Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 55-68 (2004).

2004 Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies

BEHAVIOR IS ABSTRACTION, NOT OSTENSION: CONCEPTUAL

AND HISTORICAL REMARKS ON THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Emilio Ribes-Iesta
University of Guadalajara

ABSTRACT: In this paper I discuss (1) the nontechnical nature of the term behavior; (2)
the need to revisit the Aristotelian concept of soul as the prime naturalistic subject matter
of psychology; (3) the incompleteness of meaning when behavior is identified with
movements or actions; (4) the implication of behavior in episodic and dispositional words
and statements including mental terms; (5) that mental concepts are not learned by inner or
outer ostension to physical properties of the speaker or of others; and (6) the concept of
behavior involves a two-fold abstraction, involving speaking with terms about doing and
saying, on the one hand, and speaking about those terms with which we speak, on the other.
Key words: soul, behavior, dispositional categories, episodic categories, abstraction,
ostension

The present status of psychology as a scientific discipline was described, quite

acutely, by Wittgensteins assertion that
The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not explained by calling it a
young science; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in
its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics, e.g. Set
theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual
confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.)
(1953, Part II, xvi)

Where does this conceptual confusion come from and of what does it consist?

Aristotle and the Soul as Behavior

Psychology is not a young science. In fact, it is a discipline with a long and
tortuous history. Psychology as a natural science can be traced back to the
foundational writings of Aristotle in De Anima (1908-1952, English translation).
Aristotle included psychology in his biological treatises. Biology and psychology
dealt with the study of the soul. The soul, according to Aristotle, was not a
distinctive substance. It was always the soul of a particular body and could not be
separated from it. There was no soul without body. The soul was a predicate of a
special kind of bodyliving bodies, capable of self-nutrition, growth, and
AUTHORS NOTE: Please address all correspondence to Emilio Ribes-Iesta, Centro de Estudios e
Investigaciones en Comportamiento, Universidad de Guadalajara, 12 de Diciembre 204, Chapalita,
Guadalajara, Jalisco 45030 (A.P. 5-374), Mxico. Email: [email protected]. CEICs website:
http://udgserv.cencar.udg.mx/~ceip/

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RIBES-IESTA
corruption. The faculties of the soul were conceived as the potencies of a living
organism, given its organization or form, and the soul was nothing other than these
potencies becoming act, given certain objects affecting the organism. The soul
consisted of the acting functions of a living body in relation to another body.
Because of this the soul was said to be the entelechy (or definition and essence) of
such a body. In Aristotelian thinking, the relation between matter and form defined
any particular body. The form of the candle could not be separated from the wax,
as the form of the body could not be separated from its functions. Nutrition was a
faculty exclusively related to the domain of what we call today biology, but
sensibility, desire, want and need, and the intellect of discourse were obviously
psychological functions. Aristotle thought of these functions as being
progressively inclusive, so the intellective soul always included the simpler
desiring, sensitive, and nutritive functions or faculties of the soul.
Although the domain of psychology seems to be defined clearly in Aristotles
writings as potencies becoming act, the term soul suffered from a variety of
changes due to the pervasive and strong influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition
(see, e.g., Kantor, 1963). Contrary to Aristotles claim that the soul was not a body
but something of the body, the soul became a separate substance. In the
Aristotelian conception the soul could not be given without a body, but the soul
was not in itself a body. It was always given in a particular type of body. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition the soul became an entity separate from any body. The
soul became the subject instead of the predicate and was attributed functions
similar to those of bodies: to be a substance, to move by itself, and to be affected
by other bodies. St. Augustine and St. Anselm were decisive in the final
formulation of a theory of the soul that converted it into an entity governing and
suffering at the same time the doings of only a restricted universe of bodies: human
bodies. In his 1637 Discourse of the Method (1912, English translation), Descartes
provided the rational arguments that formalized the division of man into two
substances, the soul (reason) and the matter (body). This division separated mans
doings from his reasonings. Behavior became pure mechanical action and the soul
became a cognitive mind. Man became the privileged product of creation in which
soul and matter, the physical and the spiritual, interacted in cohabitation. Man
simultaneously became a reflexive observer and a protagonist of his own doings.
It seems evident that behaviorism emerged as an attempt to overcome the
dualistic conceptions of humanity inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and
the Renaissances transaction, in which ontology was ceded to the Church and
epistemology was claimed to be the dominion of natural philosophy or science
(Cassirer, 1953). Behaviorists argued that conscious experience, as a result of the
working mind, could not be the subject matter of psychology, and that, ultimately,
consciousness itself could be considered as a form of language behavior (Skinner,
1953, 1957; Watson, 1919). Behavior was proposed as the subject matter specific
to psychology, and it was conceived of or defined in varied ways (Kitchener,
1977).
All of the proposed definitions of behavior seemed to be related in some way
to two fundamental conceptions. One was suggested by Watson (1913), who

