The Psychological Record, 1968, 18, 151·166.

BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGy1

J. R. KANTOR
University of Chicago

Behaviorism is equated with science as the study of behavior.

It is, therefore, distinguished from the specialized psychological
movement called Watsonian behaviorism. In the history of
psychology, 6 distinct periods of behaviorism are discerned and
described.

In entering upon a discussion of the place of behaviorism in

the history of psychology I am strongly reminded, and I want to re-
mind you, of Eddington's famous comparative description of the two
tables.
The first table, you recall, is the substantial object of every-
day life, an object that not only does not collapse when you lean
upon it but is also made up of coherent solid substances, including
enduring colors as well as tactile and other qualities. The second
table, the scientific one, is entirely different. It consists mostly of
emptiness teeming with electric charges moving about with great
speed. By contrast with the raw materials of the familiar table, the
scientific table is based on such raw materials as ether, electrons,
quanta, potentials, and Hamiltonian functions. We are so strongly
reminded of Eddington's two tables because when we concern our-
selves with behaviorism in psychology we are analogously called
upon to distinguish two related but still different movements.
The first is the familiar so-called Watsonian behaviorism, whose
origin goes back to several articles published by ·Watson in 1913.
Watsonian behaviorism has been cultivated mostly by psychologists
who have devoted themselves to the study of learning in animals,
especially white rats. Its outstanding characteristic is the rejection
of the introspective method of observation along with mental states
which require such a method for their study. Watson ian behavior-
ism is also reductive; it dissolves the psychological event into neural,
muscular, and glandular acts of the organism.
The second description of behaviorism, the one we may regard
as the scientific one, is much more significant. It is not based upon
a specific technique or department of study but upon the whole
enterprise of investigation. Psychological behaviorism, when scien-
1 This paper was prepared as a George A. Miller Centennial Lecture and delivered at the University
of Illinois in May, 1967. Later it was also read at Western Washington State College, and at the
University of Washington. For journal publication, footnotes and refprences have been added to
clarify some of the statements.
152 KANTOR

tifically described, is rooted in many concrete events in the history

of science. It is the product of a complex evolution through many
centuries, an evolution influenced by the contingencies of diverse
but interrelated societies. As we shall see, Watsonian behaviorism
is only one incident in the long evolution of psychological behavior-
ism.
As it is our task to describe and evaluate the place of behavior-
ism in the history of psychology, we must define behaviorism clear-
ly. By behaviOlism we understand the study of the behavior of
some confrontable thing or process; thus the term "behaviorism" is
equivalent to the term "science."
In astronomy, behaviorism is the study of the interaction of
stars, suns, planets, galaxies and celestial radiation. In physics, be-
haviorism is the study of various activities, objects, or properties of
objects; for example, moving bodies, energy, radiation, magnetic at-
traction, and atoms and their component electric charges. In biology,
behaviorism signifies that the investigator observes the behavior of
nucleic acids, cells, organs, and organisms, as well as various organic
processes such as photosynthesis, metabolism, growth, reproduction,
and disintegration. In psychology, behaviorism is the study of the
interactions of organisms with other organisms or objects; in other
words, the subject matter of the science of psychology consists of
definite confrontable events just as do the subject matters of the
other sciences. Psychological behaviorism is, then, the investigation
of fields of action which occur in the same spatio-temporal frame-
work as the subject matters studied by any of the other sciences and
are in this respect identical with the data of the other sciences.
Now I propose the hypothesis that the evolution of behaviorism
in the history of psychology is basically the record of that discipline's
efforts to achieve scientific status, and so it becomes our task to trace
the various steps in that evolution. We suggest that an examination
of the evolution of psychological behaviorism reveals at least six
interrelated periods, each of which has left its mark upon both the tradi-
tion and science of psychology. I say tradition and science because
it is an unfortunate fact that psychology, unlike other sciences, has
never completely separated itself from its non-naturalistic tradition.
Psychology has not, like astronomy, left behind the astrological phase
of its history.
Let us turn now to the six periods of psychological behaviorism;
here are the names which we use to characterize them briefly.
1. Archaic or Naive Behaviorism
2. Antibehaviorism
3. Prebehaviorism
4. Protobehaviorism
5. Watsonian Behaviorism
6. Authentic Behaviorism, Interbehaviorism, Field
Behaviorism
 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 153

