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Behavior and Behaviorism

Richard Kitchener
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Author(s): Richard F. Kitchener
Source: Behaviorism, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall, 1977), pp. 11-71
Published by: Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS)
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Richard F. Kitchener*
Colorado State University
I. Introduction
Whether psychology is to be defined as the study of behavior or not is still perhaps a
controversial question. But however one decides that question, behaviorism has claimed
to be the only correct paradigm for psychology. How controversial this claim proves to be
depends, of course, upon how one interprets the behaviorist's claims about the mind, the
nature of science, and so on. In particular how one evaluates behaviorism will depend
largely upon the adequacy of the behaviorist view of'behavior.' For behavior is, after all,
what behaviorism is all about. Surely therefore any evaluation of behaviorism must focus
on that question.
The concern of this paper is with the concept of behavior as seen by classical
behaviorists: is behavior merely a physical movement of an organism, or on the contrary
is it an action directed by an agent towards some goal? Must behavior be "publicly
observable" or can covert, internal processes also be called 'behavior'?
A belief widely held by philosophers (and many psychologists) is that behaviorism
considers 'behavior' to be merely a physical movement.1 Myles Brand (a philosopher)
says of behavior:
Though it is difficult to explicate "behavior" without begging the question at
this stage of the discussion, 'behavior' refers, roughly, to any physiological
change or process?for example, heartbeats, nerve impulses, and arm rising
due to muscular twitches or external forces. (1970, p. 4)
*This study was completed while I held a visiting appointment at the University of Minnesota. I wish to
thank the College of Education and Clyde Parker for financial assistance which enabled me to complete this
study.
An earlier version of this paper was read at the N.E.H. Summer Seminar on "Philosophical Analysis and
Psychological Theories of Man" under the leadership of Theodore Mischel. I wish to thank Ted Mischel and
the participants of the Seminar for their valuable comments. I also wish to thank Richard Weigl and Bernie
Rollin who read and commented upon an earlier draft of this paper. I am especially grateful to B. F. Skinner
and Willard Day for their critical comments.
'Most philosophers equate 'behaviorism' with the study of physical movements. See for example Hart
(1960, p. 165), Hartnack (1968, p. 267), Louch (1966, pp. 32-34), Melden (1961, pp. 200-201), Charles
Taylor (1964, pp. 152-160).
11
Richard F. Kitchener
David Hamlyn (another philosopher) says: "By making a false identification of behavior
with movements [behaviorism] has suggested that human and animal behavior may be
mechanical'' (1953, p. 69). He goes on to claim:
It is the tragedy of much modern psychology that this distinction [between

actions and movements] has not been made, and much time, labor, and expense
has been devoted to the vain task of making impossible identifications. That is to
say attempts have been made to identify behavior in general with mechanical
movements of one form or another. (1953, p. 67)
Hamlyn suggests that 'behavior' should really mean an action which is purposive and
rational (in some sense) and that psychologists should be (and in fact really are)
concerned with such actions. But behaviorists, according to Hamlyn, have impoverished
the notion of behavior, since they tend to view it as a series of (isolated) movements, as
being built up out of "mechanical" movements, and so on. But this, Hamlyn believes, is
a mistaken notion of what behavior really is and insofar as behaviorists have made such
identifications (and atomistic assumptions) their views about behavior are mistaken.
This view of behaviorism is typically thought to characterize early behaviorism

which is labelled "muscle-twitch psychology." Early psychologists (such as Edward
Tolman) made such a claim and contemporary psychologists continue to do so. For
example, Richard Herrnstein in his introduction to Watson's book Behavior: an Intro
duction to Comparative Psychology (1967), says:
For Watson, behavior was movement, actual physical movement of body, the
activity of muscles and glands, whether on a large scale, as in locomotion, or so
small as to be hidden from casual observation, as in the case of the hypothesized
movements of the larynx in Watson's theory of thought. For none of his
followers, was Watson's simple definition of behavior acceptable. For all of
them [Tolman, Hull and Skinner] behavior was a more abstract entity, more
closely allied to what a layman might call an "act," rather than to what he might
call a " movement." In the vocabulary of psychology, the new behaviorists were
"molar" in their approach to behavior instead of "molecular," as Watson was.
(1967, p. xii)
And so, his [Watson's] behaviorism was molecular, restricted to isolated move
ments, triggered by momentary stimulation. . . . (1967, p. xiii)
Herrnstein seems to be agreeing here with Hamlyn and Tolman that at least two different
notions of 'behavior' are present in behaviorism: a molecular one (an isolated movement)
and a molar notion (an act of action). Have behaviorists confused these two notions?
Which interpretation of 'behavior1 is the one accepted by classical behaviorists? Can
behaviorists interpret behavior as an intentional, purposive action, or not? How should
behavior be studied? These questions will be the focus of this paper. I attempt to answer
them by surveying the different answers given to these questions by behaviorists from
Watson to Skinner. My brief historical sketch of behaviorism leads to the conclusion that
the distinction between molar behavior (an action) and molecular behavior (a movement)
is a distinction commonly held by psychologists (although the distinction is cast in
12
different terms by different individuals).2 Contrary to the suggestion of Hamlyn, be

haviorists have fundamentally been concerned with actions and not with movements.
This holds, contrary to Herrnstein and Hamlyn, even for Watson. But although be
haviorists have centered on molar behavior as their subject matter, they have disagreed on
several other questions. (1) What is the nature of molar and molecular behavior? Is molar
behavior purposive and cognitive or not? If it is purposive and cognitive, are these
properties in turn explainable by simpler "mechanical" processes? Or are purpose and
cognition properties of behavior that cannot be eliminated or reduced to non-purposive
and non-cognitive properties? What is the status of purpose and telelogy in a behavioris
tic approach? On the other hand is molecular behavior a conditioned reflex, a muscle
movement, or simply a movement in general? (2) What is the relation between molar
behavior and molecular behavior? Is molar behavior composed of movements in some
relatively simply way? Or are the "composition laws" much more complex in nature?
For example does molar behavior have "emergent'' properties in relation to the underly
ing movements? (3) What is the correct method to employ in understanding molar
behavior? Should molar behavior be studied qua molar behavior, or should one first
investigate the nature of the underlying simpler movements and then determine how
these simpler movements combine to produce molar behavior?
II. Early "Mechanistic" Behaviorism

A. Watsonian Behaviorism
"Muscle Twitch Psychology"

A widespread interpretation of John Watson's version of behaviorism is that it was
"muscle-twitch psychology." Like most other slogans there is a grain of truth in it, but
again like many other slogans what this phrase does not conceal it misrepresents, largely
due to its overly simple characterization. What have people meant when they have
characterized Watson's psychology in this way? In what ways is this characterization
correct, and in what ways is it misleading?
When Watson characterized behavior as the subject matter of psychology he did so in
an extremely general, but so far harmless, way as the organism's adjustments to its
environment (1914, p. 10).3 Watson often glosses this phrase as "anything the organism
does ? such as turning toward or away from a light, jumping at a sound, and more highly
organized activities such as building a skyscraper, drawing plans, having babies, writing
books, and the like" (1930, p. 6). Muscle-twitches indeed! Quite clearly these are
examples of behavior we would characterize as any way other than muscle-twitches. As
2This distinction has been variously labelled: acts vs. movements (Watson, Guthrie); molar vs. molecu
lar behavior (Tolman, Hull); actone vs. action (Murray, 1938); movements vs. achievements (Lewin, 1951);
muscle-consistent vs. object-consistent responses (Campbell, 1963), etc. Such a distinction is discussed by
several contemporary psychologists: Brown (1961, pp. 3-9), Hebb (1949, pp. 153-157), Estes (1959),
Spence (1956, pp. 42-43), Logan (1969), MacCorquodale and Meehl (1954, pp. 218-231), Littman and
Rosen (1950), Smith (1969).
liCf. 1919, pp. 1, 9-11; 1930, pp. 11, 14, 49.
13
a matter of fact they seem to be actions that are purposive and intentional! Let us,
following customary usage, label these examples molar behavior (or if one prefers 'acts'
or 'actions'). Furthermore let us call such things as muscle twitches and glandular
secretions cases of molecular movements (since they are largely hidden from view under
the protective philosophical skin of the organism). Such things as an arm-rising, a head
turning, a postural change we will call molar movements (since they can be observed by
the naked eye). We should think of molar movements as being described kinematically in
terms of some space-time frame of reference. In the philosophical literature molar
movements would ordinarily be termed simply 'movements' whereas molar behavior
might be labelled 'actions.'
Given Watson's above comments, actions (not movements) seem to be the basic
subject matter of psychology. How do muscle-twitches enter in at all? As Tolman (1932)
pointed out alongside this account of behavior Watson has another account. This second
account has been the basis of the characterization of his system as "muscle-twitch
psychology," a characterization Tolman (1925a) made very popular. In this second
account behavior is characterized in mechanistic terms as "the total striped and unstriped
muscular and glandular changes which follow upon a given stimulus" (1919, p. 14). As
Tolman suggested this conception of behavior is clearly that of "muscle-twitches."
Watson endorses both accounts of behavior. In order to do so, all he need believe (as
indeed he does) is that molar behaviorreducible to molecular movements. Molecular
movements are the basic elements out of which (together with what are now called
composition laws) molar behavior is formed. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of
Watson's psychology centers squarely on this latter claim. It is clear however what
Watson's basic strategy is. He will insist upon a rigorous physicalism (since the basic
elements will be physical movements) but he will also claim that more complex forms of
behavior (exemplified even by intentional behavior) results from these simple elements
being combined in a certain way. To escape any taint of mentalism he will insist that the
composition laws be mechanistic in form, namely principles of conditioning, frequency,
and recency. If this program is successful, he will have retained his physicalism and at the
same time been able to address himself to cases of ordinary human action.
Integration of Movements
According to Watson, ontologically speaking, all behavior is physiochemical

movements. "No one believes," Watson says,
more thoroughly in the complete physico-chemical nature of all responses, from
the simplest to the most complex, than the author. We are prepared to state our
belief in the view that we shall ultimately be able to trace the complete set of
physico-chemical changes (quantitative energy transformations) from the mo
ment of incidence of the stimulus to the end of the movement in the muscle. In
fact it is one of the goals of behavior to assist in making this possible. But again
we insist that all of the facts about response be considered. In very few cases have
we reduced reactions to their simplest terms. (1914, p. 53)
But although the basic elements of behavior are things like simple reflexes, psychology is
not interested in these movements per se. Rather psychology will normally be interested
in the integration of molecular movements we call behavior.
14
The movements which result from a tap on the patellar tendon, or from stroking
the soles of the feet are "simple" responses which are studied both in physiology
and in medicine. In psychology our study, too, is sometimes concerned with
simple responses of these types, but more often with several complex responses
taking place simultaneously. In the latter case we sometimes use the popular term
"act" or adjustment, meaning by that that the whole group of responses is
integrated in such a way (instinct or habit) that the individual does something
which we have a name for, that is, "takes food," "builds a house," "swims,"
"writes a letter," "talks." (1919, pp. 11-12)
Indeed Watson explicitly warns his readers against making the mistake of equating
behaviorism with physiology. A misconception has arisen, Watson says,
with reference to objective psychology. The misconception lies in the fact that a
good many psychologists have misunderstood the behaviorist's position. They
insist that he is only observing the individual movements of the muscles and
glands; that he is interested in the muscles and glands in exactly the same way the
physiologist is interested in them. This is not the whole statement. The be
haviorist is interested in integrations and total activities of the individual. At one
moment we ask the question: What is the individual doing? We observe that he is
typewriting, searching for a lost pocketbook or "reacting" to an emotional
stimulus. (1919, p. 40)
Physiology studies the individual movements of the various body parts. But psychology,
on the other hand, is concerned with the integrated movements of the whole man. " Our
task begins," Watson claims, "only when the physiologist puts the separate organs
together again, and turns the whole (man) over to us" (1919, p. 20). "In other words, the
response the behaviorist is interested in is the commonsense answer to the question 'what
is he doing and why is he doing it?'" (1930, p. 15).
Watson can describe behavior in this molecular way and remain consistent with his
earlier remarks concerning the molarity of behavior because for him an act is reducible to
bodily movements. Actions are (materially speaking) reducible to movements and
therefore behavior is purely physical. But from a formal point of view, an action is not
just a set of movements: it consists of movements together with a certain structural
pattern unifying the movements into a configuration we call 'action.' In this latter sense
an action is not reducible to movements, but only because we need in addition to the basic
elements composition laws determining the final form of behavior.
The fundamental issue between Watson and Tolman concerns not the materiality of
action?for both agree it consists of movements?but the organization. Watson will
consistently argue that the organization and integration must be seen in a mechanistic
way. Tolman, on the other hand (being something of a Gestalt psychologist), will argue
that the organization is not merely an 'Undverbindung'?a mechanical collection of
elements?but is essentially purposive and cognitive. More importantly Tolman will
argue that when the elements are combined there is a new quality that emerges?the
distinctive quality we call 'action.' In keeping with his Gestalt orientation, therefore,
Tolman will advance a behavioral holism: action is a Gestalt whole that has emergent
properties! Consequently for Tolman there can be no talk of reducing actions to move
ments. The issue dividing Tolman and Watson therefore seems to be the issue of
15
emergence and reduction and in particular the key issue concerns the question of whether
the structural organization (Watson's "integration") is mechanistic or holistic.
Before raising that issue a point about psychological methodology should be made en
passant. According to Watson psychology may be either molar or molecular in its
methodology. Which approach is preferable is to be decided by their respective empirical
results. A personality theorist for example can, if he wishes, study behavior from a molar
point of view, whereas other psychologists (e.g., learning theorists such as Guthrie) may
find it more advantageous to analyze behavior into movements and to study how
movements actually combine to produce complex behavior. The level of analysis from a
methodological point of view may vary and psychologists may operate on either level.
There is certainly no necessity of approaching behavior from the molecular perspective.
Psychologists need not "reduce the total activity to muscle twitches. We can do it if
necessary and we do do it at times when it becomes necessary to study the various part
reactions" (1919, p. 40). But surely, Watson suggests, "objective psychology can study
bricklaying, house building, playing games, marriage or emotional activity without
being accused of reducing everything to muscle twitch or the secretion of a gland" (191,
p. 40).
Behavior is an integrated set of movements. This is the definition Watson most
frequently gives of 'behavior.' The movements themselves are reflex-like4 and the
integration of movements will either be inherited (in which case they will be instincts or
emotions) or in the more important case learned (in which case they will be habits).
Learning
The crucial issue (I have suggested) concerns the 'integration' of these movements.
Since learning represents the crucial area for Watson, let us focus on that. How are
movements integrated into learned behavior which Watson calls habits? There must be
integration and it must be mechanistic. For example if all learned behavior were
conditioned responses then since classical conditioning would represent a mechanistic
type of integration, Watson's program would have someprima facie validity. But can he
make a case for molar behavior being analogous to classical conditioning, and if he can
would this show he was not really talking about molar behavior at all?
The conditioned reflex model played an especially important part in Watson's
program. He seems to have first recognized this in his presidential address to the
American Psychological Association (1916). For there he suggests that the conditioned
reflex might replace introspection as the model for psychology. Watson's theory of
learning however was not a simple classical conditioning theory5 for he combined it with
his earlier theory of learning in terms offrequency and recency and only later (1930) did
he take pains to explain their relation. He did maintain however that integration could
occur by classical conditioning and cites the following as a paradigm case. Suppose we
4Early in his writings Watson suggested that the concept 'reflex' should be broadened to include not only
stereotyped ;eflexes in which a stimulus elicits a response but also random and spontaneous movements in
which behavior is emitted without any recognizable stimulus causing its occurrence (1914, p. 109).
'Watson's relation to classical conditioning theorists is generally oversimplified. One often hears that
Watson was strongly influenced by Pavlov. However this seems to be inaccurate. Of more importance than
Pavlov was Bechterev, whose works Watson apparently studied carefully.
16
have three isolated and separate pairs of unconditioned stimuli and unconditioned
responses (A-l, B-2, C-3). "When the three stimuli are applied in quick succession, they
will still call out a pattern reaction the components of which are 1, 2, 3 (if mutual
inhibitions do not enter in). I would say that so far there is no integration" (1926, pp.
187-188). Now suppose we apply a new stimulus X each time we apply A, B and C. In
time the conditioned stimulus X will call out the responses 1,2,3. For example, X will
call out 1 followed by 2 followed by 3. Watson goes on to give a supposed example of this
process. "As an example, the sight of your wife entering the room may call out the
integrated social response which we will call Y, consisting of (1) rising from your chair,
(2) bowing, (3) offering her a chair. I would call this an integrated response" (1926, p.
188). Watson proceeds to speculate that such a response could become a chained serial
response: kinesthetic feedback from response 1 would be paired with response 2, etc.,
such that we would have the chained sequence: X-l-s-2-s-3 where the only molar
stimulus is X. In this way, the succession of responses 1, 2, and 3 would be accounted for
on associationist principles. That this model of chaining is inadequate has been pointed
out (ironically) by Lashley (1951) and Lashley's critique of such an account seems to me
to be faultless.
A Critique of Watson's Example
Indeed the preferred example of an "integrated social response" surely is an