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identified behavior with doings and sayings of individual organisms (i.e., with
some form of organized activity). Another was stated by Skinner (1938), who
identified behavior with a part of the total activity of the organism,
which is engaged in acting upon or having commerce with the outside world
. . .the movement of an organism or of its parts in a frame of reference provided
by the organism itself or various external objects or fields of force. (p. 6)

Both Watson and Skinner distinguished behavior from biologys subject matter to
the extent that behavior, as a psychological concept, dealt with the workings of the
organism as a whole, not with the functioning of its separate or isolated parts.
Skinner thought it was desirable to deal with an effect more than with movement
itself. These conceptions, nonetheless, thought of behavior as the specific, or
exclusive subject matter of psychology.
Contrary to common assumptions, however, behavior is not a term that
belongs exclusively to psychology. It shares its meaning with other terms such as
comport, conduct, acquittal, and deportment to refer to the manner of doing
something, but it is also applied to the response of groups or species to its
environment, to the way in which a machine or something operates, or to the way
in which different bodies, molecules, or particles react or displace themselves. If
behavior is to be used as a technical term defining the subject matter of
psychology, it is necessary to establish the boundaries of its application.
Otherwise, the term behavior is as ambiguous as any other term that psychologists
use.

Behavior as Action or Movement

Behaviorists have developed a complex and unsolved relationship with the
concept of behavior. Kitchener (1977) concluded that the nature of behavior in
behaviorism is a complex issue. If we are to avoid misunderstanding we must
appreciate this complexity and not remove it by a desire to simplify for the sake of
convenience (p. 68). This relation has varied from the identification of behavior
with movements and physical descriptions to considering behavior as patterns of
performance directed by goals and intentions. It is not surprising, however, that
these apparently extreme conceptions were implicated by Aristotles treatment of
the soul without contradiction or opposition. Movement and act were
fundamental concepts in Aristotles analysis of biological and psychological
functions, but they did not necessarily have different meanings, as they do in
contemporary language.
Movement was the specific subject matter of Aristotelian physics. Physics
studied nonimmutable realities having separate existence. Biological and
psychological functions were part of physics, or what today we might call natural
science. Movement was conceived of as change or mutation. Aristotles theory of
change was grounded in the identification of change with form, the beginning of
change in the deprivation or absence of form, and in the occurrence of change in
something that is permanent, the subject, entity, or being that changes accidentally.
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Deprivation, the origin of change, equals not-being, but according to Aristotle
there are two forms of not-being. In one case change is impossible (e.g., a stone is
not a tree and cannot become a tree). In the second case change is possible (e.g., a
seed is not a tree but it can become a tree). That which is not but can be or become
is called to-be-in-potency. That which actually and effectively is is called to-bein-act. Movement is passing from potency to act; however, nothing passes from
potency to act if it is not under the influence or action of an entity being already in
actuality. Potency is preceded by the act and the entity under which action the act
takes place.
Movement as change could be substantial or accidental. Substantial
movement involved the generation or destruction of a substance or entity. The soul
was related to accidental change. Accidental change involved three kinds of
modification of a substance or entity: (1) change in quantity or size, (2) change in
quality or alteration, and (3) change of place or translocation. The third meaning of
movement as a change of place, posture, or position became the only accepted
one during the Renaissance. Since the Renaissance, movement has become the
subject matter of mechanics, and actions have acquired a double meaning: (1)
mechanical movement as an alteration produced by force or through natural
agency, and (2) movement in or of a body produced as an act of will, or the
intention of an agent residing in that body. The first meaning was mechanical
action and the second was psychological or paramechanical action.
The identification of movement with change of location had two significant
consequences. First, changes in magnitude and in quality, as forms of movement,