ARCHAIC BEHAVIORISM
To the question where and when authentic behaviorism or scien-
tific psychology originated, we find a ready answer; it began with
Aristotle and other ancients in the fourth centmy B.C. Of course,
Aristotle had no intimation of a science called psychology, but in his
biological work he inquired into the activities of organisms among
which he included, besides the metabolic processes and reproduction,
such psychological behavior as sensing, remembering, imagining,
thinking, and dreaming. What is significant here is that he regarded
those psychological activities as ways in which plants and animals
interacted with the things constituting their environments. For ex-
ample, in describing vision as a sensory phenomenon he specified
the activity of each of the components, (a) the reacting organism
with its sense organ, (b) the visible object with its color, and (c)
a transparent medium between them, that is light.
At this point we must be sure to mention that Arisotle had no
inkling of what has later been postulated as mental or psychic repre-
sentatives of objects. In essence Aristotle's psychology was complete-
ly naturalistic though obviously it was bound to be naive and ex-
tremely simple. An acquaintance with the details of psychological
history precludes the view that behaviorism was an invention of
Watson or anyone in the twentieth century. At this point I want
to add the suggestion that whatever failings may be attributed to
the physics and other scientific studies of Aristotle, they do not
count against his status as a psychologist.
Before we leave this first period it should be mentioned that the
naturalistic viewpoint characteristic for Greek psychology is a defin-
ite reflection of the relatively safe and secme economic and politi-
cal conditions which are about to be replaced by another and very
different type of social life and science. The glorious civilization of
Athens soon gave way to the culture of Alexandria of the Ptolemies.
And it was in Alexandria that spirit and mentality had their first
origins in Western European cultme.

ANTI BEHAVIORISM
Our next period, which we call antibehaviorism, and which is the
longest in point of time, covers more than seventeen centuries, from
the second century B.G to the fifteenth centmy A.D. It may be re-
garded as an empty period from the standpoint of achievement. How-
ever, it is not merely a gap, but really a negative phase since what
it lacks in the way of science is substituted for by religious specu-
lations which have excrted a great influence upon scientific thought
and have provided a general cultural background that has persisted
from the second century B.C. to this very moment. It is antibehavior-
ism which is the basis and cause for the existence of behaviorism
154 KANTOR

as a problem and a doctrine in the history of psychology and of

science.
Such were the cultural conditions of the second period that
science as the free investigation of confrontable events practically
disappeared, while the civilization of the time became replete with
religious and transcendental preoccupations. This is the era of theology
and supercosmic cogitation. Intellectual interests were deeply concerned
with problems of a moral and religious type. Knowledge of the nat-
ural world had given way completely to an interest in the super-
mundane destiny of man. The primary pursuit of the age is the search
for the best means of personal salvation. The problem of saving souls
eclipsed all concern for the affairs of the actual world and current
experience. This viewpoint is excellently illustrated by the comments
of St. Augustine in his Confessions. He writes:
And men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, the
lofty billows of the sea, the long courses of rivers, the vast compass
of the ocean, and the circular motions of the stars, and yet pass
themselves by, nor wonder that while I spake of all these things
I did not then see them with mine eyes; yet could I not have
spoken of them, unless those mountains, and billows, and rivers,
and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believed to
be, I saw inwardly in my memory, yea, with such vast spaces
between, as if I verily saw them abroad.
Yet did I not absorb them into me by seeing, when as with
mine eyes I beheld them. Nor are the things themselves now
within me, but the images of them only. And I distinctly know
by what sense of the body each was impressed upon me.'
But not only was science cast aside in favor of religious pre-
occupations. There was outspoken hostility toward it. Science was
regarded as stale and unprofitable in the face of the pressing de-
mand for eternal security and perennial bliss.
During the course of all this preoccupation with the supernatural,
with salvation, and with the relation of man to God, the foundation
was laid for inclining psychology towards spirit and away from the
concrete adjustments of organisms to each other and to other sur-
rounding things. The spiritistic period is the source and origin of
soul, inextensible thought, and myriads of invisible and intangible
things and processes. Man himself was divided into a natural and a
supernatural part, the latter of which is the basis for our present-day
constructs of mentality, consciousness, experience, sensations, and
other psychic processes.
It is melancholy to observe how little psychologists realize that
the model they adopt for interpreting psychological events is dir-
ectly derived from the antibehavioristic era. This is true not only of
the mentalist, but also of the ordinary behaviorist, who does, how-
ever, exhibit antibehavioristic tendencies more in the case of sensory

~ See Augustine, Confessions, Book 10.

