavior Analytic Pragmatism

This paper addresses the legacy of John B. Watson’s (1913b) article, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” for applied behavior analysis, in particular, for four of its dimensions: the conceptual systems, behavioral, analytic, and applied dimensions. I begin with brief histories of behaviorism, behavior analysis, and applied behavior analysis. I situate Watson’s article in the psychology of his day. And, I locate the defining features of his behaviorism in its opening sentence: “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science” (p. 158). The legacy of “natural science” is the conceptual systems dimension of applied behavior analysis. The system was a metaphysical behaviorism and descriptive positivism, not a methodological behaviorism and a logical positivism. The legacy of “objective” is the behavioral dimension of applied behavior analysis. Objectivity was not objectivism. The legacy of “experimental” is its analytic dimension. Prediction and control were means for understanding behavior, not goals in themselves. Application was not a defining feature of Watson’s behaviorism, but he addressed experimental research on behavior of societal importance and mentioned its application in vocational bureaus. Thus, its legacy was, in part, the applied dimension of applied behavior analysis.

The legacy of john b. watson’s behaviorist manifesto for applied behavior analysis

“Methodological behaviorism” is a term that frequently appears in the behavioristic literature, but one accompanied by considerable semantic confusion: the term is used to denote very different theoretical positions and the authors classified as methodological behaviorists are many and various. In order to understand the polysemic character of this term, we propose a historical analysis of its origins and development in the literature from the 50 years following its first appearance in 1923. The results reveal that it has been used by authors as diverse as Karl Lashley, B. F. Skinner, Herbert Feigl, and Gustav Bergmann. Moreover, it has been defined in terms of two central features (one a methodological assumption and the other a metaphysical one) and used to demarcate positive and negative forms of behaviorism, depending on how each author has understood those features and forms. We conclude that the term’s polysemic character and different uses can be traced back to its roots in the 1920s, which helps us to understand the semantic confusion in the contemporary literature.

Methodological Behaviorism: Historical Origins of a Problematic Concept (1923-1973).

Methodological behaviorism is a stance on verbal processes and the meaning of "psychological" terms and concepts that are deployed in theories and explanations of behavior. According to this stance, all such terms and concepts should be based on observable stimuli and behavior. Over the years, psychologists have interpreted the phrase "based on" in at least three different ways. One interpretation was that psychologists should remain formally silent on causal mental terms, and not speak at all about unobservables. A second interpretation allowed psychologists to appeal indirectly to mediating mental terms, provided the psychologists could logically connect the terms to observables through operational definitions, where those definitions were exhaustive. A third interpretation again allowed psychologists to appeal indirectly to mediating mental terms, provided the psychologists could logically connect the terms to observables through operational definitions. This time, however, the definitions need be only partial instead of exhaustive. We argue the interpretations lead to an incomplete psychology, if not also an institutionalized mentalism, because they fail to recognize private behavioral events. None of the interpretations are consistent with the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner.

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Methodological behaviorism as a radical behaviorist views it

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Methodological behaviorism as a radical behaviorist views it