were eliminated, reducing changes and their causality to mechanical movement
and efficient causes. Second, change was cancelled as an actualization or function.
The Aristotelian conception of movement as passing from potency to act implied
that the possibility of doing became actual function: doing something in relation to
another being in action. An act was always doing something in a situation and in
accordance to the possibilities of doing so. Actualization of potency meant
fulfilling a function in such a way that any act included an inherent sort of
intentionality. Actualization as function implied a final cause, but final cause
was not teleological or external to the doings involved. Final cause was related
to the accomplishment of potential functions through acting in a situation.
Intention and efficient cause were not in conflict in the Aristotelian conception of
the soulthey were aspects of a unique event.
Because the Aristotelian conception of movement did not separate produced
changes from function, purposiveness and goal-directedness were inherent
predicates of actions. Actions were not produced by physical or mechanical agents,
nor were they governed by intentions or the will of a nonphysical agent. The
opposition between action and purpose comes from the post-Aristotelian reduction
of movement to change of location and from the isolation of action from potency
and function. If we take the Aristotelian sensitive and intellective soul as a
paradigm of psychological functions, behavior consists of the actualization of the
organisms functions. Individual behavior would occur as movement (alterations
and displacements, because growth is a biological movement) taking place in

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relation to other entities (concepts, organisms, or physical bodies), but behavior
would not be identical to those movements and changes. Behavior would be the
accomplishment of possible functions given a situation. Thus, behavior could not
be separate from the structural characteristics of the behaving organism, the
situation, the entity in relation to which it was acting, and the degree to which the
action adjusted to the completion of a possible function. Behavior would consist of
movements as alterations of those organisms without self-originated
displacements. In organisms that have motor faculty, behavior would additionally
consist of desire and change of location. In Aristotles thinking, movement as selfdisplacement was always related to the desired object. Purpose and goaldirectedness were consubstantial to behavior in the form of self-translocation.
Nevertheless, final causes, which were involved in the actualization of potency,
were far apart from teleological explanations, which assume that acts are
determined by the anticipation of their outcomes. Potency and function as purpose
are denoted explicitly by the Latin roots of comportment and conduct: comportare
(what is brought with) and conducere (directed towards), respectively.
The equation of movement with mechanic translation and efficient causality
undoubtedly contributed to identify behavior with physical descriptions of
movements of the organism and their effects. This conception blurred the
boundaries between biological and psychological behavior and disconnected the
bodys alterations and changes of location from its structural organization and the
diverse functions completed (or achieved) in its relations with other bodies.
Potency, function, alteration, displacement, and action became isolated,
independent terms regarding the description and explanation of behavior.
As a consequence of this, some behaviorists identified behavior with
movement (e.g., Watson, Hull, Guthrie, Skinner), whereas other behaviorists
identified behavior with purposive and goal-directed actions (e.g., Holt, Tolman).
In both cases movements and actions consisted of effects of previous entities such
as stimuli, drives, reinforcement history, intentions, cognitions, or expectations.
Although behavior was ultimately equated with doings and sayings in regard to
something or someone, the description of behavior ended with the occurrence of
movements or activities that were caused, motivated, or facilitated by a previous
entity that acted on the organism from the outside or the inside. The organism
became the central referent in the description of behavior, leading to what Kantor
(1969) called the organocentric conception of behavior. Seen this way, behavior
was either instigated by some entity or was emitted by the organism. It was
explained as movement caused by external stimuli or as action caused by an
internal agency. In both cases the explanation of behavior was reduced to some
type of efficient cause, and final causes were limited to some kind of anticipatory
process or mechanism related to the outcomes or consequences of behavior.