 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 155

and perceptual processes than in the case of habits and learning. But
both types of psychologists operate with descriptions that belong more
to the traditions inherited by psychology than to its scientilic aspect.
There can be no doubt that the description of "seeing" or "experienc-
ing" a color as something occurring when an impulse terminates in
the brain is based upon the spiritistic ideas engendered in the
antibehavioristic era. We shall deal further with this type of des-
cription later.
I believe it is clear that psychologists are reinforced in their
use of antibehavioristic constructs by the fact that physicists and
physiologists also use them. That other scientists besides psychologists
have adopted transcendental postulates simply illustrates the coher-
ence of culture. One branch of science influences another. Basic here
is the fact that specialization in science is of recent origin. A close
study of psychological development reveals that the current model
of visual discrimination was built up by Newton in his Optics. This
model was adopted by those philosophers who later developed psy-
chology as a specialty.
One of the great values of the history of science is that, rightly
studied, it will teach us a great deal concerning the origin of our
constructs. It is impossible then, to overlook the straight path that
leads back from all notions of mentality, private experience, sensa-
tions, and ideas to the spiritistic tradition of the antibehaviorism per-
iod. It was that religious period which has given rise to the bifurca-
tion of the universe. The antibehavioristic period is the time when
men sought for the nature of reality and could not find it in the
confrontable events that could be observed with varying degrees of
facility. Accordingly, they built up the notion that reality was a world
behind the appearances. Reality was hidden and unseeable except
through the medium of the spirit or the soul. From his dissatisfactions
with the difficulties and troubles of the familiar world and from his
hope of a better life to come, antibehavioristic man created the di-
chotomies of subjective and objective, of the internal and the external
worlds, of mind and body, and of the primary and secondary quali-
ties, in sum the whole idealistic or spiritistic philosophy.
What is of importance to us at this point is the continuity of
history. Our different periods are not isolated entities. They are links
in a chain. What the Greek and Latin church fathers wrought for
social and religious purposes-the arguments of Tertullian, the para-
bles of Philo, the cosmos of Plotinus-live on in the constructs of
mind and introspective consciousness. The subjectivity and person-
alism of St. Augustine became the heritage of Descartes and his fol-
lowers.
Though the spiritism of the antibehavioristic period lived and
lives on, it did, of course, change in various ways. As early as the
thirteenth century the thinkers who were exclusively professional or
156 KANTOR

lay churchmen began to allow some place to non-theological subjects.

They adopted the motto that nature could not be despised despite all
the values that accrue to grace. Notable among the scholars of the
day were the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Dominican saints
Albert and Thomas. All these showed a remarkable interest in once
again studying natural things and events alongside theological wis-
dom; they thus helped to renew interest in behaviorism or science.
St. Thomas, especially, deserves credit for reintroducing Aristotle's
psychology to Western Europe, although both in language and doc-
trine he transmuted it to conform to the spiritistic culture of his
time.
PREBEHAVIORISM
Although authentic behaviorism does not again emerge until the
twentieth century, there are two intervals which must be regarded
as continuous with and in a genuine sense preparatory to authentic
behaviorism. We have named these periods "Prebehaviorism" and
"Protobehaviorism." Essentially they represent the traditional spiritistic
doctrine as modified by attempts to reject and refute the overwhelming
dominance of the mental. Thus these two periods lead forward to
behaviorism.
In prebehaviorism we distinguish three separate but interrelated
stages. The first stage represents an attempt to naturalize the spirit or
soul. Here is one of the earliest arguments that science, the study of
nature, must be enlarged to make room for what was presumed to be
an aspect of reality additional to the usual observational one. This ad-
ditional aspect was, of course, the spiritual. Outstanding here are the
postulations of such thinkers as Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Spin-
oza, that the divergence between the natural and the supernatural
could be overcome by verbally incorporating spirit into nature or ver-
bally making it identical with nature. Thus was born the interaction-
ism of Descartes, the identity doctrine of Spinoza, and the parallel-
ism of Leibniz, as well as Hobbes' so-called materialism.
The second stage of prebehaviorism consists of a definite change
from the cosmic and theological interests dominant earlier to human
and epistemological concerns. Thus, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries such thinkers as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume turned psy-
chological or mental problems in the direction of human understand-
ing and knowledge. There is much to criticize in this movement to
establish an empirical mode of knowledge; both Berkeley and Hume
went so far as to absorb actual confrontable events in the mental pro-
cess of human knowledge. On the other hand, the English empirical
movement departed farther than the earlier prebehavioristic stage
from purely cosmic principles by centering the knowing process in
the activities of man. This is true despite the fact that Berkeley did
not entirely rely upon human mentality to guarantee knowledge, but
resorted to the intervention of God.
 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 157

