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ALIVE AND KICKING: A REVIEW OF HANDBOOK OF BEHAVIORISM, EDITED BY WILLIAM O'DONOHUE AND RICHARD KITCHENER
Author(s) -
Baum William M.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.2000.33-263
Subject(s) - behaviorism , clarity , psychology , epistemology , stimulus control , cognitive science , psychoanalysis , philosophy , psychotherapist , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience , nicotine
Behaviorists have struggled and continue to struggle with basic questions about behavior, such as how to define behavior, how to talk about behavior in relation to environment, and what constitutes an adequate explanation of behavior. Skinner made huge progress on these questions, because of his emphasis on the generic character of stimuli and responses, his advocacy of rate as a datum, his introduction of stimulus control, and his reliance on selection by consequences as a mode of explanation. By no means, however, did he provide final answers. In particular, Skinner fell short because he never escaped from the limitations imposed by thinking in terms of contiguity and discrete events and because he never specified a useful role for theory. The 14 chapters in this book offer varying degrees of clarity on the ways in which behaviorists and behaviorally oriented philosophers dealt with basic questions in the past and are dealing with them in the present, post‐Skinner. They are reviewed individually, because they are uneven in quality. Overall, the book is a useful tool for gaining historical and philosophical background to behaviorism and for getting some idea of behaviorists' current directions.