Mind and Behavior

In ordinary language, reference to psychological episodes or phenomena is
usually done in mental terms. These terms include expressions that use words

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related to perception, memory, imagination, thinking, feeling, and many others that
philosophers and most psychologists have claimed to refer to private entities,
activities, or events. Because it is assumed that these events and activities take
place within the individual, only the individual experiencing them has privileged
access to their occurrence in the form of reflection, introspection, or selfknowledge. The use of these terms in ordinary language is taken as the primary
evidence of the existence of mental phenomena and events by the defenders of this
view.
However, there is no persuasive reason to assume that such use of mental
terms in ordinary language has any relation to the description or identification of
hidden activities or events. On the contrary, mental terms are always used in
relation to the explicit circumstances in which they occur and to the behavior of the
speaker and/or the listener. For instance, when someone says that he or she has
the word on the tip of the tongue, nobody tries to press the tongue to get the word
out, nor does the speaker assume or believe that a word is actually on his/her
tongue. The speaker and the listener understand, and behave accordingly, that for
whatever reason the speaker is not able to utter the appropriate word in the context
of a conversation despite the fact that he or she has used it in the past.
Mental terms or expressions are not ordinarily taken as narratives of hidden
activities or events. How are we to understand, then, philosophers and
psychologists claims that mental terms and expressions refer to activities and
events occurring inside the speaker, to which only the speaker can react directly?
Ryle (1949), among other philosophers of language, has provided an accurate
analysis of the inappropriate uses of language involved in proposing the existence
of mental workings different from the doings and sayings of individuals. Ryle has
attributed the ensuing conceptual confusion to category mistakes that occur in
ordinary uses of words and expressions.
A category mistake consists of treating words and expressions that belong to a
category as if they belong to another category. Sometimes a category or conceptual
mistake can be attributed to the speakers failure to use words and expressions
appropriately; however, psychologists and philosophers misunderstanding of
mental terms arise from the fact that people. . .are perfectly competent to apply
concepts, at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable
in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical types to which they
do not belong (Ryle, 1949, p. 17). Ryle has characterized what he has termed the
official doctrine about mental life (i.e., the notion of the ghost in the machine)
as the major category mistake, representing the facts of mental life as if they
belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types of categories), when
they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosophers myth
(1949, p. 16).
The doctrine of the ghost in the machine assumes the existence of two kinds
of substances and two kinds of activities. Matter is related to mechanical action
and behavior, whereas mind is related to mental, nonmechanical actions. Ryle
(1949) pictures the official doctrine of the double-life theory and the associated
category mistake in this way:

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The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a machine
derives from this argument. Because, as is true, a persons thinking, feeling and
purposive doing cannot be described solely in the idioms of physics, chemistry
and physiology, therefore they must be described in counterpart idioms. As the
human body is a complex organised unit, so the human mind must be another
complex organised unit, though one made of a different sort of stuff and with a
different sort of structure. Or, again, as the human body, like any other parcel of
matter, is a field of causes and effects, so the mind must be another field of
causes and effects, though not (Heaven be praised) mechanical causes and
effects. . .so, while some movements of human tongues and limbs are the effects
of mechanical causes, others must be the effects of non-mechanical causes, i.e.,
some issue from movements of particles of matter, others from workings of the
mind. . . .The differences between the physical and the mental were thus
represented as differences inside the common framework of the categories of
thing, stuff, attribute, state, process, change, cause and effect.
Minds are things, but different sort of things from bodies; mental processes are
causes and effects, but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily
movements. . .the repudiators of mechanism represented minds as extra centres
of causal processes, rather like machines but also considerably different from
them. Their theory was a para-mechanical hypothesis. (pp. 18-19)