The third stage of the prebehavioristic period we may designate

as the age of man. This is the age of the social revolutions and the
Enlightenment. At this time we have the convulsive social events of the
American and French revolutions.
Now man as a social being became the focus of interest; though
social communities are still as always dominated by rulers and the
well-to-do, individual rights and privileges are stressed. The age of
man is marked by the discovery of the worth and dignity of the hu-
man individual and the placing of high value upon his feelings and
social needs.
The outstanding doctrinal result of the new humanistic thinking
was the minimization of the transcendental features of man as com-
pared with his materialistic or naturalistic aspects. The mental as-
pects of man were made subservient to those of his body. It is this
materialistic phase of the prebehavioristic interval which exerted a
strong influence on the later development of Watsonian behaviorism.
In summarizing the prebehavioristic period in the development of
scientific psychology, we note in the first stage the attitude that spirit-
istic things can be brought into juxtaposition with natural things. Na-
ture, it is thought, must be enlarged to accommodate spirit. This was
a step away from the antibehavioristic attitude that had inevitably
tied spirit to the theological realm. In the case of human beings Des-
cartes asserted that the soul could interact with the pineal gland. Here,
too, we must recall Spinoza's anticipation of the Jamesian view of the
prominence of bodily action in emotional behavior, and also Hobbes'
assertion that the mental is motion.
In the next stage, the soul was transformed from a mere super-
mundane entity into the mind and into the source and basis of hu-
man knowledge. This is a trend toward a naturalistic position.
Finally, in the third and humanistic phase this period reaches
its peak with the emphasis on man as a social, political, and economic
creature. Now psychological thinking is turned sharply toward the qual-
ities of persons and a great impetus is given to the study of the affective
traits. The ultimate outcome is to minimize the mental traits of man and
to make them dependent upon the body. At this time the ground is
prepared for the emergence of eighteenth-century French materialism.

PROTOBEHAVIORISM
When we reach the period of proto behaviorism we come to a
progressive link in the chain of psychological development. In this per-
iod we have a decided preparation for an authentic behavioristic
evolution of psychology. One stage of the proto behavioristic period
is the age of physiological and experimental psychology as connect-
ed with such well known figures as Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and
158 KAXTOR

Ebbinghaus. We call this the protobehavioristic period because, while

there is no interruption in the continuity of the spiritistic tradition,
psychology becomes involved with manipulations and experimental
work. Despite thcir manipulations, however, the men of this period
believed themselves to be working with the psychic aspects of hu-
man action. Consciousness and the mental were to be studied by
means of bodily motions and processes. The view is formulated that
psychology must follow the lead of physiology and study organic ac-
tion as a clue to the nature and the workings of the mind.
What is unique and important about this stage of the protobe-
havioristic period is that operational techniques were exploited along-
side the speculations concerning consciousness and mental contents.
The performance of various operations or experiments cannot but
have the potentiality of leading to the study of confrontable events
despite the mentalistic interpretations made of the events observed.
We must note, however, that this first stage of protobehaviorism
is decidedly characterized by a striking divergence between the pos-
tulations and the detailed operations performed. This divergence is
an extremely effective barrier to a full-fledged scientific movement
in which the hypotheses and interpretations must be fully integrated
with the experimental operations performed on the events studied.
In the particular case to be discussed, the experiments upon organ-
isms were completely vitiated by transcendental interpretations, which
stood at the opposite pole from the behavioristic ones.
For example, to interpret the operations and the results reach-
ed by Fechner as a relation between psychic processes and either
(a) the nature of the organic excitation or (b) the traits of the stim-
uli as in the standard formula
S = k log R
is to misconstrue the entire situation. Clearly, what is happening is
that the subject is performing a response describable either as a
judgment or a comparison or as a verbal reference to the reaction or
to the stimulus object. Accordingly, the formula should be trans-
formed into
R = k log S, or R = k Sn.
Now the R symbolizes a concrete action of the subject while the S
represents some trait of the stimulus object.
A second distinctive stage of the protobehavioristic period we
may can evolutional behaviorism. Basically, evolutional behaviorism is a
result of the great movement known as biological or Darwinian evolu-
tion.
It is a matter of common knowledge that Darwinism has exert-
ed a tremendous influence upon psychology as well as upon every
other phase of Our Western European culture. When we analyze its
most important influence, we see that evolutionism demonstrated the
 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 159

possibility of treating geological, biological, and psychological events

as definite naturalistic processes without invoking theological and
supernatural factors. In biology especially Darwinism demonstrated
the interactions of observable and confrontable events whenever all
sorts of changes and metamorphoses occurred.
In so far as psychology in particular is concerned, Darwin show-
ed the definite interrelations of organic things so that the theological
notion of man's difference from and superiority to the rest of cre-
ation was rendered null and void. The result for psychology was that
animal behavior became a comparative study and the doctrine develop-
ed that human psychology could be enhanced by the study of ani-
mals in their normal and laboratory environments. It is impossible
to overestimate the importance of this aid which psychology receiv-
ed from biological evolution. Suffice it to suggest the advantages of
evolutionism for the emergence of psychological behaviorism. In detail,
there is hardly a doubt that functionalism in psychology was greatly
facilitated by the developments in organic evolution and it is like-
wise certain that Watsonian behaviorism had a definite basis in
functional psychology.

