REVIEW OF CAPALDI AND PROCTOR'S CONTEXTUALISM IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH? A CRITICAL REVIEW

Capaldi and Proctor’s (1999) book is about philosophical issues not directly related to applied behavior analysis, and readers of this journal might therefore ask why a review of it is published here. I would give two answers, one pragmatic and the other biased. The pragmatic answer is that both applied and basic behavior analysis, which of course are intimately interrelated (e.g., Baer & Pinkston, 1997; Sulzer-Azaroff & Mayer, 1991, pp. xv–xvi), are largely misunderstood and therefore mistakenly criticized in mainstream psychology. Capaldi and Proctor’s book contributes to the misunderstanding and in doing so provides new ersatz fuel for the critics. Consequently, even though behavior analysts’ applied or basic work will proceed as before—and indeed it should not be affected by Capaldi and Proctor’s book or by this review of it—behavior analysts who are asked to justify their approach, or to respond to criticisms of it, should benefit from seeing where the critics err. The biased answer is that I am profoundly interested in contextualism, which is the philosophy that Capaldi and Proctor attack, and I think that behavior analysts should find contextualism at least somewhat interesting because it seems to be the philosophy that underlies behavior analysis (e.g., S. C. Hayes, Hayes, & Reese, 1988; Morris, 1988, 1997; and chapters in S. C. Hayes, Hayes, Reese, & Sarbin, 1993). Capaldi and Proctor (1999) describe and evaluate ‘‘philosophic’’ contextualism and two ‘‘modified’’ contextualisms that are