The claim that mental terms and expressions refer to things other than doings
and sayings rests upon a double category mistake. First, it is assumed that because
mental terms are phrased as verbs and nouns, they must correspond to entities,
structures, actions, or activities; second, because mental terms cannot be
ostensively reduced to particular actions, movements, or behaviors, it follows
that such terms and expressions do not refer to what is being directly observed.
Bodily actions and movements can be pointed to, but mental activities and
processes cannot be identified in this way. Both are described in some sense as
activities and occurrences related to organs, but they are assumed to be activities
and occurrences of a different type depending on the structures whose workings
are responsible of these happenings. An additional counterpart mistake is the one
made by behaviorists by supposing that mental terms are reducible to particular
forms of actions or their effects. It is believed that this conceptual problem is
surmounted by using the mental terms as adjectives of behavior (i.e., seeing
behavior, thinking behavior, etc.) or by assuming that some of these
behaviors might occur inside the body as private but physical events that might
be traceable in the future by sophisticated physiological instruments (Skinner,
1945; Homme, 1965).
The first type of category mistake is identifying nouns and verbs with objects
and actions. Objects and actions can be ostensively identified and named. When a
child asks what is a chair?, the answer involves pointing to a chair and saying
that is a chair. Pictures or drawings of chairs can be also used as surrogates for
the meaning of a chair. In the same way, when a child asks what are you doing?
the answer consists of showing a special kind of activity like eating, running,
laughing, writing, reading, etc. In these cases the nouns correspond to distinct
objects that can be pointed to in a particular location. Verbs describing actions

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correspond to specific, observable, distinct sets of movements, postures, and
responses involving objects (e.g., playing the piano, eating a banana, or
hanging the frame). However, some nouns and verbs do not refer to entities and
actions in a direct, ostensive manner. These nouns and verbs involve entities that
include objects and acts that include actions and movements, but these terms do
not describe, name, or identify particular objects or actions. Ryles examples of
treating different nouns as the same kind of entity (e.g., seeing the university or
looking for connections between the Church of England, the Home Office and the
British Constitution) are well known. Terms such as memory and intelligence are
also nouns, but they do not share the same logical properties as nouns that have
ostensive meanings such as planes, trains, and trousers. Similar examples of
confusion can be shown in reference to always treating verbs as referents of
actions (e.g., treating thinking behavior as an action of the same logical type as
eating behavior). Most mental terms in the form of verbs do not describe actions
per se, although they refer to acts in which actions, movements, and responses can
be identified. With seeing, perceiving, imagining, remembering, thinking, and
communicating, some activities and movements can be pointed to, but none of
these activities or movements can be identified with the meaning of the those
verbs. This characteristic of verbs is not exclusive of technical mental terms.
Many ordinary verbs involve actions but do not describe specific actions (e.g.,
loving, convincing, waiting, preferring, choosing, deciding, etc.);
such terms constitute a potential reservoir for naming new mental processes.
The second category of mistake under discussion consists of putting terms and
expressions that describe different things into the same category. On the one hand,
some terms describe occurrences and episodes. On the other hand, some terms deal
with collections of occurrences or dispositions, namely propensities, inclinations,
and tendencies. The category mistake consists in treating dispositional words as if
they describe occurrences and episodes. Dispositional words are different from
episodic words. Episodic words are about how people do, or should, act and react.
Dispositional words are not used for particular matters of fact, although they are
satisfied by the occurrence of particular matters of fact. Dispositional terms deal
with capacities, abilities, and tendencies (e.g., terms such as knowing,
aspiring, clever, and brave). If it is said that Peter knows Turkish, Peters
knowledge is not an observable state of affairs. Nonetheless, if Peter translates a
page written in Turkish into English, this fact satisfies what is asserted about Peter,
although the translation by itself is not identical to the knowledge of Turkish.
Episodic words refer to the observable events, occurrences, and acts that
satisfy the application of a dispositional word to a person or a thing. Dispositions
refer to propensities, tendencies, or inclinations to act in one way or another, but
they do not refer to the particular acts that prove or satisfy their application. Some
philosophers and psychologists have interpreted dispositional words and
statements as being categorical reports of particular matters of fact, but because
these matters of fact are not observable as particular acts, they have been treated as
unobservable acts taking place in the mind or in the head of the individual. These
words do not, however, apply to any particular unobservable acts. Dispositions