WATSONIAN BEHAVIORISM
If we have been reading the history of psychology correctly, it
should be clear that protobehaviorism led more or less inevitably to-
ward Watsonian behaviorism. The tradition of experimentation in
psychology was well established and the same may be said of the
animal studies which received so great an impulse from evolution
theory. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Watsonian behavior-
ism required little more to come into existence than a confluence of
some of the factors that had been developing in previous periods of
the history of psychology. Recall that eighteenth and nineteenth-
century materialism were also ways of misprizing the psychic.
All psychologists who appreciate the value of psychological be-
haviorism as a scientific movement will realize that it is impossible
to minimize the great merit of Watson in promoting an objective and
naturalistic view in the field of psychology. But this is not to over-
look that Watson's dissatisfaction with consciousness and introspection
had a basis in the opinions current in his day. It has been pointed
out that "symptoms of Behaviorism are detectable in the writings of
Cattell as early as 1904."
Much more telling evidence of an incipient anti-mentalism is the
famous article of James entitled "Does Consciousness Exist" of 1904
and the writings of Singer on "Mind as an Observable Object" in
1911 and his paper on "Consciousness and Behavior" of the next
year. To consult the pre-Watsonian writings of the philosophers
Woodbridge, Bawden, Tawney, Bode, and others, and of the bio-
160 KANTOR

logists such as Jennings and Loeb, is to conclude that behavioristic

ideas were certainly in the air before 'Watson issued his manifesto.
Further evidence that Watsonian behaviorism is only one item
in the evolution of an authentic behaviorism we find in the great in-
fluence upon Watson of the Russians Bechterev and Pavlov. The in-
adequacies of the introspective psychologies contributed only a nega-
tive attitude. When Watson became familiar with conditioning tech-
niques the way was opened to a more self-sufficient naturalistic at-
titude and investigative program. The conditioning techniques rein-
forced the conviction that psychological data were confront able events.
Watson's manifesto was then only an announcement of changes
that were taking place in psychology. It would be a great mistake,
however, to deprecate the importance of that manifesto, since in the
processes of cultural change and revolutions of thought a great po-
tency attaches to the formulations embodying attitudes and beliefs.
Such formalizations can serve as catalysts bringing about changes
in viewpoint. Thus it cannot be denied that Watsonian behaviorism
was a powerful factor in moving psychology toward an objective and
naturalistic position. Even though Watson based his manifesto on
his revulsion against the structural and functional variations of the
description of consciousness, his discontent with those specific forms
of mentalism showed the way toward a complete emancipation of
psychology from its mentalistic servitude. Watsonian behaviorism
ultimately became a guide to a genuine and comprehensive view of
naturalistic psychology.
In the history of psychology, then, the greatest value of Wat-
sonian behaviorism is that it was a great step forward in the evolution
of the subject toward the status of a natural science. However, Wat-
sonian behaviorism can be considered only as a tentative and pre-
liminary version of naturalisic psychology. Great changes were nec-
essary before it could become authentic behaviorism. The nature of
these changes is apparent when we compare the traits of Watsonian
behaviorism with the more advanced form of anti-mentalism which
we have called authentic behaviorism, interbehaviorism, or field be-
haviorism.
INTERBEHA VIORISM OR FIELD BEHAVIORISM
As stages in the evolution of naturalistic psychology, both Wat-
sonian and field behaviorism are opposed to all forms of mentalism,
but there is still a vast difference between them. Although Watson-
ian behaviorism objects to consciousness or mentality, it does so un-
der the influence of the mind-body tradition. Watsonian behavior-
ism simply sets mentality aside as unnecessary and interfering. Even
the strict version of Lashley simply denies the existence of conscious-
ness or mentalitv. Moreover, when the Watsonian behaviorist asserts
that he has tran~cended the sheer negative attitude of rejecting men-
 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 161