integrated social response, but how it is an example of the process Watson has in mind
remains quite unclear. To mention only two reasons the example is puzzling, 'the sight of
your wife' is quite unlike a light ray striking one's retina, and even though Watson claims
every stimulus situation is analyzable into physical terms, this promissory note is hard to
cash in if one thinks the sight of one's wife is simply a conditioned stimulus. Secondly,
the responses of rising from your chair, bowing and offering her a chair are not obvious
examples of unconditioned responses. 'Rising from one's chair' is an action, not a
movement; it is not an unconditioned response as Watson supposes. Furthermore if it is
reducible to simpler movements Watson has not shown how this might be done, since this
very reduction itself would presuppose, it seems, the correctness of the original analysis
of what he calls Y. In other words, to make his case plausible for Y he must assume 'rising
from one's chair' is analyzable in terms of simpler responses presumably the way Y is
analyzable. But that seems to beg the question. It might be the case that rising from one's
chair is analyzable via the conditioning model but that is a claim yet to be substantiated.
Watson's example provides an occasion to point out another feature of his account of
integration that is problematic. Suppose we call his 'Y' a case of showing respect for
one's wife. Aside from the problems already mentioned there is another one that proves
to be perhaps the most telling, viz., how we identify the response as a case of Y.
As Holt and Tolman insisted (see below) to identify anything as a molar response one
must describe it in terms of its relation to environmental objects (Holt's '' recession of the
stimulus") and this in turn is to identify the behavior as a case of purposive behavior. To
anticipate the discussion which is to follow, to say 'Jones is showing respect for his wife'
is to characterize it in a purposive way (and moreover as being intentional). Quite roughly
put, it is purposive because Jones' goal is to show respect for his wife and because Jones'
17
behavior manifests 'persistence' in attaining this goal. This characteristic in turn is

indicated by one's criteria for identifying his behavior as a case of 'showing respect for
his wife.' To qualify for this description the behavior would have to satisfy certain
counterfactuals, viz., if Jones were told that woman is not his wife, he would behave
differently; if he were told he just (inadvertently) insulted his wife, he would modify his
behavior, etc. This counterfactual force (so to speak) marks it off as purposive behavior.
Teleology and Instincts
Watson of course avoided teleology "like the plague." This is true not only in
regards to his description of acquired behavior, but also for instinctive behavior. In his
early writings (prior to about 1925) Watson divided behavior into instinctive and
acquired behavior. Instinctive behavior was a "series of concatenated reflexes" (1914,
p. 106). But by about 1925 Watson suddenly disclaimed any belief in instincts and his
change of mind was due largely to the "purification of behaviorism" administered by
Kuo (1921) and the supposedly damaging criticisms of instinct theory by thinkers such as
Ayres (1921), Bernard (1921), Dunlap (1919-20), and Kuo (1922).
There were a number of reasons that led behaviorists to finally deny the existence of
instictinve behavior. One reason was their desire to maintain their strict empiricism.
According to one very influential point of view, "to assume any inborn tendency is to
assume a priori relation between the organism and stimulating objects. . . . Such an
assumption is no less objectionable than the theory of innate ideas" (Kuo, 1921, p. 648).
Needless to say such a view was antithetical to the spirit (if not the letter) of empiricism.
A second and even more significant reason for reflecting instinctive behavior was the
desire on the part of the behaviorists to escape from all teleology. Instincts had tradition
ally been viewed as being adaptive in nature: they were complex behavior patterns that,
by producing certain goals, had survival value for the species. Animals, of course, were
unaware of what they were striving for, but they were striving for it nonetheless.
Originally Watson had no objections at all to assuming a Darwinian framework and
characterizing behavior in terms of its adaptiveness to the environment. Gradually
however he came to adopt the anti-instinct position of Kuo and others and to abandon not
only instincts but also his earlier Darwinian perspective. Much of the underlying reason
for this change was his desire to rid psychology of mentalistic and teleological elements.
For example concerning James' definition of instinct Watson remarks that this definition
looks convincing at first glance.
But when one tests it out in terms of one's own observations on young animals
and children, one finds that one has not a scientific description but a metaphysi
cal assumption. One gets lost in the sophistry of "foresight" and "end." (1930,
p. 110)
Instincts were abandoned partly because Watson considered them to be both
metaphysical and teleological. In fact Watson consistently avoided the terms 'purpose'
and 'teleology' altogether. It is true that he often gives as examples of behavior the
adjustments of an organism to its environment (1919, p. 1) as well as including such
things as searching for a lost pocketbook and building a house, activities that patently
seem to be goal-directed and intentional. But apparently Watson believed these types of
18
behavior did not require any mention of the goals for which these behaviors were
undertaken; or perhaps he believed that although behavior was oriented to non-present
objects, the introduction of 'purposes' was anti-scientific (since purposes were mental
entities consciously entertained before one's mind, and thus was contaminated by
vitalism and mentalism). In any case Watson would not admit the possibility of an
"objective teleology" and would have no trek with Tolman's 'purposive behavior.'
B. Walter Hunter and Albert P. Weiss
The first stage of behaviorism lasted from 1913 to approximately 1930. During this
early period psychologists were debating the issues raised by Watson, several of them
staunchly defending Watson, several of them frantically criticizing him, and the majority
of them taking a reconciliatory position. It would be impossible of course to discuss all
those psychologists who could be called behaviorists and whose views would be rele
vant, e.g., Lashley,6 Kuo, Dunlap, Meyer. But two individuals must be singled out
for attention?Walter Hunter and Albert P. Weiss. Hunter and Weiss are especially
important for two reasons: they recognized that even a 'mechanistic' behaviorism such as
Watson's had to take into account the peculiar variability of behavior that is called
'purposive' and they dimly became aware that behavior has not only a physical side but
also a social one.
Hunter
In his early writings Hunter has little to add to Watson's views. Watson's assump
tions, together with most of Watson's analyses of psychological problems, were taken
over largely unchanged. Behavior for example was defined in the same way: "All
behavior," according to Hunter, "seems to be a combination, more or less complex, of
the relatively simple activities of muscles and glands" (1928, p. 175).7
All behavior consists either of unlearned reflexes and instincts for Hunter or it is
learned coordination of these elements (a habit). Reflex movements combine to form
habits by the process of continguous conditioning, a process in which frequency, recency
and facilitation play the most important role (1928, pp. 53, 175).
For our purposes, most of Hunter's views are not very interesting, since they are
largely a paraphrase of Watson's ideas. But some of Hunter's later views prove to be
much more interesting philosophically. For example, addressing himself to the question,
"What is the psychological study of behavior?" (1932), Hunter proceeds to sketch an
answer that is quite different from Watson's so-called mechanistic views. According to
Hunter the kind of behavior studied by psychologists is not the same as the behavior
investigated by the physiologist. In fact there are three ways, Hunter suggests, of
distinguishing physiology and psychology.
6Lashley the behaviorist must be distinguished from Lashley the anti-behaviorist. Lashley the behaviorist
had a very short life living from 1916 to about 1929. His rigorous defense of what was later called analytical
or logical behaviorism is contained in his 1923 article. Lashley the anti-behaviorist began about 1929 and
over a number of years launched several important critiques of behaviorism (1929, 1930, 1938, 1951).
7Hunter does point out however that the concept of behavior he is concerned with is not behavior in the
sense of unobservable muscular and glandular movement, but rather those bodily movements observable to
the naked eye (1928, p. 3), those things I have called molar movements.
19
First, psychology is interested in man's externally observable behavior which consti

tutes his "adjustment" to the environment. Hunter labels this directly observable
behavior 'superficial behavior' as opposed to the 'subcutaneous behavior' of the muscles
and glands studied by the physiologist. Physiology studies those responses under the
skin: digestion, circulation, brain functions and glandular secretions. Psychology, on the
other hand, studies such things as manual dexterity, anger and habit formation (1932,
p. 10).
Secondly, unlike physiology, psychology stresses man's behavioral adjustment to a
social environment (1932, p. 13) and presumably a social environment is a much
different thing from a physical environment. But since this point is not elaborated and is
apparently not accorded much importance, little can be said about it.
Finally (and most importantly) physiology and psychology are distinguished by the
types of organ functions studied. Physiology studies what Hunter calls intrinsic functions
and psychology investigates extrinsic functions. For example, the intrinsic functions of
the limbs (studied by physiology) are locomotion and prehension, whereas the extrinsic
functions of these limbs (studied by psychology) are writing, typewriting, maze-running,
and so on. The intrinsic functions of body organs are manifested when the genetic and
maturational preconditions are satisfied. They are primarily reflexive in nature and
involve little (if any) learning. But human beings learn how to achieve certain goals by
using these limbs and this involves the cultivation of skills. A skill is not a function
genetically and maturationally determined. It is an organ function determined by one's
learning history, practice, and experience. Consequently psychology will concern itself
fundamentally with the acquisition of skills, and, as many philosophers have suggested,
to have developed a skill is to "know how" to attain a certain result by appropriately
modifying one's movements. Skills are actions we can perform in various ways, they are
evaluated in terms of how well they achieve certain results, they are done intelligently,
thoughtlessly, for a multitude of reasons, and so on.
Psychology will be primarily interested in behavior which is like skilled action.
Skilled action has, as a distinguishing characteristic, vicarious functioning andresponse
equivalence. "... such behavior as language, typing, and maze solution may at one
time involve responses of the right hand while at another time other parts of the body may
exercise these functions" (Hunter, 1932, p. 18). If one hand is lost for example the other
one can accomplish the same task. Consequently in psychological behavior there is
response equivalence: ''One response is equivalent to another when it produces the same
result as that other" (1928, p. 322).
Since behavior has these characteristics, very little attention will be focused on the
particular movements present and employed in a given instance of that behavior.
Psychology will be concerned with response classes, i.e., certain types of behavior, and
it will neglect the particular movements present since these may fluctuate indefinitely
without our characterization of the behavior changing.
It seems clear therefore that Hunter does not advocate a muscle-twitch psychology,
nor does he equate behavior with mechanical movements. On the contrary, behavior for
him has the sense of purposive, molar behavior (since 'response equivalence' and
'vicarious functioning' obviously have the characteristics of goal-directed behavior
[Braithwaite, 1953], even though he believes a naturalistic science of action is possible.
20
Behavior is not identified with bodily movement. In fact Hunter suggests it is impossible,
in many cases, to define a response in purely physiological or kinematic terms:
Maze-running and typewriting are identified in terms of the apparatus employed;
nest-building and food-getting are identified in terms of the result of the be
havior; while different types of emotional responses are identified largely in
terms of the situations which call them forth. (1932, p. 22)
Weiss
Hunter was not the only behaviorist to see the need for a more detailed account of
behavior, nor was he the only behaviorist to point out the social dimension of an action.
The behaviorism of A. P. Weiss makes an attempt (largely unsuccessful in my opinion) to
develop the notion, already implicit in Hunter's views, that behaviorism must abandon
any exclusive physiological account of behavior and turn to a psycho-social definition of
"what organisms do."
Weiss was a thoroughgoing materialist or, as he put it, a physical monist. Everything
ultimately consisted of arrangements of physical particles (electrons and protons). This
included of course human behavior. Ultimately it, like everything else, is reducible to
physical movements between electron-proton systems (1925a, pp. 14, 36, 50). But
although Weiss believed that in some metaphysical way human behavior was reducible to
or composed of electron-proton reactions, he did not believe that behavior was simply
bodily movements or 'muscle twitches.' On the contrary he insisted on the social nature
of human responses, distinguished muscle twitches from human behavior, and suggested
that psychology must also study what he termed 'bio-social responses.'
"A response," according to Weiss, "is a unified group of contractile effects which
as movements form the basis of the cooperative, receptor-effector (sensori-motor)
interchanges between individuals" (1925a, p. 143). When humans act they move and
these movements are "unified groups of contractile effects." But behavior is not merely
bodily movement, for that would make it indistinguishable from physiology. Certain
bodily movements have social significance, namely those movements which establish
"his status in the social organization of which he is a member" (1925a, p. 133).
According to Weiss two types of responses must be distinguished. Biophysical
responses (as he called them) are the effects of antecedent neuro-physiological causes.
They are muscular contractions and glandular secretions (1930, p. 302). These molecular
movements are also present in another type of behavior, however, a type he calls
biosocial response. Biosocial responses act as stimuli causing certain reactions in other
individuals. "All biosocial responses are biophysical reactions, but the responses are not
classified according to the contractile effects (as in the case of biophysical reactions) but
according to the response in other individuals" (1930, p. 303). In other words when we
make certain types of movements these movements are classified or categorized by other
individuals in various ways (specific behavior). These social "interpretations" together
with an evaluation of it (behavior rank) result in social evaluation and determine our
social status.
A response is a biosocial one just in case some other individual is affected by it and
categorizes it in one of a variety of ways.
21
Speaking simply, the biosocial response is the group of movements or the effects
of these movements that other individuals observe and may classify into educa
tional, vocational, administrative, recreational, and personal forms of behavior.
(1925a, p. 191)
Individual Y for example sees a movement on the part of X and this causes Y to interpret
the movement m of X as a case of 'playing golf.' The movement m is a biosocial response
only because Y (or someone else) categorizes it in that way; otherwise m is simply a
biophysical response. The various categories under which movement m may be sub
sumed (educational, administrative, and so on) constitute what Weiss classes as specific
behavior (the type of behavior or behavioral category). When an individual proceeds to
evaluate the biosocial response in terms of how well it was done, we are talking about the
behavior rank. When a movement is categorized and evaluated, our social status is
determined (at least for one area). Our social status as a golfer for example depends not
only upon the specific behavior involved in golfing but also on how well we golf.
Weiss agrees with Hunter that psychology is interested in response classes defined
abstractly and socially; the particular movements occurring on any occasion of that
response are of little concern. To put this point slightly differently two responses may
differ biophysically but be equivalent biosocially. For example a biosocial response
such as 'accepting an invitation to dinner' can be performed in various ways (by
telephone, telegraph, etc.). These ways of accepting are different physically, but they
"are socially equivalent because any one of the four (as a stimulus) releases the same
response" (1924, p. 44).
Weiss recognized the plasticity of behavior and (using what he called a tear drop
analogy) tried to show that purposive behavior could be analyzed in a behavioristic way.
Whether it can or cannot is an issue to be discussed later. But one point about Weiss'
behaviorism must be made now. It is clear that he believed human behavior was largely
social in nature. But what is not so clear is how he believed this was consistent with his
physical monism. Consider his examples of biosocially equivalent responses. Jones can
accept an invitation to dinner in various ways, e.g., by telephone, by letter, etc. Now one
obvious first point to be raised against this account is that 'accepting an invitation' is a
behavior defined socially, since it presupposes certain social institutions, rules, roles,
etc. How can this concept be reducible to physical motions? No doubt some physical
motions are involved in accepting an invitiation to dinner, e.g., in telephoning my
acceptance I emit certain acoustic wave lengths. What makes this a case of 'accepting an
invitation to dinner'? Weiss' answer seems to be that these physical movements are
interpreted by others as a case of accepting an invitation to dinner. But what does Weiss
mean by this? Surely not just that any physical movement will count, and of that small
subclass that does count, it will count only because it satisfies certain criteria for
something's being an 'acceptance of a dinner invitation.' But these criteria will of course
be social in nature, and needless to say they are (in some sense) normative.
Individuals classify behavior into certain response classes such as educational,
vocational, administrative, and so on. Now what of these specific behavior classes? How
are they conceptualized and in particular how are they to be reduced to physical terms?
For example, the educational category includes "the various systems of instruction and
learning which represent the various forms of educational behavior" (1925a, p. 209).
22
But how are such sociological concepts to be construed physically? Moreover even
assuming this problem could be circumvented what are we to make of the behavior
ranking that occurs, i.e., the degree of excellence we attain, judged by the standards of
others, in these various specific behavior categories? Since these standards are norms for
evaluating the individual, how are they to fit into Weiss' physical monism?
This brings us to a second point. What is Weiss' concept of the social stimulus, and
what is a biosocial response? Apparently for him something is social just in case it
involves a causal interaction between two individuals. A biosocial stimulus is a con
ditioned stimulus involving another person (1926-27, p. 206) and a biosocial response is
a response which acts as a (conditioned?) stimulus on another person. The paucity of this
view of the social realm is evident in Weiss' claim that the League of Nations is even a
form of motion: since it "may be regarded as made up of (a) the movements of a
particular group of administrators and experts, or (b) a system of records and reports
which are also the products of the movements of individuals" (1925b, p. 175). On this
view a cultural object is no different (except in complexity) from the accumulation of
nitrogen as a result of muscular exercise. In short we can applaud Weiss' attempt to
include the social dimension in his conceptualization of behavior, but how he achieves
this remains in doubt.
Summary
What was the conception of behavior held by the early behaviorist? As I have tried to
point out this question is not easily answered without considerable discussion. It may be
true that early behaviorists were mechanistic, but there was a growing awareness on the
part of thinkers such as Hunter and Weiss that not only must psychology endorse a molar
conception of behavior (a point Watson also endorses) but also that two aspects of molar
behavior are especially important to the program of behaviorism: its purposive aspect and
its social dimension. True enough they continued to maintain the belief that psychology
was committed to physicalism and that the complex organization of behavior must be
accounted for along the lines of "conditioning theory." Such a belief may make them
'' mechanists,'' and their notion of how behavior is social certainly seems inadequate; but
their conception of behavior is much more complex than is usually implied in labelling it
"mechanistic." Any such characterization requires several qualifications.
III. Purposive Behaviorism