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involve the conditions under which observable acts may or may not occur, and
because dispositions do not have episodic properties (i.e., a beginning and an
ending), it is misleading and erroneous to predicate their observability or
unobservability. Thus, dispositional statements describe generic happenings and
their main job is prediction. Ryle (1949) asserted, dispositional statements narrate
no incidents. But their jobs are intimately connected with narratives of incidents,
for, if they are true, they are satisfied by narrated incidents (p. 125). Because of
this intimate relationship between dispositional and episodic words it is tempting
to construe dispositional words as if they were episodic, postulating that any verb
that has a dispositional use must also have a corresponding episodic use, or that
dispositional nouns can be transformed into episodic verbs.
These arguments lead to the conclusion that mental terms and expressions do
not deal with happenings, episodes, or conditions that are opposed to or
antagonistic to terms denoting acts or the circumstances in which certain kinds of
behavior might or might not take place. On the other hand, mental terms and
expressions always have episodic or dispositional properties. Mental terms involve
episodic descriptions of achievements or manners of doings or dispositional
accounts of collections of happenings in the form of tendencies or propensities,
predicting or pointing to the conditions in which particular acts might or might not
occur. Mental terms and expressions in ordinary language are about behavior and
its circumstances. The improper use of such terms and expressions by
psychologists and philosophers, who consider them to be technical names for
unobserved occurrences or entities, has resulted in a mythical world of extraepisodic actions and entities. Behaviorism must recognize that mental expressions
are nothing other than expressions about behavior, and that a conceptual analysis
of how these terms and expressions are used in ordinary language will be helpful in
avoiding misunderstanding and confusion about their meaning. These terms and
expressions are not ambiguous expressions about behavior, so they do not require
improvement through any translation into technical jargon about behavior or
identification with private, physical inner behaviors. In short, they are mental terms
and expressions of ordinary language and they are the fundamental raw material
providing functional meaning to the subject matter of psychology: behavior.

Behavior is an Abstraction
From the above discussion about the relation of the term behavior to
descriptions involving movements, actions, and mental terms and expressions, an
issue arises that needs to be examined: the term behavior does not refer to
particular occurrences or events to which anyone can directly point. Behavior
cannot be ostensibly pointed to or seen directly. Behavior, as a psychological
concept, is a term that has always referred to a person or another specific organism.
We see, hear, smell, or feel somebody doing or saying something, but we do not
see or hear behavior. Doings and sayings involve movements, actions, and
different types of sensory and mechanical effects, but the description of none of
these is sufficient, by itself, to accurately describe or capture a doing or saying as

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an act. Behavior, as a concept, is an abstraction of the movements, actions, and
effects of a persons doings and sayings in context. To assert that behavior is an
abstraction is to say that behavior is a concept about doings and sayings, not a
mere description or naive apprehension of the physical properties, qualities, or
dimensions of such doings and sayings.
Following Carnap, many behaviorists, whether aware of the doctrine or not,
assumed that descriptions containing mental terms could be reduced to physical
descriptions and that behavior could be directly described in terms of movements.
Malcolm (1971) criticized this doctrine for its implication that
every description of human beings, containing mental terms, may be replaced by
a purely physical descriptionthat is, a description containing no mental terms.
As Carnap put it, psychology is a branch of physics. Physical descriptions are
conceived of as the basic form of description. From descriptions of physical
states and movements one can go, by means of logical constructions, or by
means of inferences based on physical laws, to descriptions containing mental
terms (mental descriptions). One can also go in the other direction, from mental
descriptions to physical descriptions, since the relation of translatability is
symmetrical. (pp. 93-94)