tality and is cultivating a new science, that of behavioralism, he only

approaches authentic behaviorism because the behavior he studies
is strictly limited to the behavior of certain animals and particular
techniques. Furthermore, the Watson ian behaviorist makes use of
the same model of the sensory processes as the mentalist.
By contrast, field behaviorism starts in a completely different way.
It approaches psychological studies from the standpoint of confront-
able events in the same way as any natural science does. The field
behaviorist becomes interested in the intetbehavlior of organisms
under definite environing conditions and proceeds to investigate them
in a manner suitable to the original events and in conformity with
the technological means available. He does all this independently of
the transcendental postulates which have dominated psychology since
the extinction of the naive behaviorism of the Greeks.
Our next comparison between the different behaviorisms is con-
cerned with the role assigned to biological elements and puts into
bold relief the advantage of complete independence of the mind-
body tradition enjoyed by the field behaviorist. He is able to obviate
completely the construction that psychological happenings require some
biological or neural basis. 3 The point here is that Watsonian behav-
iorists, in common with the traditional mentalist, perpetuate the view
that psychological data are diaphanous, unapproachable happenings
requiring some more solid foundation. Here is a paradoxical situa-
tion. Those psychologists who propagate the notion that psychologi-
cal events have a biological or neural basis assume that this notion
reinforces the scientific character of psychology. Actually, the op-
posite happens. The stress on biological factors simply makes room
for vague and even false interpretations. Consider the standard des-
cription of a sensory reaction which I quote from the Handbook of
Experimental Psychology.
The external ear delivers sound waves through the external audi-
tory canal to the middle ear, and thence they pass to the inner
ear. There, in the cochlea, the sensory cells of the organ of
Corti are stimulated and initiate nerve impulses in the fibres
of the auditory nerve. The impulses pass through a series of
nuclei and fiber tracts in the medulla and midbrain to the
auditory area of the cerebral cortex; and there somehow; they
generate the sensations that we know subjectively as "sounds."
( our italics). 4

Although the Watsonian behaviorist claims to be free from the

constructs of the introspectionist he really is committed, in part at
least, to the same doctrine. His refusal to accept the rest of the in-
trospectionist's system lays the Watsonian behaviorist open to the
charge of not doing justice to the total cognitive situation.

3 Biological Basis is to be distinguished from Biological Participation. See infra, p. 000.

4 Stevens 1951, p. 1116
162 KA:'-.'TOR

Let us note that there are two problems here. One is to describe
what occurs when an organism discriminates a color, a taste, an odor
or some other sensory quality. The other is to describe what the organic
structures of the organism do when a discrimination is made. It is
obvious that a sensory or a discrimination event cannot be reduced
to the functioning of biological processes. Neural conduction or cortical
excitation cannot be identified with sensory qualities and clearly there
is no color in light rays, as Newton knew in his time.
Psychologists face a striking dilemma in the study of sensory
processes. On the one hand, it is impossible to accept the mentalistic
interpretation that a sensation arises when energy impinges on a sense
organ and sets up a conduction pattern in the brain. And on the other
hand, to accept only the stimulation and conduction factors is to leave
sensory qualities out of the picture.
The removal of this dilemma requires that account be taken of the
complex physical and chemical traits of stimulus objects. For example, in
the analysis of the discrimination of the red of blood or the green
and other colors of plants it is inadvisable to neglect the chemistry of
chlorophyll, of the anthocyanins, and of hemoglobin.
Basic to the errors of both the Watsonian behaviorist and the intro-
spectionist is the indiscriminate borrowing of abstract constructs from
other disciplines even when they have clearly a negative or harmful
effect upon psychological descriptions. For example, both types of
psychologists, when describing visual events, take over the constructs of
wave lengths and frequencies in order to transform them into stimulus
data despite the fact that organisms respond to colored or bright objects
and not to the physicist's abstractions.
Nothing that I have said goes counter to the undeniable fact that
when an organism responds there are many biological occurrences in the
situation. But this is merely to note that psychological events are
also biological and physiochemical events. What must be emphasized
is that the biological features of the situation, when they are not
aspects of stimulating objects, are only participating factors in the
response phase of the stimulus and response event.
On the response side, all psychological events are performances
of biological organisms. Obviously, then, psychological actions include
organic activities as components. Every tissue, organ, or system con-
tributes to the total response. It is an error, however, to think that
the neural, muscular, or glandular functions are the basis of some
other kind of process. Rather they are part of the pattern of action
which is coordinate with the action of the stimulus object. It is in this
sense that we must distinguish between biological concomitants or
bases of action and the intimate participants of action. The concomitant
view is born of the traditional mind-body diremption while the partici-
pation view comports with actual observation.
 BEHAnORIS~1 I:\, THE IIISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 163

