On Behaviorism and Private Events

Abstract

Radical behaviorism may be distinguished from other varieties of behaviorism, notably methodological behaviorism, by the way that it accommodates private events, where a private event is understood as (a) a verbal report of an internal sensation or (b) the influence of such phenomena as thinking, consciousness, and the like. Verbal reports of internal sensations are established by the verbal community, which solves the problem of privacy inherent in such cases by administering differential reinforcement based on public features associated with the private stimuli. Such phenomena as thinking may be understood as private or covert behavior, not essentially different from public behavior although executed at a reduced level. The behavioristic position on private events does not constitute a new solution to the mind-body problem, nor does it equate private events with observation of physiological brain states, nor is it another form of conventional operationism, largely because of the mentalistic if not outright dualistic features of the other views.