This doctrine was intended to account for descriptions of ones mental expressions or
of a second and third persons psychological descriptions embodying mental terms in
terms of the observation of his or her own behavior or in the direct perception of pure
physical properties of others behavior.
However, people do not base announcements of their intentions or states on
their awareness of events in their bodies. A speakers true statement about what he
or she intends, thinks, feels, or wants is not based on a previous observation of
something, a happening to him or her, or a change in his or her body or behavior.
The statement is in some sense simultaneous with the identification or description
of a mental condition. An example by Malcolm (1971) is illustrative:
Suppose I say I am putting on my coat, so plainly I intend to go home. This
remark might be made in fun. But if I gave the impression of being serious,
others would regard me strangely. If I intend to go home I should be able to
announce this straight off, without recourse to observation of my behavior.
Indeed, if my remark were truly based on such observation of myself, it would
not be an expression of intention. . . .I can say of another person, I know his
stomach hurts from the way he is groaning and doubling ever. But I cannot
speak this way of myself, without revealing a ludicrous misunderstanding of the
concept of sensation. I can say of another person, From the look on his face I
can tell he is surprised; but to say this of myself would show that there is some
misunderstanding somewhere. (p. 85)

Mental concepts are learned as connections between what oneself or others

say and what is said and done in a particular situation. This learning applies to our
mental expressions in the first person or to the description and identification of
mental expressions of others (second- and third-person descriptions). Although

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mental concepts are applied to others on the basis of behavioral criteria (i.e., a
change in appearance, utterance, or physical action or posture), mental concepts
are not applied to ourselves on this basis. First-person utterances and their secondand third-person utterances in applying mental terms entail the same concept, not
because of the verification procedures used to validate the meaning or correctness
of the utterance but because both applications are learned in the same way:
speaking in mental terms when something is being done and said. They are tied to
the same behavioral criteria. In both cases it is not possible to make a distinction
between being able to use a word correctly and knowing its meaning. Any attempt
to make such a distinction by appealing to an inner ostensive definition or by
analogy based on behavioral criteria correlated with self-observed mental states
is a failure. The same can be said about the perception of people under mental
descriptions. Perception is immediate because descriptions are not based on
different kinds of descriptions. I see serenity in his face is an immediate
description that is not based in inferences from a more basic description of
geometrical or physical characteristics of the facial expression. In fact, for the most
part we cannot give or even comprehend purely physical descriptions of human
behavior. Mental concepts are learned when language is learned, and it is learned
when words and expressions are used correctly in context (Wittgenstein, 1953).
The physical description of objects, animals, and activities or states is a step
further after learning to speak about what we perceive.
Malcolm (1971) claims:
We must reject the doctrine, so powerful in modern philosophy, that we acquire
concepts of mental occurrences by observing those occurrences taking place in
ourselves. In rejecting it we remove the chief source of the temptation to think
that a human mind could exist and be provided with concepts, in isolation from
a human body and from a community of living human beings. (p. 59)

The notion that mental states can be observed in terms of the discrimination of
physical properties is incorrect in two ways. First, all concepts, mental states, or
intentions exist to the extent that the individual identifying or describing them
speaks. All mental concepts appear with language, and it is only until a concept is
learned that the corresponding mental state or intention is recognized or identified.
Nobody learns the meaning of a mental concept by first discriminating inner
physical events to which the concept is applied, even when this learning, based on
inner ostension, is assumed to be controlled or regulated by a verbal community
(Skinner, 1945). Mental concepts are learned as words and expressions used and
applied correctly in specific circumstances and situations. Learning first-person
descriptions or identification of mental states and intentions takes place in the same
way as learning the identification of these states and intentions in second and third
persons: by using or applying the concept correctly. We learn to recognize the
circumstance in which a concept is meaningful by adjusting ourselves to the
criteria, behavioral and situational, in which the concept is used appropriately. The
concept is learned by speaking and behaving in a particular way, not through an
elaborate process of discriminating inner or outer ostensive physical properties of
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oneself or others and building the identification, naming, or description of the
mental state or intention (or tacting private stimuli under the control of the verbal
community) upon them. Mental concepts are deeply tied to language. As
Wittgenstein (1953) remarked,
Our criterion for someones saying something to himself is what he tells us and
the rest of his behaviour; and we only say that someone speaks to himself if, in
the ordinary sense of the words, he can speak. And we do not say it of a parrot;
nor of a gramophone. (p. 344)
Well, one might say this: If one sees the behaviour of a living thing, one sees it
soul. But do I also say in my own case that I am saying something to myself,
because I am behaving in such-and-such a way? I do not say it from observation
of my behaviour. But it only makes sense because I do behave in this way. (p.
357)