The title of this section may produce a feeling of surprise on the part of the reader.
Because behaviorism has been considered to be "mechanistic" and "anti-mentalistic"
for so many years, the existence of the "aberrant" branch of behaviorism has generally
been either overlooked, repressed, or relegated to the scrap-heap of idle historical
curiosities. Of course the reason for this is not far from view. For how indeed can
behaviorism admit the existence of "purpose'' much less emphasize its importance as the
defining feature of behavior? To discuss 'purposive behaviorism' at all is to spoil any
neat, simple characterization of behaviorism. But although it complicates the task of
characterizing behaviorism it does have the salutary effect of pointing out some of the
fundamental issues at stake in any discussion of the adequacy of behaviorism.
23
Another effect of becoming cognizant of this "deviant" movement in the develop

ment of behaviorism is of equal importance. For it shows that teleology has always been
an issue that psychology could ill afford to ignore and, as a matter of historical fact, never
really has ignored. Psychology and in particular behaviorism has always secured a place
for teleology in its scheme of things. But by couching the notion in different (non
teleological) terms, it made an honest woman out of her, and even appeared to lend her
scientific respectability (the highest form of praise and status possible). Teleology
therefore has always been retained by behaviorists, but retained at a cost. Several
important aspects of teleology (now recast in proper dress of course) were preserved but
in so doing other equally important aspects were ignored and (more importantly)
credence was given to the supposition that psychology really did not have to worry about
this problem any more. Consequently subsequent students of psychology ceased to be
aware of the problem of teleology (at least in its more philosophical guise) and gave it
little or no attention. The key figure in this behavioristic transformation of teleology was
Clark Hull (see below).
A. Edwin Holt
A complete discussion of teleology in the development of psychology would contain
a discussion of the arch-teleologist William McDougall as well as Hugo Munsterberg.8
But for our purposes we can immediately proceed-to the issue of how behaviorists have
incorporated teleology into their system by discussing the views of the neo-realist Edwin
Holt.
The Description of Behavior
Holt was concerned, in a fundamental way, with the question, What is the nature of
behavior? One way of putting this question is by asking: What is the correct description
of behavior? According to Holt, behavior is always to be equated with what the organism
is doing. If we ask this question, "What is the organism doing?", we will, according to
Holt, obtain the correct description of behavior. What is the bird doing? It is building a
nest. What is the rat doing? It is running down the maze or pressing a lever, and so on.
There are several important features to notice in this account. First, we are describing
behavior in molar terms (i.e., we are not employing terms from physiology and physics).
Consequently for Holt, the correct description of behavior is ^psychological description
(of behavior). This view should be contrasted to that of someone like Lashley (1923) who
suggested that a complete description of behavior could be given in terms of physics and
physiology. True enough, behavior can be characterized in this (alternate), non
psychological way but (and this is the focal point of Holt's thesis) this is not a psychologi
cal description of behavior.
Secondly, to describe behavior in this way is to suggest that molar behavior has a
complex organization and integration which is more than a "collection" of muscular
movements and, moreover, more than a "collection" of muscular movements plus a
simple "summation" of them. The separate reflexes and responses are functionally
interrelated in a complex and interdependent way. Behavior has a certain organization
which is plainly evident.
8For a discussion of Munsterberg, see Kitchener (Reference Note 1).
24
Thirdly (and this follows from the above point), behavior is always behavior of the
whole organism and not of a sub-system of the organism. The rat runs down the maze, its
legs do not run down the maze. The molar movements of the organism are organized by
the organism-as-a-whole and determined by the overall behavior act as a whole. The
organism's legs are moving because the organism is running down the maze; the
organism is not running down the maze because its legs are moving.
Emergence
Holt's emphasis on organization and integration was a theme in common with that of
several other psychologists, including of course the Gestalt psychologists. One way of
expressing this point is to say, as indeed Gestalt theorists did, that in the realm of
behavior, the organization inherent in it is an emergent property. As muscle movements
and reflexes are combined, integrated and synthesized, a new behavioral property
emerges. This novel property which could not have been predicted prior to the integration
of movements is the behavioral description of the act, namely 'the organism is respond
ing to the environment.'
. . . the phenomena evinced by the integrated organism are no longer merely the
excitation of nerve or the twitching of muscle, nor yet the play merely of reflexes
touched off by stimuli . . . this integration of reflex-arcs, with all that they
involve, into a state of systematic interdependence has produced something that
is not merely reflex action. The biological sciences have long recognized this
new and further thing, and called it "behavior." (Holt, 1915b, p. 366)
Separate reflexes can be explained by mentioning the proximal stimulus energy eliciting
them, e.g., a light ray. At this descriptive level we can only say for example that the
organism's pupil dilated. But when several of these reflexes are combined we have the
emergence of a new description of behavior, for now we can say such things as "the
organism is moving toward a light." Thus to understand what the organism is doing and
to give a correct description of it, one must always include what Holt calls the objective
reference, the environmental object in reference to which the organism is responding. In
behavior (as opposed to movements) "there is a genuine 'objective reference' to the
environment which is not found, so far as I can learn, in the inorganic, or the organic
world prior to integrated reflex response. This is the novelty which characterizes
behavior. And here, if anywhere, evolution turned a corner" (Holt, 1915b, p. 371).
'' And the objective reference is that the organism is moving with reference to some object
or fact of the environment" (Holt, 1915a, p. 55).
Recession of the Stimulus
As some would perhaps put this point, intentionality is an essential feature of all
behavior acts. Intentionality here of course does not necessarily refer to the organism's
awareness of what it is doing, nor to what the environment is like from the organism's
point of view (although this is the natural extension of this way of looking at behavior). It
refers simply to the fact that behavior is always behavior-in-relation-to-the-environment;
a doing is always a doing of something; responding is always responding to something.
Consequently for Holt we must say that behavior is always a function of some environ
25
mental object or, as he puts it, in the arena of behavior there is the recession of the
stimulus. "As the number of component reflexes involved in response increases, the
immediate stimulus recedes further and further from view as the significant factor [in the
description of behavior]" (Holt, 1915a, p. 77).
In the case of a simple reflex or a simple mechanism like a gun firing, the effective
stimulus is proximal and the resulting event(s) depends wholly on internal factors. But in
the case of organisms that are behaving, the effective stimulus "recedes" and becomes
more and more distal. In such cases one can understand the subsequent behavior of the
organism only by considering external factors, namely, the environmental object and any
changes in it, the intervening means towards obtaining that object, etc. Unlike the
organism, the pistol (or the simple reflex or the rocket firing) once it has fired receives no
subsequent information about the stimulus (environment). In modern terms there is no
'feedback' from the environment and of course there is no possible modification of the
subsequent behavior by the rocket or reflex. To say there is an "objective reference" in
the characterization of behavior is, on the contrary, to say that the organism as a system is
receiving information from the environment and as a result is modifying its behavior in
appropriate ways. In the case of humans of course "the recession of the stimulus"
reaches its highest degree: there may simply be no current environmental object that is the
objective reference, if the person is engaged in behavior characterized for example as
"looking for the fountain of youth." Holt did not extend his analysis to this extent but it
is, I think, a natural step to take.
Clearly to insist upon objective reference and stimulus recession is to insist that molar
behavior is (at least) goal-directed (if not fully purposive). If x's behavior is correctly
described as: 'x is moving towards the light' then this behavior must be goal-directed. For
this description is true just in case it is true that x is set to perform certain kinds of
behavior depending upon environmental fluctuations. For it to be true that 'x is moving
toward a light' (and not merely that x's body is moving from one spatio-temporal point to
another spatio-temporal point) it must be true that if the environmental object moves from
spatio-temporal point A to spatio-temporal point B, then x's behavior would change in
certain ways, ways we would characterize as 'making appropriate compensatory (and
possibly anticipatory) adjustments.' Consequently for Holt a molar description of be
havior is a purposive description of behavior (1915a, p. 54). This is why Holt believes the
concept of a 'wish' to be the fundamental analytical unit for psychology. A wish is "a
course of action which mechanism of the body is set to carry out, whether it actually does
so or not" (1915a, p. 3). 'Wishes' and 'behavior' turn out to have the same semantic
features. The key properties of each are purposiveness and set (preparation).
If Holt's account is correct then Watson's description of behavior must be inadequate
since it particularly ignores these "teleological" features. As Holt sometimes puts this
point, behavior has what we can call "descriptively emergent" properties. Holt wants to
insist however that this type of (descriptive) emergence has no implications for explana
tion and that on the contrary all behavior of the organism can be explained as the
combination of reflexes.9
9For a discussion of descriptive versus explanatory emergence, see Kitchener (Reference Note 2).
26
Holism
Holt insists there is nothing mysterious about his claims concerning emergence.
When reflexes are synthesized in certain ways, novel properties emerge. But for him this
does not entail any form of'holism.' The whole is more than the sum of its parts but there
is no new "something" added to the parts.
Nobody but an ultra-organicist or vitalist ever suggested that the parts of any
organized whole are merely an arithmetical sum, related only by the an d or plus
relation, which is the only relation subsisting between bones in a mere collec
tion. And nobody but an ultra-organicist or vitalist makes a silly mystery about
the accession of organizing relations, by thing-izing them into entelechies or
superordinated 'wholes.' A whole is not more than the sum or totality of its parts
in that arrangement or organization which constitutes the whole. To say that the
'whole' constitutes, generates, dominates, etc., etc., its parts is the most arrant
nonsense. (1931, pp. 258-259).
Explanation
Holt believes that all molar behavior can be explained along mechanistic lines and his
1931 work is devoted to just that task. Since "... in the last analysis all the activities of
an organism, including the highest mental achievements, are reflex" (1931, p. 92). Holt
attempted to show that the formation of "reflex-circles" could account for the purposive
behavior of 'approaching' an object and that more complicated forms of purposive
behavior (e.g., running a maze) could be explained along the lines suggested by Smith
and Guthrie (1921), Woodworth (1918), Hull and others in which a stimulus "drives"
the organism until a response terminates the stimulus. "It is a strictly mechanical
process, which nevertheless looks very 'teleological'; and it is primarily a process of
avoidance, which nevertheless looks like one of seeking" (1931, p. 98). Holt therefore
tried to wed teleology and mechanism. He apparently believed that behavior is funda
mentally teleological (and that this could not be denied) but that a "mechanistic"
approach could explain such types of behavior. It is for this reason that Holt can be
labelled a purposive behaviorist. He began a tradition in psychology that included
thinkers such as Craig, Woodworth, Perry and Tolman, a tradition that attempted to
retain teleology within a mechanistic framework. To do this of course necessitated
redefining teleological concepts (in particular removing most of its "mentalistic"
overtones). Several "objective," behavioral criteria for goal-directedness were ad
vanced, and the attempt was made to explain goal-directed behavior in a "mechanistic"
way.
B. Ralph Barton Perry

As we have seen Holt was fundamentally concerned with the correct analysis of
molar behavior. According to him molar behavior must be characterized in a teleological
way, as behavior directed towards certain environmental objects. Several other thinkers
agreed with Holt about the nature of molar behavior, but they attempted to analyze this
kind of teleological behavior in a more systematic fashion. For although Holt had insisted
on the teleological nature of behavior he had not addressed himself to certain key
27
questions surrounding this notion. In particular what seemed to be missing was a

philosophical analysis of purposive behavior, an analysis in keeping with the then very
popular movement called naturalism. What needed to be done according to some thinkers
was to insist upon the legitimacy of teleological concepts in psychology, but (more
importantly) to argue for the existence of "objective teleology" (Hofstadter, 1941).
Unlike McDougall's version of teleology for example which strongly emphasized the
subjective side of teleology (the conscious awareness of ends and goals), what seemed
needed in order to insure a place for teleology vis-d-vis the criticisms of the behaviorists
(e.g., Watson [1930], Weiss [1925b], Kuo [1928]) was to argue for a behavioristic
teleology. Such an account would insist upon the necessity of teleological concepts in a
science of behavior, but would also argue that nothing "mentalistic" (in a Cartesian
sense) was involved. This job fell primarily to Ralph Barton Perry and Edward Chace
Tolman. Perry provided the philosophical substructure for it and Tolman built a
psychological superstructure upon it.
Objective Teleology
What Perry seemed to be seeking was a correct characterization of teleological
systems and especially those human systems that seem teleological in a unique way. In
particular what Perry was fundamentally concerned with was establishing the "be
havioral marks" of purpose (the behavioral criteria one uses to decide whether a system
[organism] is purposive or not). William McDougall had answered this question upon
several occasions and it was a question that later thinkers would raise again and answer
(roughly) in an identical fashion. Strangely enough these later philosophers (e.g.,
Braithwaite, 1953; Nagel, 1961) would reach their views independent of this earlier
work. In fact what has now become the standard, positivistic model of goal-directed
behavior (the Sommerhoff-Braithwaite-Nagel model) was already completed at an
earlier time and in a superior way by Perry. For example Scheffler's (1959) modifications
of the Braithwaite model was already a key part of Perry's scheme.
Perry was concerned with an objective analysis of purpose, i.e., a philosophical
account of purpose from the third person point of view. In his early articles (1917a,
1917b) Perry rejects attempts to define purpose in terms of "systematic unity," "ten
dency," and "adaptation." Especially important is his discussion of'adaptation,' since
this represents the framework within which later philosophers such as Braithwaite and
Nagel operate.
Adjustment
According to Perry there are three kinds of 'adjustments' that seem to be viable
candidates for a model of purposive behavior. The first kind of adjustment that seems to
be purposive is compensatory adjustments. There are numerous examples of systems
(such as a thermostat or the temperature system of the body) which make compensatory
reactions to an environmental change so as to maintain an equilibrium or constant result.
This is the model (sometimes called a furnace model) that Nagel (1961) uses, his example
being temperature regulation in the body. That one can describe such teleological
behavior in non-teleological terms, as Nagel claims, is a point Perry would accept. But
28
since this type of model applies to the inorganic realm as well as to the organic realm, it
will not do as an account of purposive behavior in biological organisms (and in particular
humans). Perry therefore rejects such a model as being too weak and proceeds to discuss
a second model of complementary adjustment, namely that of progressive adjustment.
In this model there are compensatory reactions to environmental changes but there is,
as a result of this process, an increase towards a certain maximum which is then
maintained (1917b, p. 489). This is represented by Perry as: Ot + Et + Rx = 02; 02 +
E2 + R2 = 03, . . . , where R=response, O = states of the organism, and E=environ
ment. In this model, upon reaching the state On, the organism ceases responding and
(presumably) we can then say that On was the goal of this whole process. Such a model
implies, Perry thinks, the independent variability of the environment and the organism,
and the obvious examples that come to mind are those involving growth, the satisfaction
of hunger, etc.
Such a model, although superior to the first, is still too weak according to Perry, for it
does not contain a key component of many teleological processes, namely the feature of
anticipation (Warren, 1916) or foresight. This third kind of adjustment Perry labels
preparatory adjustment. In this scheme equilibrium is not actually disturbed as in the
simple compensatory adjustment model, it is instead averted. What the organism is
reacting to is the threat or prospect of disequilibrium, not disequilibrium itself (1917b, p.
490). What is involved here Perry suggests is something like the following: suppose D is
the disturbance and suppose S is a stimulus regularly preceding D. Ordinarily S is
followed (at some later time) by D. Now if O performs some appropriate response R at
the time of occurrence of S, D would be avoided and (conversely ) if R does not occur to
S, D will occur. In this way, the future threat can be averted or even "anticipated."
Although this is the strongest model of complementary adjustment that Perry considers,
he rejects it also.
Docility
Purpose must be reserved Perry argues for cases in which there is not only preparatory
adjustments, but for cases in which the preparatory adjustment is learned. The reason for
claiming as he did (1918) that docility is essential to purposive behavior is an important
(and often overlooked) point. What Perry wants to claim is that purpose in the full-blown
but still objective sense of the term had to be reserved for those instances in which the
response occurs because of (for the sake of) the future result. According to Perry this is
the sine qua non of teleological explanations. For this to be true, Perry suggests, it must
be the case that the independent variable is not the environment (as in simple adaptation)
but the result or goal to be attained. In simple adaptation, for example temperature
regulation, the appropriate response occurs because of environmental changes. We can
represent this as 4if E then R': if the environment changes the response alters. But in the
case of purposive behavior in biological organisms Perry suggests "the response occurs
because of the result" and not just because of the variations in the environment. This in
turn must mean that if the Environment (E) 4- the Response (R) results in the goal (G) (or
would result in the goal) then R occurs, i.e., if (E + R G) then R (1917b, p. 494). In
cases of true purposive behavior, "an act's performance is somehow conditioned by its
29
having or promising a certain result" (1918, p. 14). This in turn must mean, according to
Perry, that the organism has (at some point in the past) experienced or learned that (E +
R) ?? G. Organisms must learn what consequences follow their responses to certain
environments. They must learn that if they are to obtain a certain desired consequence
they must perform certain types of behaviors in certain types of environments. They must
(if they are to procure certain situations) learn that Et + Rx ?? G, E2 + R2^G, etc. The
only way an organism could know what results from its behavior would be by its having
learned (i.e., experienced) this in the past. Because it has learned that (sometimes at
least) E + R ?> G, it now selects R in environment E because of its "knowledge'' of this
relation.
In order that an organism may be said to act in a certain way because of a certain
result, it is necessary that acts, proving themselves to have a certain result,
should derive a tendency to occur from this fact; and that other acts proving not to
have the result, should derive from that fact a tendency to be excluded (1918, p.
14).
Consequently, Perry suggests, purpose is present only if there is docility.10
Perry's argument, if successful, would show that the standard account of goal
directedness is inadequate since it cannot handle the exclusively teleological notion of an
act occuring "because of" what the act will (perhaps) produce in the future. The
Braithwaite model, along with the cybernetic model of purpose in terms of negative
feedback, is inadequate therefore because it is too weak. Systems with negative feedback
(e.g., thermostats) come close to being purposive but ultimately are to be excluded
(according to Perry) because, although they manifest persistence and plasticity, they do
not possess docility. One might call them "weak teleological systems" if one wished,
and then proceed to construct stronger teleological systems, which are 'docile.'
Purposive behavior for Perry therefore is conceived along the lines of the following
model: it persists until a certain goal state is attained, it is variable or plastic in its
behavioral repertoire of response to environmental stimuli, and this variability is
learned. Perry believes that in the case of human purposive behavior, we have additional
features to consider. But this involves no fundamental changes in his system, only the
addition of new elements. It is clear for example that intentionality will play a crucial role
in the case of human purposive behavior and one will have to consider mental states such
as belief and expectation. In analyzing intentional behavior Perry's overall strategy is to
employ a belief-desire model of human action and then to analyze beliefs and desires
dispositionally.
1 "Perry's formulation of teleology anticipates the widely influential account of Charles Taylor (1964).
According to Taylor a teleological explanation of some behavior B is the following sufficient condition: the
system (organism) S and the environment E are such that B will produce goal G (or B is required for G) (1964,
p. 9). If we formulate Taylor's account as 'if (S + E + B) ? G, then B,' then Perry's account is: if (E + B)
?? G, then B. Of course our formulation of Taylor's account is inadequate since it does not contain the notion
of 'is required for.' However this is an aspect of Taylor's account that is problematic since it seems much too
strong. On the other hand Perry's account is too weak since the 'selection' among various responses that have
produced goals in the past must be accommodated and although Perry admits this, it does not occupy a
prominent place in his account.
30
Determining Tendency
Common to mental states and goal-directed behavior is a concept used by virtually all
writers on teleology: the concept of 'set' or, as Perry puts it, determining tendency. A
determining tendency is "a general response-system, tentatively advancing towards
completion, or tentatively renewing itself" (1921, pp. 104-105). As such an essential
characteristic of determining tendencies is their selection of which response is to be made
to which stimulus.
An organism emits let us suppose various responses in the presence of stimuli and as a
result learns to emit a definite serial pattern of responses to a series of stimuli. Let us
suppose the correct pattern of responding is:1
St ? R,,
1S0 2
? R9, ^
SQ ? R?,.
3 . .3
G.WhenS
1
occurs, then Rt is made, etc. (We can imagine as an example the series of correct turns to
be made in a maze.) These responses are correlated to this set of stimuli and form a series
of simple dispositions leading to a goal and a goal response. Now according to Perry
when Rt is made to S the remaining members of this set can be said to be in a state of
readiness such that when the appropriate stimulus appears, the next corresponding
response will occur. We can say the organism is "set" to make a series of responses, or
that the man is prepared for future action. Now let us suppose the appropriate stimulus
(e.g., S2) does not occur (but instead S2'), or that the appropriate response (e.g., R3) is
prevented from occurring. To say that behavior is plastic (that O can make suitable
compensatory responses or adjustments and still attain the goal) is to say that there is
another response (R20 that O makes to S2' such that the series of remaining responses can
then be continued, e.g., Sl ? Rj9 S2' ? R2', S3 ? R3, or that there art auxiliary responses
that occur that reinstate the series: S2 ? R1? S2 ? Ra, S3 ? R3. What is controlling this
entire sequence, according to Perry, is a higher-order set or disposition (e.g., to get to the
food) and this higher-order set is called a determining tendency.
A determining tendency as a directive disposition is an important element in Perry's
scheme, but it still falls short of characterizing fully purposive behavior, even if docility
is included. For what is missing in this account according to Perry is the element of
foresight or anticipation as exemplified for example in human behavior. Preparatory
adjustments are anticipatory in the sense of averting a forthcoming disequilibrium, but
this does not capture other features of the "anticipation" of the goal. In the case of
purposive action, organisms prepare for the goal that (presumably) is to come. They
anticipate it, expect it, believe it will come, etc. To include these elements requires no
substantial modification of his determining adjustment model. For Perry maintains that
such teleological notions as foresight, anticipation of the future goal, etc., can be
accommodated behavioristically as responses and dispositions to respond. "To expect an
object or event is to be prepared for it, that is, to have ready the appropriate response . . .
the organism has its performance scheduled in advance, or set for an orderly sequence of
occasions ..." (1926, p. 313). "Expectation is an anticipatory response correlated with
a contingent object. It implies no disposition to bring its object into being, but only a
readiness to deal with it when and if it occurs" (1926, p. 318). Similar analyses are
suggested for belief, judgment, etc.
Occurrent preparatory, anticipatory responses are observable in the course of human
and animal behavior. Perry even suggests that the conditioned reflex model could explain
31
such anticipatory responses (as well as the problem of meaning). When an animal
salivates "in anticipation" as it runs down the maze towards food, the salivation is a
conditioned response (a fractional part of the consummatory response to the goal object)
made to some conditioned stimulus (e.g., the sight of the goal object, a prior environmen
tal stimulus or even a molar response itself may function as the conditioned stimulus). In
such cases we can say the rat anticipates or expects food at the end of the runway (1918,
p. 17), that salivation is a "preparing for'' the eating of the food. Consequently Perry and
others like him (Tolman, 1932; Williams, 1929; Zener, 1937) view the conditioned
stimulus as a "sign" of what is to come. And Perry is prepared to admit that it may even
be the behavioristic analogue to ideas (1918, p. 17). Consequently for Perry
Interested or purposive action is tentative action adopted because the anticipa
tory responses which it partially arouses coincide with the unfulfilled or implicit
phase of such a determining tendency. (1921, p. 105)
With such a scheme Perry believes he can account for characteristically human purposive
behavior, such as Socrates' remaining in prison. Whether he can or not may depend
ultimately on how adequate an account of belief, intentionality and related issues Perry
can within his system provide.
C. Edward Chace Tolman