Recently, the expression has hecome popular that hiological ac-

tions are the hases of behavior. This expression suggests the same sort
of dualism we have just been considering. Behavior is separated from
biological action and made to parallel it. \Vhatever is objectionable
in this sort of construction is obviated by the participation description.
Another great difference between \Vatsonian and field behaviorism
is that the latter is far removed from the organocentrism which
localizes a psychological event in or about an organism. It is precisely
the organocentric way of thinking that has led to the invention of
psychic powers or internal forces to account for the activities of
organisms. Thus constructs like instincts, drives, intelligence, and per-
sonality have come to be used for such powers and forces instead of
as class names for the actions that arc really stimulated and controlled
by the contingencies of personal, domestic, and social life. For that
reason an authentic behaviorism concerns itself with comprehensive
fields that include in addition to the organism the stimulus objects and
the many physiochemical, biological, and social setting factors.
A fourth great difference between the two types of behaviorism
concerns the nature of stimulus and rcsponse. For Watsonian behavior-
ism the stimulus is anything that elicits a response. The stimulus may
be some form of energy or an object. Corresponding to the simple stimu-
lation is the response reduced to a movement or a secretion. The inter-
behavioral psychologist, on the other hand, differentiates between a
stimulus object and a stimulus function. The latter is developed in
correspondence with a response function during a prior contact of the
organism and an object. The basic datum of psychology is, then, the
occurrence of stimulus and rcsponse functions in complex fields or-
ganized in earlier contacts bctween organisms and objects or condi-
tions. In this way account may be taken of all sorts of complex be-
havior; the psychologist is not restricted to elementary reflexes nor
is he constrained to build his interprctations with reflexes as models. 5
As a fifth and final differentiation between interbehavioral and
behavioral psychology we must point out the completely different pro-
topropositions or philosophical assumptions that underlie them. Despite
all its resolute efforts to avoid the mental, Watsonian behaviorism still
stands under the banner of the dualistic tradition. In contrast, inter-
behavioral psychology claims to be entirely free of the idealistic or
other metaphysical philosophical traditions, and thus avoids altogether
the problems of creative processes, which produce objects of knowledge,
or even the need to sidestep such problems hy reducing the qualities
of objects to organic processes. Basically, this means that interbehavioral
psychology does not stand in the shadow of any traditional form of
philosophy. If some philosophical foundation is regarded as necessary,
it is of a new type and absolutely different from the philosophy which
has flourished since the Judeo-Christian way of thinking became es-
tablished.
5 For a more elaborate statement of stimulus and response functions see Kantor 19:1'3lJ alld HJ-!2.
164 KANTOR

In completing our comparison of Watson ian and authentic be-

haviorism we may draw two conclusions: first, that scientific psychology
is a particular type of behaviorism and, second, that all types of be-
haviorism have been successively evolved and illustrate the corrigibility
of science. I will conclude my discussion by considering several of
the most outstanding characteristics of authentic behaviorism.

OUTSTANDING CHARACTERISTICS OF AUTHENTIC

BEHAVIORISM
We have already dwelt sufficiently upon the fact that authentic
behaviorism demands the derivation of all data from confrontations
with observed events. For any discipline to be a science there is a fur-
ther demand: namely, that the data be organized and interpreted by
means of a suitable set of postulates.
What guarantees the scientific character of field behaviorism is
the precise conformity of its postulations with its operations. We have
seen that experimental operations alone do not suffice to make psy-
chology scientific, the classic example being Fechnerian experimental
psychology. Though Fechner's operations were excellent, especially his
manipulation of data, they had nothing at all to do with his mystic
assumptions. Consequently, while Fechnerian experiments contributed
greatly to the eventual evolution of scientific psychology, his work on
the whole belongs only to the protobehavioristic period of psychologi-
cal history. For the most effective progress of science it is imperative
that the assumptions be drawn from operations and the criticism of
operations, and also they must later be applied and tested by addi-
tional experiments, that is by confrontations with events. In other words,
postulates must be congruent and convergent with operations.
Two important advantages ensue from the congruence and con-
vergence of postulates and operations. The first is the inhibition of
all substitution of the data or methods of other sciences for those of
psychology. Probably because of the persistence of spiritistic postula-
tion, under the name of psychology many workers occupy themselves
with events that belong to the older naturalistic disciplines. They may
concern themselves with neurological, statistical, and general biological
tasks, or even problems of physics. It is hardly an advantage for psy-
chology to substitute the data of physiology, pharmacology, or physiCS
for psychological events. When such substitution is made we can,
at best, hope only for some remote advantage to psychology.
All scientific events are interrelated; accordingly there is great
merit in interdisciplinary study. But to take account of what is going
on in the ncighboring sciences and to cooperate with their workers
is no warrant for neglecting to respect the importance and integrity
of psychology as a science.
The most aggravated form of substitution is illustrated by psy-
chologists who go even farther afield than neighboring sciences and
 BEHAVIORISM IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 165

