MODERN MOLAR BEHAVIORISM AND THEORETICAL BEHAVIORISM: RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Baum and staddon disagree on the status of internal states in behavior analysis. Baum advocates molar behaviorism, treating behavior in temporally extended segments and so avoiding the need for internal states. Staddon argues that internal states merely represent the effects of different histories and that their use brings behavior analysis in line with the established sciences. The dispute is one form of the age‐old molar—molecular controversy that characterized Aristotle's disagreement with Plato. Both molar and molecular analyses have their place, but molar behaviorism may apply more naturally to a variety of phenomena, ranging from the matching law and avoidance learning to socalled “higher mental processes.” When molecular analysis involves internal states, as in Staddon's Theoretical Behaviorism (or New Behaviorism), misunderstanding will be inevitable and behaviorism will be seen as one more instance of the mediational theories in which psychology has long been mired. Such theories have long dominated the physical sciences, where their usefulness is indisputable, but psychology is far behind the physical sciences and nonmediational molar behaviorism better suits a discipline that lacks the methods and the data of the established sciences.