The individual that is most closely associated with "purposive behaviorism" is
Edward C. Tolman. Tolman's particular version of behaviorism begins with an issue
raised in our earlier discussion of Watson and Holt. It was pointed out, to reiterate, that
Tolman claimed Watson's account of behavior was inadequate because Watson defined
it in terms of muscle-twitches and, consequently, his views were indistinguishable from a
physiological account. If so, Tolman insisted, then how could there be a science of
psychology at all (1922, p. 2)? Psychology, if it is to be a science in its own right, must
have its own subject-matter and this subject-matter must be behavior qua behavior, the
doings of organisms.
While recognizing Watson's other view concerning the nature of behavior, therefore,
Tolman maintained that "Watson has in reality dallied with two different notions of
behavior. ... On the one hand, he has defined behavior in terms of its underlying
physical and physiological details . . ." (1932, pp. 6-7). Tolman called this "the
molecular definition of behavior, a definition of behavior in terms of what the organism
is doing. " Following Holt rather closely here Tolman suggests that molar behavior "is
more than and different from the sum of its physiological parts. Behavior, as such, is an
'emergent' phenomenon that has descriptive and defining properties of its own" (1932,
p. 7).
Descriptive Emergence
What Tolman meant by such a claim is not easy to discern. He clearly wants to argue
that molar behavior is descriptively emergent, i.e., that it possesses novel properties not
possessed by its component parts and moreover that these properties could not be
predicted from the knowledge of the underlying components. These molar properties are,
32
as we shall see, those of purpose and cognition. What he seems to be insisting upon here
is that a correct description of behavior will contain predicates ('purpose' and 'cogni
tion') not occurring in a complete description of the molecular movements. If this is so
then Tolman's next point is to insist that, in order to describe behavior in this way,
behavior qua behavior must be studied, since no amount of knowledge concerning
muscle twitches would be of any help whatsoever in describing behavior. In short,
Tolman is arguing for the (initial) autonomy of psychology, and insisting that the correct
methodology to use in psychology is a molar methodology, i.e., the observation of what
organisms are doing.
Tolman's way of putting this point is in terms of behavior "being a whole with
emergent properties." As he admits, molar behavior is "no doubt in complete one-to
one correspondence with the underlying molecular facts of physics and physiology ..."
(1932, p. 7). But when these molecular facts combine in a certain way new properties
emerge. These "emergent" properties are purpose and cognition. Presumably then
molar behavior is purposive and cognitive but no muscular movements can be charac
terized in these ways.
As we have seen Holt maintains roughly the same thing: behavior according to him is
emergent since in order to describe it one must mention environmental objects towards
which it is directed. Tolman also maintained (1925a, p. 33; 1932, p. 10) that whenever
we identify a behavioral act we must mention some end object or situation that is the
object of the act.
Thus, for example, the rat's behavior of "running the maze" has as its first and
perhaps most important feature the fact that it is a getting to food. Similarly, the
behavior of Thorndike's kitten in opening the puzzle box would have as its first
identifying feature the fact that it is a getting away from the confinement of the
box, or, if you will, a getting to the freedom outside. Or, again, the behavior of
the psychologist reciting nonsense syllables in the laboratory has as its first
descriptive feature the fact that it is a getting to (shall we say) "an offer from
another university." (1932, p. 10)
These goal-objects or goal-situations must be determined empirically of course accord
ing to certain criteria, e.g., we know the behavior is a getting-to-food because the
behavior changes in certain ways depending upon the absence or presence of food.
How are these stimulus-objects (the goals) to be defined? Tolman does not give a
satisfactory answer to this question. One might think that food for example could be
defined biologically or chemically. Tolman however seems to believe that in general
environmental objects must be intentionally defined, i.e., defined in terms of their
"meaning" for the subject. And by this he means (roughly) what the organism does to or
with it. "Behavior objects" (i.e., objects 'as seen by' the subject) consist of these
tendencies to behave in certain ways which are aroused by certain behavioral cues (1922,
p. 6; 1937, p. 135). Consequently something would be food (from the subject's point of
view) if the sight of it evoked certain reaction tendencies on his part, e.g., he eats it.
However Tolman also maintains a somewhat different view of goal objects. Purposes
are persistences to, not environmental objects as ends in themselves, but persistence to
states of bodily quiescence or bodily disturbance. ". . .all behavior purposes do thus
reduce ultimately to drives to or from final physiological states, and that all other objects
33
or situations are, in the last analysis, got to or from only as routes or means for getting to
or from these bodily states" (1926, p. 52) (cf. also 1932, pp. 445-446). This account
seems to be strangely out of keeping with Tolman's other "cognitive" views. For surely
it is not the physiological quiescence or lack of it that is the important consideration, but
rather the organism's "awareness" of such a quiescence or lack of it (whether veridical
or not). This view will not work for hunger much less for more complicated forms of
behavior such as gossiping.
It must be said therefore that Tolman's definition of a goal is ambiguous. This same
situation is characteristic of his discussions of 'cognition' and 'purpose.' He does not
really give a definition of them and his characterization of them finally must be judged to
be equivocal as between characterizing them in cognitive terms as opposed to charac
terizing them in behavioristic ways. It is clear however that they resist description in
physiological terms and this is perhaps sufficient to warrant his views being labeled
'descriptive emergence.' Purpose and cognition are descriptively emergent since, in
relation to the physiological level, they are novel, they cannot be described by the
language of physiology and they cannot be defined in terms of physiology.
Behavior therefore has descriptively emergent properties for Tolman, a view also
shared by Holt. But Holt claimed (1931), on the other hand, that these emergent
properties could be explained in terms of the S-R conditioning of molecular movements.
Holt therefore seems to deny what is sometimes called explanatory emergence.
Explanatory Emergence
Tolman's views on the question of explanatory emergence are very difficult to
fathom. Throughout all of his writings Tolman insisted on the point that molar behavior is
in a close relation to the underlying physiological movements. This is sometimes
expressed (by him) as: molar behavior is in one-to-one correspondence with molecular
behavior. As he later explained (1933, p. 464): "I meant this only in the sense of a
functional correspondence." Presumably what he has in mind by a 'functional corres
pondence' are those laws connecting the two series (what are sometimes called cross
connection or bridging laws). Such bridging laws can be discovered only after the laws of
the two respective sciences are themselves discovered. Therefore one must discover the
laws of the molar science (the reduced theory) and the laws of the molecular science (the
reducing theory) and then discover the bridge laws. This seems to be what Tolman had in
mind. The behavior series would then be predictable from the brain physiology series
"but predictable only after one has empirically discovered the nature of the transforma
tion equations which connect the two" (1933, p. 464). This is good old-fashioned
reductionism, logical positivist vintage.
This interpretation of Tolman is supported by several passages in which he claims
that physiology will (some day) explain and therefore "reduce" molar behavior laws
(1922, p. 16; 1925b, p. 47). He offers no further comments about what this physiological
account might be. He does insist however that the conditioned reflex model will not
account for molar behavior (since this can be done only by molar constructs such as
'expectancy,' 'needs,' 'valence,' etc., together with molar learning principles). In fact
conditioned reflex theory cannot explain the learning of molar behavior, including even
classical conditioning. After arguing for this Tolman goes on to say:
34
These strictures of ours against the conditioned reflex theory are strictures
against it as an adequate principle at our level of interest, i.e., at the level of
behavior qua molar. This does not deny, however, its possible validity as a
principle for the physiological units underlying behavior. It may still be that the
phenomena of sign, of expectation, etc., which we find involved in learning,
described at the level of behavior qua molar, may be built up upon, or out of
conditioned-reflex sorts of connection among the elementary physiological
processes which underlie behavior. But we suspect that even as a principle re
physiological units the conditioned reflex mechanism may not be as simple as
has been supposed. (1932, p. 336)
Whether this amounts to explanatory emergence or not is perhaps not clear from this
passage although the most obvious reading to give to it would support it. It is obvious for
example that Tolman believes new explanatory principles (and new concepts) are
required to explain (higher) molar behavior. This in itself would constitute an argument
for explanatory emergence since it would be tantamount to the claim that laws of
physiology together with composition laws concerning how physiological elements
interact could not account for purposive behavior. The composition laws (e.g., con
tiguity, or chaining) may be inadequate but more important I think is the necessity for
new explanatory principles of learning, those involving expectancies, demands, etc.
This would be true even though these principles were correlated with the underlying
physiological level. The most natural interpretation to give to Tolman's remarks there
fore is that he advocates explanatory emergence, although it remains frankly somewhat
unclear as to what he really believed.
Furthermore to contribute to the complexity of this issue, Tolman (in his later
writings) seems to argue that reductionism in psychology is not possible! The reason he
gives for believing this is the fact that molar psychology involves (in a fundamental way)
sociological concepts. Human behavior "takes place only in social contexts" (1945,
p. 228). Psychology's independent variables, Tolman claims?such things as past
training, maintenance schedules involving food and sex, environmental objects, etc.?
are part of a particular culture and particular social groups within that culture. ' 'They are
always immersed in a 'field' constituted by the 'culture pattern' of the whole group. They
cannot be manipulated wholly independently of this field" (1938, p. 185). Consequently
since a cultural pattern is a "whole" one cannot manipulate one variable without
influencing other variables. Furthermore,
the laws for individual behavior which psychology finally arrives at will be laws
holding, so far as we can be certain, only within the given culture in which they
have been found. Only by studying psychology within many cultures would it
eventually be possible to arrive at a pure psychology ? a psychology which one
could feel certain would hold for all cultures. (1938, p. 185)
Therefore, Tolman claims, "sociology is in some considerable measure ancillary to