confine themselves to practical work of some kind, substituting some

professional activity for basic scientific study. The plea that this is a way
of avoiding unsuitable postulation really reflects a complete escape from
science. Our objection here is not to a ReId instead of a laboratory
source of data, but to the inevitable danger of either neglecting scienti-
fic problems or, even worse, employing psychic interpretations in
handling the data. The latter eventuality is daily observed when psy-
chologists apply constructs borrowed from classical Greek mythology
to human nature and its deviations.
The second advantage of converging postulates and operations is
that psychological studies can be carried out on even the most elaborate
types of behavior, such as imagining, feeling, and thinking, without
transmuting them into organic processes or simpler psychological acts,
or denying their existence altogether. As long as we cleave to the funda-
mental principle that psychology is the study of the interactions
between response functions and stimulus functions there is no type of
behavior that eludes observation. In dealing with the most refined and
difficult behavior we need only exclude the influence of venerable
traditions. Imagery, for example, can be readily described in terms of
incipient and vestigial action based upon prior contacts with particular
objects and surrounding circumstances. 6
With even greater assurance we may assert the capacity of in-
teractional theory to describe and interpret the more overt ranges of
behavior. We all recall the criticisms directed by the psychopatholo-
gists against academic psychology. They complained that psychologists
have been so intent upon the judgment of lifted weights or differences
in brightness discrimination as to have no interest in man's important
complex behavior. This criticism grew out of the claims of the extreme
introspectionist that only rigidly introspective studies were truly scienti-
fic. The authentic behaviorist, however, is in principle enjoined from
discriminating against any form of action, whether human or non-
human.
One of the most valuable achievements of authentic behaviorism still
remains to be mentioned. It encourages the distinction between con-
structs and events and between different constructs. \Vhen we respect
this analytic differentiation we cannot but be struck by the building
up of fantastic constructs such as ego, id, or death instinct as descriptions
of deviant behavior. Our basic point is that any description or interpre-
tation in psychology must begin and end with definite interactions of
persons in favorable or unfavorable conditions. To draw constructs
from mythology or metaphysical historical traditions is to take psy-
chology out of the range of science.
CONCLUSION
In concluding this sketch of the nature and development of be-
haviorism, I want to refer once more to the tortuous career of psy-

• See Kantor 1924, Ch. 10 and 1933, Ch. 11.

166 KANTOR

chology as a science. As we know, psychology early attained a scien-

tific status soon to be lost. Indeed it is interesting to contemplate the
high estate that Greek psychology would have reached had it not been
cut off in its infancy. What followed was a different cultural world
which abolished behaviorism in psychology as well as in the other
disciplines and reduced them all to supermundane traditions. This
transcendental intellectual orientation lasted for some seventeen cen-
turies and, though gradually modified, left numerous institutional sur-
vivals. Slowly, however, with the changing conditions of social and
economic life, science was allowed a place beside theology and event-
ually reached a lofty peak. In the case of psychology the steps by
which this was accomplished were (a) a gradual departure from theo-
logical speculation, (b) the postulation that the mental aspects of
man were somehow natural, (c) the growing belief that the mind was
dependent upon the body, (d) the development of manipulations
and experiments, and finally, (e) the insistence that observable inter-
behavioral events were the actual data. Today there exists again an
authentic behaviorism which has made considerable progress in pene-
trating into the psychological domain. Still, a survey of the current
psychological field reveals the perseverance of many traditional doc-
trines so that authentic behaviorism has by no means achieved a
dominant position.
REFERENCES
AUGUSTINE, 1938. Confessions. London: Everyman Library.
KANTOR, J. R., 1924. P1'inciples of psychology. Vol. I. New York: Knopf.
KANTOR, J. R, 1933a. A sftTvey of the science of psychology. Bloomington, Ind.:
Principia Press.
KANTOR, J. R., 1933b. In defense of stimulus-response psychology. PS1Jchol.
Rev., 40, 324-366.
KANTOR, J. R., 1942. Preface to interbehavioral psychology. Psychol. Rec., 5,
173-193.
STEVENS, S. S (Ed.) 1951. Handbook of experimental psychology. ;\Jew York:
Wiley.