Following this argument it becomes clear that the concept of behavior can
be understood in two levels of abstraction. The first level involves the proper use
of mental terms in relation to the acts of others and to ones own acts. At this level
behavior is referred to with the appropriate use of words and expressions regarding
alterations and acts of persons. This first level of abstraction deals with ordinary
language practices and the social criteria that ground them. Behavior is referred to
through mental concepts or physical descriptions of movements, postures, and
reactions. The second level of abstraction involves behavior as a concept operating
upon the language practices that are used in relation to concrete acts in specific
situations. When the term behavior is used in the first level of abstraction it
applies to concrete situations in concrete descriptions consisting of verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs. Behavior is described as occurring in certain situations, to
show certain characteristics or not, to vary in form or speed, etc.; it is referred to as
acts and mental intentions or states. However, when the term is used at the second
level of abstraction it is used as an abstract noun, and the concept of behavior, as
Ryle (1971) points out, becomes parasitic on concrete assertions in which the term
is operated within the description of or reaction to acts and alterations. Behavior, in
this second level, is not used to describe, assert, or account for any particular act or
alteration; it is used to examine, follow through, and analyze the various
neighborhoods or familiarity threads that link or contrast the application of the
term in concrete assertions and descriptions. Behavior becomes a theoretical
term with a different functional grammar. The basic question in this second level
of abstraction is what is behavior? Depending on the way we answer this
question and the arguments we use for doing so, the first-level descriptions of
behavior will be thought of in different ways, and explanations, methods, and
concepts about types of behavior will vary. Ryle (1971) characterized this second
level of abstraction as follows:
We have now to operate upon what we ordinarily operate readily and
unquestioningly with. We now need the theory of our daily practice, the
geography of our daily works. When two or twenty familiar threads seem to pull

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across and against one another, it is no longer enough to be able unperplexedly
to follow along each one by itself. We need to be able to state their directions,
their limits and their interlockings; to think systematically about what normally
we merely think competently and even dexterously with. (p. 444)

Behaviorists have to face these issues, but to do so implies having to

understand the ordinary expressions and terms including mental terms, which are
the concrete linguistic material upon which the abstract concept of behavior has to
develop. Behaviorists speak about behavior, describe behavioral episodes or kinds
of behavior, and set up conditions for observing, measuring, and even changing
behavior, but all these first-level abstractions using the term behavior do not
share a common second level of abstraction about what behavior is, how it should
be explained, and how one can appropriately look for different forms of occurrence
of behavior. Sadly, behavior is still an elusive concept for behaviorists.

Conclusions
Some general conclusions can be derived from the arguments presented here:
(1) behavior is not a technical term specifying a subject matter unique to
psychology; (2) although behavior, like concrete acts, involves movements and
actions, it is not identifiable through movements or actions; (3) the concept of
behavior is not antagonistic to mental terms and expressions (on the contrary, it is
always implied in episodic and dispositional words and statements); (4) behavior is
identified and described by words and expressions that are not used or learned
according to ostensive criteria regarding physical properties or dimensions of self or
others behavior; and (5) behavior is a theoretical concept, an abstraction about
concrete assertions in which the term can also be used. Descriptions of behavior,
including verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, need a further level of abstraction if the
term is to be used as a general concept encompassing all those concrete assertions.
I would like to close this paper with a quote from Malcolm (1971) that
accurately represents the intention of this work: Philosophical work of the right
sort merely unties knots in our understanding. The result is not a theory but simply
no knots! (p. xi).

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