psychology" (1938, p. 186). By a similar "wholistic" argument Tolman purports to
show that psychology is also ancillary to physiology (since physiological processes
always occur in a larger psychological field or whole). As Tolman later pointed out
35
(1959, p. 96) this was the opposite of reductionism. But as his remarks also indicate
(1959, p. 96) he is willing to grant reductionism "in one sense" but to deny it "in
another equally important and perhaps more pragmatically useful sense."
Purpose
The emergent properties of molar behavior are purpose and cognition. When we
observe a rat going down the maze and describe it that way we are in effect claiming,
according to Tolman, that the behavior is purposive. Following Perry's account of
purpose very closely, Tolman believes it can be characterized as be'mgpersistent until the
goal is reached and docile.
To say that something is a case of purposive behavior is first of all to say it persists
until a certain kind of goal situation is attained. For Tolman this was a property of
behavior that he believed to be of fundamental importance. Sometimes he seems to
maintain that one can directly observe this 'persistence until' (1925b, p. 38), whereas at
other times he seems to believe one must give behavioral evidence for it, or at least one
must give an analysis of it (1926, p. 51; 1928).
Just when is it we find a statement of a "toward whichness" or of a "from
whichness" thus necessary? We find it necessary, whenever, but modifying the
various attendant circumstances, we discover that the same goal is still there and
still identifying the given response. Thus, when we make minor changes in the
position or nature of the intervening objects and the behavior readjusts so as to
again come to the same end object, the case is one of purpose. Or finally, when
we remove the goal object entirely and behavior thereupon ceases, purpose must
again have been a descriptive feature. In short, purpose is present, descriptively,
whenever a statement of the goal object is necessary to indicate (1) constancy of
goal object in spite of variations in adjustment to intervening obstacles, or (2)
variations in final direction corresponding to differing positions of the goal
object, or (3) cessation of activity when a given goal object is entirely removed.
(1925a, p. 35)
Initially (1920, 1925a, 1925b) persistence was (contra Perry) the only defining
characteristic of purpose. Gradually however Tolman also became persuaded that docil
ity was an essential property of purpose. In changing his mind Tolman apparently became
convinced by Perry's argument that purposive behavior was so characterized precisely
because it was contingent upon its tendency to reach the goal. This contingency upon
behavior reaching the goal was the learnability of the act in relation to the end. Therefore
as early as 1928 Tolman claimed:
Whenever upon successive occasions, a given act will repeat itself, only if the
getting to (or getting from) such and such a type of end-object is achieved by it,
this act can be said to be contingent upon such an end. And it can be said to
'purpose' that end. (1928, p. 525)
To say that behavior is docile is to say that an organism learns which response to make
to get to the goal, it selects shorter means to the goal, if it cannot make one response it will
make another response, and so on. As Tolman defines docility it "consists in the fact
that, if a given behavior-act in a given environment proves relatively unsuccessful, i.e.,
36
does not get to the demanded type of goal-object at all or gets there only by a relatively
long distance, it will, on subsequent occasions, tend to give way to an act or acts which
will tend to get the organism to this demanded type of goal-object and will tend to get him
to it by a relatively short route" (1932, pp. 442-443). The docility of behavior consists
therefore of its trial and error nature along with the selection of a response because of the
past consequences of this response.
To say that a response is docile, according to Tolman, implies that it is purposive,
since acts are docile only in relation to certain goal-states that are "demanded."
Ultimately therefore Tolman requires only docility as a characteristic of purposive
behavior since docile behavior itself "persists until" a goal is reached.
Cognition
Molar behavior is not only purposive and docile it is also cognitive in nature. This
cognitive aspect follows directly from Tolman's definition of docility. When a rat runs a
maze it is expecting that a certain sequence of turns will result in a goal object, that this
goal object will satiate its drive, and so on. By its behavior, Tolman maintains, the rat is
(in effect) postulating or asserting such things as the existence and nature of means-end
connections, paths towards the goal.
Every behavior act, in going off and being what it is, expresses, implies, certain
specific characters in the environment. And this is so because the continuance of
its going off can be shown to be contingent upon there actually proving to be such
characters in the environment. If these expected characters are not found, the act
sooner or later ceases or modifies itself. (1927, p. 64)
Suppose behavior is docile relative to two paths A and B, i.e., if path A does not result in
goal G, the rat will choose path B. This is to say, according to Tolman, that the rat had
certain initial expectations or beliefs about path A and that later its expectations and
beliefs regarding A and B change so that now it expects path B to result in the goal.
Mental Terms and Definitions
Tolman insists that his use of mental terms such as 'purpose' and 'expectation' is
consistent with behaviorism. "For the behaviorist," he says, '"mental processes' are to
be identified and defined in terms of the behaviors to which they lead. 'Mental processes'
are, for the behaviorist, naught but inferred determinants of behavior, which ultimately
are deducible from behavior. Behavior and these inferred determinants are both objec
tively defined types of entity" (1932, p. 3). For example 'expectation' is apparently
defined in the following way: to say that x expects something F is just to say that if F is
absent, then x's behavior shows disruption (e.g., searching, speeding up) and "sur
prise" (1932, pp. 74, 76, 82). Likewise Tolman defines 'conscious awareness' as for
example 'running back and forth' behavior (1932, p. 206), or at least "behavior
adjustments."
Tolman's views on these issues are much more complex than some of his remarks
suggest. For not only does he consistently identify defining some term with giving
evidence for it, he proceeds to make several other claims about 'purpose' and 'belief that
37
complicate the situation even more. Thus, purpose and cognition are immanent in
behavior, they are not directly observable in behavior, they are defined in terms of
behavior, inferred from behavior, discovered and also the causal determinants of
behavior.
To say these properties are imminent in behavior (1932, pp. 13, 19) for example is to
say that they are "directly in behavior" (1932, p. 13), they are "lying" in behavior
(1932, p. 446). Now what can this mean? One obvious interpretation would be that they
are qualities "directly observable" in behavior, analogous perhaps to colors being
immanent in objects. But this is not what Tolman means since he also wants to maintain
that such properties are not directly observable in behavior (1928, p. 524). Quite clearly
Tolman wants to maintain these concepts are defined in terms of behavior (1932, pp. 13,
204), i.e., "they are defined by characters and relationships which we observe out there
in the behavior" (1932, p. 13). But then how can they be described as being "inferred
from behavior" (1932, p. 19) and also "discovered" (1932, pp. 10, 204)? Moreover, if
these problems are solved, how can they be characterized as the causal determinants of
behavior (1932, pp. 13, 19, 43)? Before attempting to make sense out of these different
claims, another preliminary problem concerning Tolman's view must be raised.
Tolman consistently vascillates between maintaining that certain properties of be
havior are the criteria, evidence, or symptoms for a mental concept and saying that these
behavioral properties constitute the definition ? in the strict sense of definition ? of the
term. This distinction is sometimes expressed as the distinction between the meaning of a
term and the evidence for it, a distinction that contemporary philosophers often use as a
stock distinction.
Tolman of course does not recognize the distinction and often in the same sentence
mentions giving behavioral evidence for a concept and also giving its meaning as if these
were the same thing (1932, pp. 440, 441, 452).
It certainly seems to be the case that when Tolman defines 'expectation' as the
description of behavior consequent upon the absence of the (expected) object, he is
giving us only one context in which 'expectation' would be used (i.e., one instance of
expectation). That could not be the definition of 'expect,' since we would not know how
to use the term when the object is present. Rather it seems more natural to say that Tolman
has given us some evidence for, or an indicator of, 'expects.' This is (roughly) the same
point that Koffka makes in his review of Tolman's book and it is very enlightening
(philosophically) to look at Tolman's reply.
I believe, in short, contrary to Koffka, that the "excursion of a pointer on a
seismograph'' (or rather the excursion of all the pointers on all the seismographs,
together with all the other normal "behavioral" results of an earthquake) do
"define" this concept ? earthquake ? and that the actual occurrence of such
pointer readings and of such other normal accompaniments on any particular
occasion denote an actual occurrence of an actual earthquake on that occasion.
(1933, p. 459)
In short, ". . .1 did not attempt to assert that an expectation is the same as any of its
effects?but rather than it was the same as the potentiality of all of its effects" (1933, p.
462). What Tolman seems to be saying here is that the behavioral manifestations,
criteria, evidence of some entity collectively serve to define it.
38
Properly speaking, a construct is a formulation in terms of "operations,"

'' formulae," etc., of what may naively be thought of as an " entity " or " thing."
When it is said that an electron is a "construct" what is meant is that all that we
really know of an electron can be stated completely by the formulae and
operations of the physicist?no little rough balls remain outside. Similarly all
that we really know of a "mental process" can be stated completely by the
formulae and operations of the stimulus-response connections in which this
mental process occurs. This does not mean that electrons and mental processes
do not exist; it merely means that they "occur" only as variables and constants in
physical and behavioral equations. (1933, p. 462, footnote)
'Expectancy' and 'cognition' therefore are to be defined in terms of their behavioral
effects. Furthermore these concepts are not directly observable in behavior?since they
are defined in terms of the behavior?but Tolman wants to maintain that the behavioral
properties constituting the definiens are directly observable and immanent in behavior.
But if so, we may ask, how can he also maintain that purpose and cognition are immanent
in behavior, that they are "lying in behavior"?
Intervening Variables
Can we be any more precise about what he means by these various views? We can I
think but only if we view expectancy as an intervening variable in the strict sense. For
Tolman (at least in his early works) an intervening variable is a convenient summarizing
device, i.e., a conceptual way of representing a series of behavioral relations. In a
standard experimental arrangement we vary an independent variable (e.g., hours of
deprivation) and observe its effect on a dependent variable (e.g., eating behavior or
percentage of correct turns in a T-maze). We assume this relation "mirrors" the relation
between our independent variable and an intervening variable (e.g., 'demand') and that
consequently this experimental relation is a measure of our intervening variable. We then
may replace our dependent variable by an intervening variable to generate a (new)
function between an independent variable and an intervening variable. In such a way we
have operationally defined our intervening variable, e.g., demand is defined as the
relation between our independent variable and our dependent variable. The operational
manipulation of an independent variable is performed and we observe the effects on our
dependent variable. As Tolman puts it:
. . . each such "intervening variable" is defined by a standard experiment in
which its correlative independent environmental variable is systematically var
ied. Further, in each such experiment all the other independent variables are held
constant while the one in question is systematically changed. Under such
conditions the resultant variations in [our dependent variable] are, by definition,
to be said to mirror directly the variations in the one given intervening variable.
(1938, p. 157)
Although this interpretation of intervening variables appeared after his 1932 book
they must be considered roughly the same as the views implicitly contained in that earlier
work (1932, pp. 88-89, 414, 422, 424-45). If this is correct, then Tolman's paradoxical
views concerning purpose and cognition can be shown to be much more consistent.
39
Purpose and cognition as intervening variables are discovered since we must empirical
lydetermine the function via a standard experimental arrangement. They are also inferred
from behavior in the sense that we infer for example that the intervening variable is
mirrored by our experimental correlation between independent and dependent variable.
The properties serving as a definition of an intervening variable (our independent and
dependent variables) are directly observable and although our intervening variables are
not, we can say that our intervening variables are immanent in behavior. How can they be
the causal determinants of behavior? In the sense that any variable that causes a change
can be: for Tolman 'causality' (and therefore 'causal determinant') can only mean
'functional relation' and of course our intervening variables are functionally related to
our dependent variable (by definition).11
Expectancies and purposes are therefore intervening variables. Are they only that?
Tolman's answer to this question historically seems to have changed from a somewhat
ambiguous answer to a more clear-cut " No." For example he believes expectancies '' are
really only functionally defined entities and never have actually an independent existence
in and by themselves" (1932, p. 399). But later he thinks they are "sets in the nervous
system" (1945, p. 237). By 1950 he became convinced that psychology must use
hypothetical constructs (1949a, p. 146; 1949b, p. 49; 1959, p. 97). Consequently
cognitive terms are to be viewed not as intervening variables any more but as hypothetical
constructs whose "surplus meaning" originates from non-physiological sources (1959,
p. 98). They are "central phenomena, each of which may be expressed by a variety of
responses" (1949a, p. 146).
The next step seems to be to view expectancies and demands as full theoretical
entities, partially interpreted and implicitly defined by Tolman's basic postulates. Or if
this seems to be stretching really what Tolman had in mind, then at least such constructs
are to have their meaning specified not completely at one time but rather partially by a set
of Carnap reduction sentences (Tolman, Ritchie, and Kalish, 1946). Presumably there
will be several reduction sentences for 'expect' and no simple "if ? then" formula will
capture the meaning. Consider for example a case of "expecting there is bread in the
kitchen."
Difficulties arise, however, when we try to describe this expectation in terms of
behavior. In the first place, there is no known simple response which is uni
formly associated with an expectation of bread in the kitchen. In fact, when there
is no motivation there is no response at all. However, none of us would wish to
assert that because there is no response in such circumstances, there is no
expectation. For this reason we must reject any explicit definition of 'expecta
tion' in terms of any single response or set of responses. . . .
Now let us consider those cases in which the person is motivated and some
response occurs. Even now there is no single response or set of responses which
is uniformly associated with this expectation. A wide variety of responses may
be observed in such a situation, and all that they seem to have in common is that
they all are functions of the relation between the location of the person who has
the expectation and the location of the kitchen. Since this relation may change
uCf. Tolmarfs "conceptual shorthand" view of science, a la Karl Pearson: 1932, pp. 424-425.
40
from one occasion to another, the response to this sign differs on different
occasions. All of this illustrates that it is very difficult to describe such expecta
tions in terms of behavior. About all that can be said, as Bertrand Russell (1940)
has pointed out, is that the hungry bread-lover responds appropriately to the fact
that he is here and the kitchen is there.
Of course this statement is not very helpful unless we are able to characterize
what is meant by the word 'appropriate.' (Tolman, Ritchie and Kalish, 1946, p.
239)
Many of Tolman's views about theoretical constructs in psychology are frankly
unclear. On the one hand this may reflect an uncertainty on his part concerning their
status. On the other hand it may reflect a perennial problem of incorporating "mentalis
tic" terms into any kind of behaviorism. In any case such vascillation reflects the status
of Tolman's theory as a historical transition from a strict operationism to a view that
concepts have an "open texture."
Summary
After this rather long discussion, what can we say in sum concerning "purposive
behaviorism'' ? That it is a molar behaviorism of course and that this means that behavior
is always the doings of organisms. These doings or actions are the doings-of-something
(e.g., moving towards a light) and therefore such descriptions always mention some
environmental object or goal towards which the behavior is directed. To say behavior is
directed is to say it persists until the goal is reached, in other words that it is purposive.
There are behavioral criteria of such purposive behavior and these criteria pretty much
reduce to saying behavior is docile. Behavior is also cognitive since in behaving in a
particular way, the rat is in effect making claims about the environment.
As we have already mentioned several other psychologists were 'purposive be
haviorists,' e.g., Craig (1918) and Woodworth (1918, 1921). Whether there can be a
"purposive behaviorism" or not, whether ultimately for example a behaviorist must
exclude the notion of teleology altogether or else retain it in a non-behaviorist form are
questions t his paper is not designed to answer. But given the current popularity of the
"new" teleology (Charles Taylor, 1964) and the associated movement known as Action
Theory, it remains somewhat surprising that those behaviorists that insisted upon the
necessity of 'purpose' in any adequate account of behavior should be ignored. At the very
least therefore "purposive behaviorism," as one variety of behaviorism, must be
accorded considerably more importance than that given it by contemporary philosophers
and psychologists.
IV. NeoBehaviorism and S-R Theory

A. Edwin R. Guthrie: Movements vs. Acts
As we have seen Tolman believes psychology?if it is to be an independent and
autonomous science?must concentrate on molar behavior. Molar behavior? what the
organism is doing?is purposive and cognitive, in short docile. This insistence that
psychological behavior is molar in nature provides the background for much of the
subsequent history of behaviorism and learning theory. Subsequent behaviorists (such as
41
Guthrie and Hull) develop their particular views of psychology and behavior largely in
reaction to Tolman's claim. For much of the subsequent history of behaviorism and
learning theory, Tolman's views function as a foil for S-R psychology.
The theory of Edwin R. Guthrie is a clear case of this. For his account logically begins
with a distinction between what he calls acts (Tolman's purposive behavior) and
movements. This distinction (as I have suggested) in turn is grounded in further (and more
basic) philosophical issues over the nature of mind and the nature of science. This is
nicely illustrated in the case of Guthrie.
The Nature of Mind
Guthrie was foremost concerned with the questions of what organisms learn (move
ments vs. achievements), and how they learn (contiguity vs. reinforcement). He was
concerned with questions about learning because he believed the ability to learn was a
characteristic property of the mind. To be able to profit by experience and to improve
one's adaptation to the environment was what distinguished the mental from the non
mental. "Responses are mental," Guthrie claimed, "when they are subject to modifica
tion. This modification lies in the capacity for attaching responses to new stimuli'' (1938,
p. 99). For Guthrie therefore to have a theory of learning was tantamount to having a
theory of mind! Such an assumption seems to lie at the root of many American
psychologists' preoccupation with learning. Assuming?as most American
psychologists did?that the mind must be approached from an evolutionary point of
view, it seemd obvious that the (biological) "function" or use of mind was to enable an
organism to adapt to its environment by behaving in certain ways. How does the mind
perform this adaptive function? What is the nature of adaptive behavior? This question in
turn became divided into two sub-questions since (from an evolutionary point of view)
adaptive behavior could be considered hereditary in nature (innate) or learned. Obviously
hereditary behavior patterns that are adaptive are precisely those behavior patterns
labelled 'instinctive.' All the remaining behavior patterns that were also adaptive but
acquired (i.e., learned) were habits. The topics of learning and instinct therefore
occupied an especially important place in early behaviorism. This much seems obvious
of course. But when the notion of instinct died in the '30's, the only remaining category
of adaptive behavior (besides reflexes which were to be studied by physiologists) was
learned behavior. Consequently from 1930 to about 1950 behaviorism (and indeed much
of mainstream American psychology) was occupied with problems of learning. Guthrie
simply makes this preoccupation explicit by claiming that "to learn'' is the essence of the
mind!
Purpose
To understand the nature of learning entails, Guthrie admits, understanding the
nature of purposive behavior, for behavior normally seems to be goal-directed. An
adequate theory of learning therefore should account for the obvious facts of purposive
and intentional behavior.
An animal is primarily a striving object. But even though we admit that goal
striving is fundamental to human and animal nature, it is the conditions under
42
which goals are reached, and the conditions under which goals are established
through learning that are the fundamental problem of the psychologist. If we
attempt to understand goal-behavior we are at once driven to consider the nature
of learning, the mechanics of learning, because in all the more complex strivings
of men and of animals it is through learning that goals are attained and through
learning that desires, wishes, goals and purposes are formed. (1938, pp. 166
167)
Although Guthrie was not opposed to purposive explanations, he did believe that
mechanistic explanations were more valuable in psychology than teleological accounts.
Often, Guthrie argued, purposive descriptions of behavior have the unfortunate effect of
preventing one from asking for an explanation of it.
When the outcome of an activity is the achievement of a goal or purpose, there is
no need to explain it. We did it, and take the credit. But when we fail, we find
objective reasons for that failure, reasons which others will understand. If we
succeed in getting the engine of the boat started, this success needs no explana
tion other than that we intended to do just that; we are a person of insight. If we
fail to start the engine, we go into mechanical details and put the blame on the
physical mechanism of the engine, or we talk in terms of forgetting or the
association of ideas. (1938, p. 33)12
An explanation of such behavior would account not only for its success, Guthrie
believed, but also for the frequent failure to obtain the goal. A purposive account on the
other hand is limited to the prediction of success "and failure is both unfortunately
common and important" (1942, p. 22). A purposive account focuses on what is achieved
and ignores how a goal is obtained. But according to Guthrie we really do not understand
the behavior until we know the details of the process of goal attainment. A mechanistic
account is concerned precisely with the underlying process involved and this underlying
process consists of movements made. Once we have an explanation in terms of the
underlying movements we can then account not only forfailure and the particular means
employed, we can also predict behavior in a more precise way (since purposive accounts
are inherently probabilistic, because molar [1924, 1933]). For Guthrie therefore a
mechanistic account of behavior would be concerned with movements and not with
"acts."
Guthrie suggested, furthermore, that a mechanistic account of learning would shed
considerable light on the nature of purposive and intentional behavior. According to
Guthrie for example in goal-directed behavior maintaining stimuli (which typically are
those stimuli arising from unsatiated physiological drives) are present throughout long
and complex series of behaviors. These maintaining stimuli "drive" the animal, thereby
resulting in various kinds of precurrent responses until an appropriate goal object is
found. Consummatory responses (e.g., eating) then occur, thereby removing these
maintaining stimuli. On a second occasion of this complex sequence a part of the
consummatory response (e.g., salivation) is present throughout the series and this current
reaction constitutes anticipation and foresight. Foresight "consists in reacting to signs of
what is to come. The signs of rain are the substitute stimuli for a conditioned thought of an
12This is precisely the view of teleology suggested by Charles Taylor (1964).
43
umbrella, that earlier depended on the shower but now is stirred by the clouds, the
weather bulletin, or the rheumatic pain" (1935, p. 133). These "signs of what is to
come" are conditioned stimuli evoking a response originally made to the unconditioned
stimulus. Thus associative conditioning can account for foresight (since we can thereby
react to signs of future events) and maintaining stimuli account for behavior being
goal-directed. Maintaining stimuli energize and integrate behavior, they direct the
organism to the goal, and they account for the persistence of behavior.
Intentions and intentional behavior are analyzed by Guthrie in a similar way. An
intention is present, according to him, when a maintaining stimulus complex is present
but the consummatory response is blocked. In this case responses occur which "com
mit" us to making the consummatory response when an occasion presents itself. Along
with these responses is the presence of a readiness or set for the consequences of our
actions. This set consists of an anticipation of the consummatory response which, in turn,
may be a muscular preparation or a fractional part of the consummatory response (1935,
pp. 203-206).
Acts vs. Movements
A basic issue separating purposive and mechanistic approaches to psychology con

cerns the nature of behavior. Molar behavior is purposive, whereas molecular behavior is
not. Guthrie adopts Tolman's molar-molecular distinction and labels it the distinction
between acts and movements.
Acts and movements are both distinguished however from another type of behavior,
namely those things that happen to an organism.
It is usual to limit that word [behavior] to exclude purely physical reactions to
changes in the world. The pugilist who takes a left to the chin finds his chin
moved suddenly up and to one side. This is, however, something that happens to
him, not something he did. We do not include it in behavior. That word is
restricted to the responses we make as the result of nerve impulses activating
muscles or glands. (Guthrie & Edwards, 1949, p. 29)
Things that "happen" to organisms are of no concern to psychology, whereas acts and
movements are both appropriate areas of investigation. A behavioral act is a response
defined in terms of "end results which may be accomplished in an indefinite variety of
ways" (1935, p. 8), e.g., playing a tune, catching a fish, driving a car. A movement, on
the other hand (e.g., glandular secretions, reflex winking, flexing the leg) is the actual
physical behavior displayed on any given occasion.
The precise nature of a movement was left somewhat vague in Guthrie's account: in
theory it referred to the contraction of muscles or the secretion of glands (molecular
movements) but in practice it referred to observable movements of the body, e.g.,
depression of a pole (molar movements). He seems to have assumed that observable
movements consisted of the underlying molecular movements, but he never specified in
any satisfactory way how this was to be conceived.
According to Guthrie a theory of learning must first discover how movements are
learned and only then proceed to discover how more complex forms of behavior are
developed. If one investigates only the latter (e.g., acts) then one may learn how results
44
are attained (e.g., how long it takes to learn a maze) but one will never discover the
underlying process involved (the means employed) in actually achieving the result. To
know the latter is to know why the animal makes the movements it does.
Movements are learned according to a single principle: contiguous association of a
stimulus pattern (cue) and a set of movements. liA combination of stimuli which has
accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement''
(1935, p. 26). Guthrie is careful to point out however that rarely will a cue be repeated in
exactly the same form (1933, p. 134). Instead of the original set of stimuli (S) some
elements will be missing or additional ones will be present thus forming a slightly
different stimulus pattern S'. On the occasion of S'?by the principle of contiguity?the
same movements will be learned. Since the movement M is conditioned both to S and S'
there is a variety of situations that will call out the same response. In this way habits are
formed, for habits are tendencies to respond in a particular way to a wide variety of
circumstances (1938, p. 65).
Skills
Likewise skills are collections of habits that achieve an end in a wide variety of
circumstances. In a skill a variety of means for obtaining a single end has been learned.
Skill, in short, can be defined only in terms of success, of achievement of a goal.
Skill consists in the ability to bring about some end-result with maximum
certainty and minimum degree of energy, or time, or of time and energy. (1935,
p. 162)
Skills are combinations of movements (M , M2, . . . , Mn), where each M( is one
way of attaining the goal and consists of a series of movements. Each Mi is learned in a
single occurrence, but repetition and practice are necessary in order to make M- to a
variety of situations (Sr S2, . . . , Sn). Thus escaping from a puzzle box or driving a car
can be done in an indefinite number of ways, in different postures, from different
positions, by means of different limbs, etc.
Unlike habits, therefore, actions (or skills) cannot be defined in terms of bodily
movements alone, since there is an indefinite number of movement series that will count
as the same movement. Actions are defined in terms of their success vis-d-vis the
environment and this often necessitates the mention of some environmental object,
situation, or the effects of these movements. "Even so simple an act as reaching out and
grasping something cannot be defined in terms of movement, since it may be executed
from many different positions and at many different distances" (1940, p. 140). Psychol
ogy must first study how movements are learned and only then proceed to the study of
acts.
There is little use for the prediction of movements alone, and there exists almost
no vocabulary for their description. To try to describe behavior by naming the
muscles in use and the degrees and order of their contraction would be absurd. It
is the changes brought about by movements, changes usually in the environment
and not in the organism, that are of practical importance, and theories of
behavior must somehow bring acts as well as movements into their predictive
laws and principles. (1940, p. 127)
A complete psychology therefore must deal with both (1940, p. 139).
45
Teleology Again
Guthrie's views concerning the distinction between acts and movements have been
criticized by some psychologists. According to them Guthrie has failed to make the
distinction clear-cut because he has actually studied movements defined in terms of the
effects produced. Consequently movements as well as acts are defined in terms of
end-results. For example, Mueller and Schoenfeld (1954) argue that Guthrie and Horton
in their Cats in a Puzzle Box (1946) recorded those movements that resulted in the rod
being deflected.
. . . every picture taken was associated with a response defined in terms of the
4 'effect'' of rod deflection. . . . Guthrie and Horton have taken a restricted set of
pictures. They photographed the set of all positions assumed by their cats at the
moment of rod deflection . . . it is not obvious that the recording of a movement
can be logically distinguished from an ' 'effect'' specification. If this be true then
the issue of movement versus effect raised by Guthrie may be considered an
ephemeral one. (1954, pp. 357-358)
It is true that Guthrie recorded those movements that occurred when the rod was
deflected but the issue does not seem to be (as Mueller and Schoenfeld believe) whether
movements must be defined in terms of their effects or not (e.g., depressing a bar,
pushing a button) but whether such definitions are teleological or not. In the same way, to
say that "Guthrie rejects any 'effect' definition of the response as 'deflecting the rod' "
(1954, p. 357) requires an important qualification in order to prevent misunderstanding.
The real issue to which Guthrie is addressing himself is whether one can make a
distinction between a movement (whether defined in terms of effects or not) and a skill
(an action). A skill, by its very nature, is the ability to achieve a goal in various ways,
such that if one means is blocked, another one is used. Writing a letter can be done on a
typewriter or by pen and ink; it can be done by either hand, and so on. If the right arm is
broken, for example, then the individual might type the letter with his left hand, and so
on. This plasticity of means in relation to an end such that if one means is prevented,
another one is used by the organism is a central feature of purposive, i.e., goal-directed,
behavior. It is this conceptual scheme ? Tolman's account of molar behavior as
purposive?that Guthrie is confronting.
Descriptions in terms of effects are not teleological in the same way that goal-directed
behavior is teleological (any more than a cause is a teleological concept because it
actually produces some effect). The point is that a definition in terms of effects-on-the
environment is not what distinguishes an act from a movement. The issue is whether an
animal learns to move its foot or to pull the string by one means or another (Guthrie,
1935, p. 199). The issue is not ephemeral: it coincides with the issue of whether
'behavior' refers to physical movements or to goal-directed actions, and to the question
of how actions (skills) are related to physical movements.
Guthrie seems to be aware that an effect definition need not be equivalent to a
purposive definition.
For a simple outcome of a series of acts to be a goal it is not enough that it be an
outcome. Every event ends in something or other. Every action or series of
46
actions has an outcome. For this outcome to be dignified by the name of goal it is
necessary that it be planned by an agent. (1935, p. 168)
A skill such as 'escaping from a puzzle box' is defined in terms of its effect, namely,
'escape.' But what is more important than this definition in terms of effect is the
variability of means employed (actually or possibly) and the persistence towards such an
effect. As Tolman pointed out it is docility that characterizes goal-directed behavior. A
definition of an act in terms of what it accomplishes may be a description of the purpose
of an act, but only if other conditions are present such as persistence and plasticity. The
fact that a given process P has a result Q may allow us to redescribe P as a case of Q. But
this description in terms of effect need not be teleological unless several other conditions
are present. To say therefore that behavior is defined in terms of its effects need not be
equivalent to a claim about its being teleological.
I am suggesting, in other words, that (at least some) skills and actions are teleological
and that Guthrie is contrasting movements with these teleological concepts. Escape from
a puzzle box, driving a car, playing a tune are cases of purposive behavior because of the
reasons given by Holt and Tolman, namely, their counterfactualforce. The end attained
(the result or accomplishment) picks out the goal or purpose (what was done) but we
describe behavior as a case of 'catching a fish' because the behavior prior to that end
satisfied certain conditions or criteria for our saying it was directed to that state of affairs.
Since, as Guthrie notes, there are a number of effects apiece of behavior produces (e.g.,
he not only caught a fish, he disobeyed the law by not having a fishing license, he worked
up a sweat, he fulfilled his promise to his son, etc.), we pick out one of these as "what he
did" because of other behavioral criteria, which for Tolman are reducible to docility.
Guthrie's Revised System

Guthrie's views concerning the nature of learning have changed somewhat over the
years, although his 1935 system is basically the same as his 1959 system.13 But Guthrie's
mature views about psychology indicate a gradual change in his philosophical outlook
over the years. In his latest theoretical work (1959) he is less confident about his earlier
views concerning the nature of behavior and he now suggests a much less physicalistic
interpretation. In shifting his perspective Guthrie seems to be approaching a concept of
behavior that bears certain resemblances to Action Theory.
During the first century of the development of psychology, we have made great
efforts to be objective. We hoped to achieve this by limiting ourselves to the
categories of physics and using as the weather signs of behavior only the physical
or chemical events normally activating sense organs. The determinations of
13In his latest views Guthrie retains the act-movement distinction but, in addition, introduces some new
terms. The total movement pattern occurring during a stretch of time Guthrie calls the 'integral movement
response of the animal' (Rmt), e.g., uttering word x in posture y, with inflection z, etc. Of this Rmt a certain
detail is abstracted and studied, e.g., uttering word x. This detail of the Rmt Guthrie calls Rmd. "The detail
may be the same or equivalent in two different integral responses, Rmd and R'md, as in pronouncing the
same word in two different postures" (1959, p. 185). Thus Rmd is a response class. An act (Ra) on the other
hand "involves establishing a class of movements Rmt, R'mt, R"mt. . . which all achieve the same end . . .
The learning of an act involves the presumptive association of a class of cues, C, C\ C" . . . with the
members of the series, Rmt, R'mt, R"mt . . (1959, p. 185).
47
absolute thresholds in the various senses, the hope that response could be treated
just as movement in space which was the crude interpretation of behaviorism,
failed to carry us very far toward the understanding of behavior. The reason for
this is that we cannot reduce the classes of psychological facts which make up the
data we must deal with to component movements in space. Patterns of stimuli
and patterns of response have their psychological significance and usefulness
tied to their patterning?pattern as pattern must be recognized and dealt with.
(1959, p. 165)
A stimulus is not merely a physical change in the environment, nor is a response only a
muscular contraction. From a conceptual point of view a description of stimuli and
responses resists any reduction to physicalistic terms. Guthrie therefore has (in one of the
many senses of 'reductionisrrT) moved toward a non-reductionistic psychology.
To object to treating a simple physical change as a stimulus or a muscular
contraction as a response is not to deny that all stimuli are analyzable into such
physical changes or to deny that any specific response is analyzable into muscu
lar contractions and glandular secretions. That should be assumed. It is, how
ever, a denial that the psychological description of behavior can be made in
physical terms. It requires psychological terms which will name recurring
patterns of physical change usually requiring identification by an observer which
will include recognition of their stimulus value usually judged by time relation to
the response. (1959, p. 166)
Not only do psychologists need irreducible psychological concepts, but a further reason
augurs for non-reductionism: "the life sciences cannot be reduced to the same predictive
basis as the physical sciences. The difference is a matter of degree, not of kind. It centers
about the description of behavior in terms of purpose. The quintessence of living
behavior, and particularly that area of living behavior we call mind, lies in its purposive
ness" (1959, p. 174).
Summary
For Guthrie 'behavior1 has two different senses. Throughout his career he has insisted
that psychology should study behavior as a sequence of movements. This will result in a
theory of learning that can then be applied to more complex cases of actions. Guthrie has
never however insisted that molar behavior be excluded from psychology, only that it be
deduced from simpler kinds of behavior. He never denied that we learn molar acts, but
instead attempted to show, in a manner like that of Hull, how we learn molar acts, namely
by learning series of movements. In this respect he agreed with thinkers such as Watson
that molar behavior can be analyzed into simpler elements, but, unlike Watson, insisted
that these simpler elements were not conditioned responses a la Pavlov. Movements are
learned by contiguity, and actions are the combination of movement sequences learned in
the presence of various cues. Purposive and intentional behavior are admitted by Guthrie
but only as derived forms of behavior.
48
B. Clark Hull
'Behavior'
Although Guthrie was known as a "S-R" theorist, perhaps the psychologist most
closely associated with that approach was Clark Hull. Hull (even more than Guthrie)
came to epitomize the "mechanistic" approach to psychology and for well over two
decades (1930-1950) Hullian theory dominated the scene in behaviorism and learning
theory.
Guthrie, as we have seen, was careful to point out what he meant by a response and to
contrast his notion of behavior with that of others such as Tolman. In comparison to Hull
(or even Tolman for that matter) Guthrie was not noted for a systematic development of
his theory nor even for a clear-cut attempt to be rigorous. By contrast Hull never tired of
stressing the need for clear and precise definitions. One naturally approaches Hull's
theory therefore with the expectation that he would certainly spell out in clear form what
he meant by 'behavior.' Quite surprisingly however Hull was consistently vague about
this notion. For example in the glossary to his magnum opus of 1943 a response (R) is
defined as "reaction or response in general (muscular, glandular, electrical)" (1943,
p. 406). Nowhere in this work is the concept clarified nor even given a sustained
discussion. Likewise in Hull's later works (1951, 1952) no clarification was offered, for
there a response was defined as: "an act of some kind" (1951, p. 129; 1952, p. 358).
Hull seems to have been uncertain about the concept 'behavior.' He apparently
remained undecided whether it was a simple movement or an action. On the one hand he
claimed he was concerned with establishing basic molar behavioral laws and therefore
was concerned with molar behavior (1943, p. 17). By 'molar behavior' he meant the
"grossly observable phenomena of behavior" (1943, p. 17), whereas by 'molecular
behavior' he meant "the behavior of the ultimate 'molecules' upon which this [molar]
behavior depends, such as the constituent cells of nerve, muscle, gland, and so forth. The
term molar thus means coarse or macroscopic as contrasted with molecular or micro
scopic" (1943, p. 17). Hull goes on to say in a note that Tolman introduced this molar vs.
molecular distinction and he admits he "has taken over the concept [of molar versus
molecular] substantially as it appears in Tolman's well-known book (1932)" (1943,
p. 31). However, it turns out that although Hull has taken over the concept of molar
behavior from Tolman, he has eliminated Tolman's characteristics of 'purpose' and
'cognition' and in fact has redefined 'molar' so as to mean only "macroscopic." It turns
out that Hull did not mean by 'molar' what Tolman meant at all. A key issue between Hull
and Tolman therefore concerns the characterization of molar behavior.
But even though Hull claims he is concerned with molar ( = macroscopic) behavior
and even though his characteristic experiments contain molar responses as their subject
matter (e.g., "leaping the barrier," "leaping against the wooden walls," "biting the
floor" [1943, p. 71]) he is interested in molar behavior in a very different way than
Tolman was. For Hull molar behavior is something to he explained by means of simpler
kinds of movements. Behavior-as-molar is to be a derived concept ? derived from
behavior-as-molecular ? whereas for Tolman behavior-as-molar was a primitive con
cept. In fact the concept of behavior occurring in Hull's postulates is that of ^molecular
49
movement (an effector activity). This is clear for example in his definition of primary
reinforcement (1943, p. 80) in which what gets connected is an afferent activity and an
efferent activity. Hull believes however that a "molecular" habit (sHr) is in "close
functional relationship" to a "molar" habit (SHR) and (in some sense) is isomorphic to
it (1943, p. 387). More complex molar behavior (such as running down a maze) is in turn
to be derived from these molar habits (sHR's) presumably because it too is in "close
functional relationship" with molar habits. How Hull conceived the functional relation
ship between sHr and SH R remains unclear (although nothing crucial seems to depend
upon an assumption that SH R is a response class mediated by various kinds of different
sHr's). The more important issue concerns the relationship between SHR and more
complex molar behavior, for it is here that the issue of response equivalence (and the
open-ended variability of behavior) emerges in explicit form.
Hull's basic notion of behavior therefore seems to be that of a movement and
moreover a molecular movement. By contrast Tolman believed that molar behavior as
purposive is a primitive (basic, undefined) concept in his system. Hull turns out to be in
agreement with Guthrie therefore as opposed to Tolman.
Purpose and Teleology

Hull admitted of course that Tolman was correct in claiming that molar behavior is
purposive. But just as molar behavior is to be "derived" from a molecular account so is
purposive behavior. In fact much of the early Hullian program was just such an attempt to
show that purpose and cognition could be explained in a "mechanistic" way.
Like many others before him, Hull believed purpose and other teleological notions to
be obscure and, in some sense, mysterious (1943, p. 26). But like Guthrie he was
prepared to accept the obvious fact that "we designate behavior sequences by their
goals" (1943, p. 25). This is a convenient practice for the layman, but a scientist, he
thought (again like Guthrie), would not be so "thoughtless" but would focus (initially)
on movements which would explain such behavioral achievements.
An ideally adequate theory even of so-called purposive behavior ought, there
fore, to begin with colorless movement and mere receptor impulses as such, and
from these build up step by step both adaptive behavior and maladaptive
behavior. The present approach does not deny the molar reality of purposive acts
(as opposed to movements), of intelligence, of insight, of goals, of intents, of
strivings, or of value; on the contrary, we insist upon the genuineness of these
forms of behavior. We hope ultimately to show the logical right to the use of such
concepts by deducing them as secondary principles from more elementary
objective primary principles. Once they have been derived we shall not only
understand them better but be able to use them with more detailed effectiveness,
particularly in the deduction of the movements which mediate (or fail to mediate)
goal attainment, than would be the case if we had accepted teleological se
quences at the outset as gross, unanalyzed (and unanalyzable) wholes (1943,
pp. 25-26; my emphasis).
In insisting that 4goal-directedness' is a "secondary principle" he is squarely at odds
with Tolman. Since he believed purposive behavior could be deduced from simpler
elements, Hull was also opposed to Tolman's claims about emergence.
50
Some writers [Tolman and Koffka] believe that there is an impassable theoretical
gulf between mere muscle contractions and the attainment of goals; that the latter
are "emergents." This doctrine of despair grows naturally out of the doctrine of
teleology. The present treatise accepts neither teleology nor its pessimistic
corollary. Goals, intents, intelligence, insight, and value are regarded not only as
genuine but as of the first importance. Ultimately an attempt will be made to
derive all of these things objectively as secondary phenomena from more
elementary objective conditions, concepts, and principles. (1943, p. 29)
Hull's promissory note concerning a mechanistic account of purpose and cognition
has been severely criticized in recent years by some philosophers (Peters, 1958; Taylor,
1964). A first installment on this note had been made by Hull several years earlier (1930,
1931, 1934, 1935, 1937) and apparently many psychologists were sufficiently convinced
by this account to cease even discussing teleology. At least to judge by the discussions of
teleology among psychologists, by 1935 most of them ceased worrying about it, satisfied
(apparently) that purpose could be incorporated into a naturalistic science of behavior in
the manner suggested by Hull.
In many ways Hull's treatment of teleology is a paradigm of the mechanistic's
approach. His treatment of the issue was not new of course. Several others before him
had roughly the same idea (Craig, 1918; Woodworth, 1918, 1921; Smith and Guthrie,
1921). The basic strategy in such mechanistic accounts is simple. First characterize
teleological behavior in terms of certain "public criteria." As our discussion of purpo
sive behaviorism suggested, these criteria for a goal-directed system would include
notions such as persistence, equifinality (variable means towards a common goal),
compensatory behavior, docility, etc. However one decides the issue of the exact criteria
adequate for teleological behavior, notions such as these will most certainly be
employed. Witness for example how later attempts to characterize goal-directed be
havior in "neutral," "objective" terms haveemployed identical notions (Russell, 1945;
Sommerhoff, 1950; Braithwaite, 1953; Nagel, 1961).
Next the mechanist attempts to explain these "behavioral marks of purpose" by
invoking "mechanistic" principles. For example the "persistence until" a goal is
reached is to be accounted for by an antecedent stimulus "driving'' the organism towards
a goal, and so on.
The problem to which Hull addressed himself therefore was how to explain purposive
behavior within an S-R framework. If we accept Tolman's account of the characteristic
marks of purpose?persistence, plasticity, docility, as Hull clearly did (1930, 1937)?
his task was to explain these behavioral properties from a "mechanistic" point of view.
The theoretical devices he introduced included a drive stimulus, the rg-sg mechanism and
the habit-family hierarchy. In addition Hull required several assumptions about how
these devices worked?short-circuiting, redintegration and the goal-gradient
hypothesis.
Assume initially (Hull suggests) there is a sequence of physical stimuli in the external
world (Sj-S^Sg . . .) leading to a goal object Sg: Sj-? S2-* S3-? S . Assume secondly
that overt responses (R , R2, R3) are evoked by these stimuli (e.g., by classical
conditioning) and that these responses eventuate in a response to the goal object (e.g.,
eating)?the goal response Rg. Assume thirdly the organism is motivated by some drive
51
stimulus (Sd) which persists through this entire stimulus sequence. Next assume that each
Rj has (possibly internal) sensory consequences (e.g., proprioceptive feedback), so that
Rj ?> Sj. The goal response (Rg) can be divided into two subcomponents: one (rg) is that
part of Rg that can occur alongside any of the earlier instrumental responses (e.g., rg
might be salivation) whereas the other component (Rg') is incompatible with the occurr
ence of these earlier instrumental responses. We can illustrate all of this by the following
diagram:
Now by the principle of redintegration "the components of a stimulus complex

impinging upon the sensorium at or near the time that a response is evoked, tend
themselves independently to acquire the capacity to evoke substantially the same re
sponse" (1930, p. 513). Since Sj was present (with Sp when R. was evoked, Sj will now
tend to evoke Rj. We have therefore the additional associations established: sx~R2,
s2-R3, etc., and furthermoreSd--Rg', Sd-rg(since Sdwas present along with SgwhenRg was
evoked), together with S^-R, (since Sd was present with each Sj when Rj was evoked). If
we let boxes represent simultaneous stimuli we thus have:
By the goal-gradient hypothesis (1932) those responses closest to the goal are con
ditioned more strongly than those responses further from the goal. Consequently the
strength of Sd-Rg should be stronger than Sd-R3; Sd-R3 should be stronger than Sd~R2;
and so on. Since Sd is present throughout the entire series and since Sd--Rg is the strongest
"bond," Rg should tend to occur early in the sequence if Sd-Rg is stronger than (say)
Sd-R2. Consequently goal responses should tend to appear early in the sequence and as a
result the intervening response R3 tends to drop out. Hull calls this phenomenon the
short-circuiting of intervening responses: "the tendency of a significant or critical
reaction in a learning behavior sequence, to move forward in the series in such a way as to
antedate (and thus eliminate) useless and irrelevant behavior segments formerly preced
ing it" (1929, p. 65). Since Sd (by redintegration) evokes r, and since (by short
circuiting) this response tends to occur earlier in the sequence we can add a response
tendency (rj to our diagram. And since responses have sensory consequences, r, should
52
also have sensory consequences (sg). These too should tend to appear earlier in the
sequence. Again by redintegration, these earlier so's should tend to evoke both sub
sequent instrumental responses and subsequent ru's.
Hull is now ready to explain some of the phenomena involving purposiveness. The
persistence until a goal is obtained is a property to be explained by the persisting Sd,
which "drives" the organism until a goal response Rg removes that stimulus. Foresight
which is "the reaction to an event which may be impending, but which has not yet taken
place" (1930, p. 514) is explained by short-circuiting: an organism salivates "in antici
pation" (r ) before reaching the food sg) because the response occurs earlier in the chain.
Cognition is explained in the same way. Ideas (e.g., the thought of the to-be-attained
goal) are equated with the rg-sg sequence (1931, p. 502)?in effect salivation is the
thought of the goal. The symbolism so characteristic of thought is thus located in these
"pure stimulus acts" (the sg's).
To explain plasticity, variability, equifinality, response equivalence, directive corre
lation, etc., Hull introduces the key notion of a habit-family hierarchy. Suppose an
external stimulus (SA) is conditioned to various antagonistic responses ("R , R2, R3).
Suppose secondly that various stimuli (Sm, Sn, S0) are all conditioned to a single overt
goal response (Rg). Since responses have senstory consequences we have Rj?sp R2? s2,
R3?s3, and Rm-sm, Rn-sn, R0--s0. If these two sequences get associated we would have
the following situation:
Here we have a habit family which is "a group of two or more habit sequences, all of
which may be initiated by a particular stimulus and terminated by a particular reaction"
(1934, p. 39). We need to assume these individual habits have different strengths, so that
S^-Rj-Sj?-Rm--sm--RGfor example is the strongest (perhaps because it is the shortest
sequence to the goal). The variability of behavioral means to a goal (plasticity, equi
finality, directive correlation) is accounted for in the following way. If SA occurs then
53
Rj will occur, but if the R2 sequence is stronger it will occur after the frustrated Rt (or
perhaps in place of it). If for example Rt does not attain the goal, its strength is
decreased by extinction, R2 now becomes stronger and thus appears.
The crucial phenomenon of response equivalence Hull purports to explain by this
model also, since there are equivalent ways of obtaining the goal and the transfer of
responses can also be accommodated, for if one response attains a goal in (say) a novel
situation, this learning is transferred to other members of the habit family hierarchy
without practice because, assuming the same drive is operating and assuming this drive
evokes an r,, this fractional anticipatory goal response (r,) would be present in both the
old and the new situations. If the first response could not be made, the sg would release
another response in a habit-family hierarchy which would appear to be novel.
Admittedly Hull's account is sketchy and programmatic. The judgment of history is
not in yet but such a "mechanistic" model seems to have a great deal of explanatory
power. This explanatory power may be illusory of course and several individuals have
levelled damaging criticism at this model.
The most damaging criticism of the r,-so mechanism for purposive behavior is an
objection raised by J. A. Deutsch (1960). Deutsch argues (convincingly in my opinion)
that Hull is forced to treat rT as an ordinary response, subject to the well-established
experimental laws of conditioning, extinction, etc. At the same time however, Deutsch
claims, Hull is also forced to treat an r, as expectation ordinarily understood and,
consequently, such a response cannot be an ordinary response at all.14 For example Hull
believes an r, (e.g., salivation) was an "anticipatory response" to the goal stimulus
(food). However, Deutsch suggests, responses can be reinforced in various ways and one
way of reinforcing the r, in question would be by means of the goal stimulus water. Water
should therefore reinforce an r T (even though this r 1 is a fractional part of the original goal
response of eating). But such an account is inadequate to explain certain kinds of maze
behavior. These results can only be explained, according to Deutsch, if it is assumed that
a fractional goal response must be reinforced by the goal response it is a part of (and not
by different goal responses). But to assume this is to assume an r, is not like an ordinary
response at all but rather is equivalent to the ordinary notion of expectancy (along with
the associated notions of the confirmation or frustration of such an expectancy). If this is
correct, then the Hullian rg-sg mechanism for explaining purposive behavior must be
judged to be inadequate since it presupposes teleological and cognitive concepts from the
start and therefore cannot derive them as "secondary principles" from neutral
a-teleological concepts.15
Summary
In a clear sense Hull represents a view that is a direct descendant of Watson's. Watson
believed that complex molar behavior could be explained in terms of the composition of
simple conditioned reflexes. Psychology therefore should study how movements (con
ditioned reflexes) are learned and how they combine to produce more complex behavior
(frequency and recency). Ultimately however Watson was interested in molar behavior.
14C/. Hull's remarks: "When rg sg leads to Sg ? Rg, i.e., when the anticipation of food leads to the
actual eating of the food, we have what we shall call the realization of an anticipation" (1952, p. 133).
15A similar objection has been raised by Charles Taylor (1964).
54
Guthrie's position is quite similar to Watson's: molar behavior is to be accounted for by

first studying how individual movements get learned (contiguity) and then one may study
how complex molar behavior ("acts") are composed of these simpler movements
(contiguity of many movements and many cues). Guthrie differs from Watson however
in his choice of the basic behavioral atoms, for they are not conditioned reflexes but
movements conditioned to cues. Like Watson and Guthrie, Hull too believes psychology
is interested in molar behavior and seeks to explain this complex form of behavior in
terms of simpler elements (simple s-r habits which are presumed to be isomorphic to S-R
habits). This occurs by reinforcement. More complex behavior, e.g., maze solutions,
requires in addition to the principle of reinforcement various other principles. But
although Hull's account is similar to Watson's he did differ on one point: the assumption
of what form the "composition laws" would take. In a footnote Hull remarked:
Neither here nor in any previous publication has [Hull] assumed that the more
complex forms of behavior are synthesized from reflexes which play the role of
building blocks. This may or may not be true. His working hypothesis is, rather,
that the principles of action discovered in conditioned reaction experiments are
also operative in the higher behavioral processes. The compound adjective in the
expression, 'conditioned-reflex principles,' accordingly refers to the locus of
discovery of the principles rather than to their locus of operation. (1935, p. 228)
Hull believed that basic learning principles could be discovered in simple conditioning
experiments. For him the basic law was that of habit formation by means of reinforce
ment (and not classical conditioning). In time one would discover (i.e., postulate and
test) other laws (e.g., stimulus generalization, the goal-gradient hypothesis) which as
postulates would allow one to deduce statements concerning more complex forms of
behavior. Such behavior need not be very similar to conditioned response behavior in
terms of its phenomenological appearance. Hull's composition laws therefore were very
complex compared to Watson's rather simple ones. But in spirit, though, Hull was
continuing and completing the program of "mechanistic behaviorism," a task that
required a much more rigorous research program and much less missionary zeal.
The adequacy of this entire program hinges of course on the plausibility of certain
assumptions and concepts. For example Hull's account of purpose depends upon a set of
assumptions, the key one being the r,-so mechanism together with the habit-family
hierarchy. This latter notion also is the real basis for Hull's belief that actions can be
analyzed into simpler movements, conditioned to prior stimuli. For in order to account
for behavioral plasticity, novelty and the indefinite variety of forms a given piece of
behavior may take, Hull had to assume response generalization to be the mediating
factor. This in turn depended on the notion of the habit-family hierarchy. But strangely
enough response generalization has never been explicated and defended in an explicit
way as the basis for the "open-texture" of behavior. Indeed the experimental literature
on response generalization is quite sparse and limited to rather isolated cases largely
involving classical conditioning. But if response generalization (habit family hierar
chies, etc.) is to bear the weight it is supposed to bear, such notions must be elaborated
both theoretically and experimentally. Neither of these things have, up to now, been done
with any kind of systematic effort.
55
V. Operant Behaviorism: B.F. Skinner
Response Classes
In 1935 B. F. Skinner published an article entitled "The Generic Nature of the
Concepts of Stimulus and Response." In that article and in his theoretical work of 1938
Skinner introduced the notion of a response as a class concept, an approach that all
psychologists since then seem to have adopted. The necessity of this approach is both
obvious (once it is pointed out) and important. Every particular response is a unique
spatio-temporal individual and can never be repeated. Certainly therefore psychology, if
it is to predict behavior, must predict responses that will occur in the future, and surely,
since response instances may vary in an indefinite number of ways, certain properties of a
response will be ignored as being irrelevant, whereas others will be seized upon as
important. A response, in short, must of necessity be a class of responses (a response
class). But since there are various ways of creating or forming response classes the
determination of what properties are essential for class membership and which are not
will have to be decided with care. The experimenter must initially stipulate a property as
being definitive of class membership and treat all other properties as insignificant. Such a
stipulative definition must go hand in hand with experimental research since what
stipulative definition we give will depend upon the prior observation of behavior and in
particular the prior observation that behavior has certain recurring properties.
A defining property appears on the side of the response in the first step toward
what is called the discovery of a reflex. Some aspect of behavior is observed to
occur repeatedly under general stimulation, and we assign a name to it which
specifies (perhaps not explicitly) a defining property. (Skinner, 1935, p. 354)
There are other steps involved in ' 'creating" a response but for now we can ignore those
and focus on the nature of a response class.
According to Skinner such a class concept must be employed for all types of
behavioral responses, including even reflexes.
It will be seen, then, that in stating the flexion reflex as a unit the term 'stimulus'
must refer to a class of events, the members of which possess some property in
common, but otherwise differ rather freely, and the term 'response' to a similar
class showing a greater freedom of variation but also defined rigorously with
respect to one correlation of classes, and the problem of analysis is the problem
of finding the right defining properties. (1938, p. 34)
The reason for taking such a position is the obvious one that members of a certain
response class such as 'pressing a lever' or even 'leg flexion' vary in numerous ways
from one instance to another (e.g., in amplitude, latency, and direction). Instances of
such a response-class differ in many insignificant details. If each particular instance of a
class formed a different response this would make our study of behavior impossible.lfi
The extension of such an approach to operant behavior (behavior that is not 'elicited'
by a stimulus?but rather 'emitted' by an organism for which there is no known
'"Skinner (1938, p. 10) calls such an approach to the study of reflexes & botanizing of reflexes and his
argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to operant behavior. MacCorquodale and Meehl (1954, p. 219) make
the same point.
56
experimental stimulus) was an obvious next step. If the argument for construing reflex
responses as class concepts is cogent, the argument for regarding operant responses as
class concepts is even more compelling. For an operant response not only varies in
accidental details (e.g., rate and strength) but also in another important way: two operant
responses (e.g., two cases of a bar press) may possess no common properties at all except
one, namely, "resulting in a bar press." Not only may a bar press involve varying
accidental qualities such as amplitude and latency, it may also involve differences in
more important characteristics such as the limb used, the position, and so on. A bar press
might be performed with either paw, both paws, either leg, both legs, head, posterior,
and so on. The one and only property any such response need have is an achievement
property: resulting in a bar press. Such a class is a 'functional' class.
The number of distinguishable acts on the part of the rat that will give the
required movement of the lever is indefinite and very large. They constitute a
class, which is sufficiently well-defined by the phrase 'pressing the lever.'
(Skinner, 1938, p. 37)
To understand a functional class we must distinguish two types of properties:
extrinsic properties and intrinsic properties. Intrinsic properties are properties (shared
by members of a class) the definition of which requires no reference to a result or effect.
These may include secondary as well as primary qualities (e.g., latency, amplitude and
rate). Extrinsic properties, on the other hand, are properties members of a class have in
virtue of the effect they produce (e.g., 'causing cancer'). Extrinsic properties are
relational since they involve both the individual members of the class and the effect
produced.
It is the essential characteristic of a functional class that membership is defined
exclusively in terms of extrinsic properties and not in terms of intrinsic properties. Cars,
planes, boats, and bicycles belong to the class of 'items of transportation' since they all
have the function of getting an individual from one place to another. Watches, hourglas
ses, and sundials are members of the functional class 'time pieces' because they possess
the property of 'telling time.' No other property except the functional property (the
extrinsic property) need be possessed by the members. Watches, hourglasses and
sundials need not be made of glass, nor be round, nor be manufactured, and so on.
The major characteristics of a functionally defined class can be formulated in the
following way:17
(i) The functional class, X, possesses more than one member (x 1? x2, . . . , xn)
(there are co-producers of the effect).
(ii) Each member, xj9 is a sufficient condition for producing the result Y (it is
sufficient, that is, if taken in conjunction with its environment; otherwise it
is necessary). Each xi5 we can say, causes Y.
(iii) There is no requirement that the members of X possess any common
intrinsic properties in addition to the function involved.
(iv) Frequently our main concern in functional classes centers on the probability
an Xj will produce Y.
17For a discussion of 'functional class' to which I am indebted see Churchman and Ackoff (1947, 1950)
and Moore and Lewis (1953).
57
It can easily be seen that a bar press is just such a functionally defined class, since
anything is a bar press just in case it results in the deflection of the bar. Let 'D' be the
property of deflecting or depressing the bar. Then the following is true:
First, the class 'bar press' (BP) includes more than one member: there are many types
of co-producers of D, namely left paw, right paw, snout, etc.
Secondly, each member, \[9 of (BP) causes D. Assuming there is a bar and assuming
the cumulative recorder is activated, each \{ is a sufficient condition for D; otherwise x- is
a necessary condition.
Thirdly, the members of (BP) need not possess any property but D. They need not
involve the same limb and muscle movements, they need not involve the same posture,
they need not involve the same position or point of pressure on the bar. Of course each
must meet one condition and that is that the minimum force required to depress the lever
must be exerted, but as long as this minimum force is exerted there is no requirement
about how much force beyond threshold is required.
Finally, the probability that any member of (BP) will be successful?the probability
of D?is precisely the response measure taken by Skinner.
Skinner was aware that he was dealing with such a functionally defined concept, for
he remarks that "we merely specify what is to be counted as a response and refuse to
accept instances not coming up to the specification. A specification is successful if the
entity which it describes gives smooth curves for the dynamic laws" (1938, p. 37). A
movement produces certain consequences and "the consequences define the properties
with respect to which responses are called similar" (1953, p. 65).
Other operant responses are defined in a similar way, for example, an escape
response from a shock,18 an avoidance response, running a maze, jumping to the
horizontal stripes in a Lashley jumping stand, escapting from a puzzle box, solving an
anagram puzzle, unlocking a latch, solving a syllogism, and choosing the correct
discriminative stimulus.
Of course we could define the above responses more specifically. We could define
'solving a syllogism' in terms of 'using the reduction method' as compared to 'using the
Barbara method.' If we did we would now have two response classes instead of one.
Likewise we could define two classes of 'bar press,' one class defined in terms of 'bar
press by front paws' and the other 'bar press by snout.' These cases again would be
functionally defined classes but more specific ones.19
So far the discussion of 'functionally defined class' has remained on a molar level.
But it is obviously applicable to the molecular level also. If we take a molar response,
say, 'bar press with right paw with x grams of force,' we can extend the notion of
'functional response' to include this particular response. There are an indefinite number
of molecular responses?muscle fiber movement, neural discharge?all of which could
result in the particular bar press. However we need not be concerned with the particular
molecular pattern involved. Our only concern need be the result: the particular bar press.
18A movement is an 'escape response' if it has the single property of resulting in the animal being
removed from the compartment. A rat can, for example, jump in an indefinite number of ways from an
indefinite number of positions and from an indefinite number of postures; it can run into the compartment in
an indefinite number of ways, and so on.
19This is similar to Logan's (1956, 1960) micromolar approach to learning theory, in which any
differences in response properties may serve to delineate different response categories.
58
Operant Response
Responses must always be taken to be response classes, defined functionally in terms

of their effects. What else can be said concerning the concept of behavior in Skinner's
system? In particular what is the notion of an operant response?
There are several different accounts of an 'operant' that can be offered. The first
sense of 'operant' is one which naturally suggests itself: an operant is a response class
with the defining property of producing a certain effect on the environment. Such a
response "operates" on the environment to produce certain kinds of effects.
This first reading of 'operant' can perhaps be found in certain remarks by Skinner in
his early writings. The psychologist (i.e., behaviorist) is interested, Skinner claims, in
what the organism is doing. In particular, "behavior is that part of the functioning of an
organism which is engaged in acting upon or having commerce with the outside world"
(193 8, p. 6). Behavior is not simply a movement of the organism (although in some cases
it might be, e.g., if one wanted to shape 'raising the head') but rather the effect of
movements on the external world. Such behavior ordinarily "operates" on the environ
ment.
By behavior, then, I mean simply the movement of an organism or of its parts in a

frame of reference provided by the organism itself or by various external objects
or fields of force. It is convenient to speak of this as the action of the organism
upon the outside world, and it is often desirable to deal with an effect rather than
with the movement iself, as in the case of the production of sounds. (1938, p. 6)
If we are interested in bar presses we simply define the class 'bar press' as any physical
movement of the organism that has the effect on the environment of depressing the bar. It
can be performed with either paw, snout, tail, etc. The topography is of little concern
since we are focusing on the effects of certain movements. These effects need not be
reinforcing consequences, since we may be concerned (at this stage) only with the
frequency of a certain kind of behavior in its "natural" setting. We might still want to
call such behavior an 'operant' since it "operates" on the environment, even though no
reinforcement is necessarily involved (from an experimental point of view). Such a
notion seems to be very close to what many thinkers would call an "action'' (e.g., raising
one's arm) as opposed to a "movement." No known stimulus elicits the behavior, it is
variable, it is done by the organism, etc. Such parallels could, no doubt, be extended. But
a psychologist such as Skinner is interested in why the behavior occurred (the explanation
of behavior). Behavior, if it is to be the subject matter for a science, must be lawfully
related to other "conditions." This condition Skinner imposes on the very definition of
behavior such that one's unit of behavior must be lawfully related to other variables.
Such a constraint on one's definition of behavior has been suggested by Skinner
consistently over the years. For example in one of his earliest papers referred to earlier, he
suggested the first step in the definition of a response was to observe a behavior class and
stipulate a property as being definitive of that class (see above). The next step (which we
omitted from discussion) was the following:
When a defining property has been decided upon, the stimuli which elicit
responses possessing it are discovered by exploration. (Skinner, 1935, p. 354)
59
That is, we vary the stimuli to determine which stimulus property is eliciting the reflex.
". . . the defining property of the stimulus is inferred from the part common to the
different stimuli which are thus found to be effective" (1935, p. 355).
Two points should be made about this claim. First, a correlated stimulus is necessary
in order to obtain real4 4natural" classes and to rule out4'unrelated" activities. Secondly,
what is common to all the stimuli correlated with our response class may not be any
intrinsic property at all but rather merely the ability to elicit the response (e.g., what
constitutes a 4'noxious" stimulus).
Once the stimulus class correlated to behavior has been determined and we have
established a functional relation between them (a "smooth curve") we then define our
response as the correlated stimulus-response class, i.e., our response is now a functional
relation. A reflex therefore is the functionally related eliciting stimulus class and
response class. If our correlations are not regular (i.e., we do not obtain "smooth
curves") we must continue experimentally in the above way until we obtain "smooth
curves."
This analysis applies, mutatis mutandis, to an operant response: the observation of a
behavior class, followed by the determination of what stimuli are reinforcing this class.
(This in turn is followed by determining what stimuli are the "occasion" for the
response.) Consequently an operant is then defined as the relation between behavior,
reinforcement and discriminative stimuli. In this entire process of course stimuli are
defined in terms of their effects on behavior and therefore cannot be independently
defined.
An operant response therefore really cannot be defined as we attempted to do earlier

in terms of its effects on the environment unless we proceed to determine which stimuli
are controlling this behavior, e.g., stipulating the property of behavior upon which
reinforcement is contingent, varying reinforcement and determining the effects, or by
varying possible discriminative stimuli and observing the effects. Thus,
. . . in the case of conditioned operant behavior the defining property of a class is
exactly that given by the conditions of reinforcement. If the reinforcement
depended, for example, upon making the response with a certain group of
muscles, the class would change to one defined by that property. (Skinner, 1938,
p. 38)
We may distinguish two kinds of operants consistent with the condition that an
operant is a relation between reinforcing stimuli and behavior. The first kind (Catania,
1973) one might call ^descriptive operant. It is the class of movements that, if they were
to occur, would have a property P such that reinforcement would occur. Suppose an
experimenter decides he will reinforce any response that has the property P. If any of
these responses were to occur, they would be reinforced.
Suppose however the organism begins pressing the bar in such a way as to satisfy the
experimenter's criterion and therefore to produce a reinforcing stimulus. If we observe
the actual movements that occur and are reinforced, this class need not be the same as a
descriptive operant. What responses actually do occur as a result of reinforcement are
60
those that are generated by the reinforcing stimulus (we might call this the functional
operant, after Catania, 1973) (see also Staddon, 1967).20
At this stage in operant research no single definition of an operant seems to be
adequate and there are objections to each of these formulations. Suppose we say for
example that an operant is a class of responses possessing a property P such that P is an
environmental effect and such that reinforcement is contingent upon P. As several
thinkers have pointed out there are exceptions to various parts of this definition. Some
ope rants seem to have no effect on the environment at all, others seem to be operant s in
spite of the fact that there is no property upon which reinforcement is contingent, etc.
(Schick, 1971). The problem of circularity involved here ? an operant is defined in
terms of reinforcing stimulus and a reinforcing stimulis is defined in terms of operants ?
has yet to be successfully resolved (Kitchener, 1976). For our present purposes however
we can bypass these problems.
Purpose
What then of the Holt-Perry-Tolman claim that when we observe molar behavior and
give the correct description of it we are observing and describing behavior that is
purposive and cognitive? Skinner's views on such a claim are complex and cannot be
summarized in a quick way. But (roughly speaking) he seems to agree with Tolman that
molar behavior, because it is operant behavior, is purposive. Operant behavior, Skinner
admits, "is essentially the field of purpose" (1966, p. x; 1974, p. 55). Skinner does
maintain (contra Tolman) however that purposiveness is not a characteristic of behavior;
it is rather a relation to an independent variable, it is a contingency of reinforcement.
"Purpose is not a property of the behavior itself; it is a way of referring to controlling
variables" (1953, p. 88). Therefore, "statements which use such words as 'incentive' or
'purpose' are usually reducible to statements about operant conditioning ..." (1953,
p. 87). Thus Skinner might attempt to incorporate "purposiveness" in the following
way. To say that behavior "persists until" the goal is attained for example is to say (for
Skinner) that the goal (reinforcement) is controlling the behavior. To say behavior is
plastic, variable, or compensatory is to say an operant class has various members, that it
has a certain strength, and that there is response induction between the members of such a
class. To say behavior is 'docile' is to say behavior is learned because of past environ
mental contingencies. To say "x did A in order to G" is to say in the past G was a
reinforcer for the operant A and that this contingency is now controlling the response, and
so on.21
Furthermore, contra Tolman, in observing behavior, strictly speaking, one does not
observe purpose or cognition (except insofar as one observes contingencies of reinforce
ment). Such locutions are for Skinner inferences since they are not "immediately
20Catania (1973) discusses still another sense of operant, the correlation between the descriptive and
functional operant.
2 Compare the following private comments of Skinner: "The whole point of operant reinforcement and
its relevance to purpose is that it is the consequences of past behavior which are relevant. They prepare the
organism for future consequences precisely as natural selection prepares species for future adaptation,
although it is always the adaptation in the past which is responsible for evolution" (Skinner, Note 5).
61
present" and one can directly observe only what is immediately present (see Kitchener,
Reference Note 3). For example, in his "Behaviorism at 50" Skinner remarks that such
terms as "expect," "hope," (and presumably "purpose," "in order to") were not
really observed facts. "The expressions 'expect,' 'hope,' 'observe,' 'feel,' and 'as
sociate' go beyond them [the contingencies of reinforcement] to identify effects on the
pigeon. The effect actually observed was clear enough: the pigeon turned more skillfully
and more frequently; but that was not the effect reported by the students" (1969, p. 237).
Presumably Skinner also wishes to maintain that "the observed facts" of behavior did
not consist of the pigeon pecking in order to get the food, nor of a rat running down the
maze for the sake of the food, although since these teleological terms really refer to
contingencies of reinforcement, and since contingencies of reinforcement can be directly
observed, it remains puzzling why teleological concepts are not part of the "data
language." Similar remarks apply to 'cognition,' and 'expectancy.' Skinner's overall
strategy however is clear: incorporate those valid aspects of purposive behavior into an
operant framework by "translating" them into "controlling relations." Those parts of
purpose that are not appropriate for psychology are simply to be rejected, ignored, or
relegated to the realm of epiphenomena. (For a fuller discussion of Skinner and teleology
see Ringen (1976).)
Behavior Again
We seem to have a rough characterization of what constitutes an operant response.
We are still no closer, however, to our original question, which was: what is the nature of
behavior for Skinner? We know that there is operant behavior, respondent behavior and
reflex behavior but this really does not answer our question. For now, in defining what an
operant was, we had to employ the generic term 'response' which is only a different word
for the same thing as behavior. What does Skinner mean by " a class of responses'' ? What
is the nature of a response? Are there any constraints on what can count as 'response'?
Must a response for example be publicly observable? The answer that Skinner gives
to this question is not altogether clear. Initially he insisted on this criterion, but more
recently (1974) he seems to give this up. For operant behaviorism must be able to deal
with "private" events, i.e., those events occurring within the skin of the subject.
Furthermore some of these private events apparently must be inferred to exist. Skinner
has no hesitancy in talking about private stimuli, private responses and private rein
forcement (1945; 1953, chapter 17; 1966-67). For example covert behavior is an
important kind of behavior for the operant behaviorist since it contains the key to
understanding the private events we ordinarily call 'thinking,' 'imagining,' etc. But
covert behavior is not open to public inspection (at least not now).
If responses need not be public then, must they coniam physical movements? Again
the answer here seems to be "No" since in thinking for example there may be no bodily
movements occurring at all. Furthermore an operant response can also be "not respond
ing," e.g., astoperant is the absence of a particular kind of response (Catania, 1973) and
DRO schedules reinforce the behavior of "zero responding," or "other behavior," e.g.,
"no pecks" for a certain period of time. In these cases no physical, bodily movements
are occurring at all.
62
Is the covert behavior called seeing, imagining, thinking, dreaming, etc., together
with "not responding" nevertheless in some sense physical in nature? Prima facie there
is a certain oddity in calling dreaming a case of covert responding, as it is in saying that
seeing is behaving in a certain way. But when it is suggested that seeing is some kind of
physical response then we can require of someone who makes such a claim to defend it.
Now the only defense so far of such a view is Skinner's invocation of an assumption that
everything is physical (1969), together with the belief that someday psychologists will
discover what kind of physical response the event in question was. Likewise it makes
simply no sense to ask if''not pecking a key" is physical or not. It depends upon whether
the organism was doing something else (e.g., walking around) in which case this seems
to be physical or whether it was simply the absence of responding in which case it seems
to be not physical at all.22 In any case there seems to be no criterion of 'physical' being
employed here.23
Furthermore what is the point of insisting that these private events must be physical?
Aside from the fact that Skinner has never indicated what 'physical' means, what does
22It does not help much to say as Skinner does: "An organism is not 'doing nothing' when there 'are no
bodily movements.' To reinforce 'not responding' is to reinforce incompatible behavior, including standing
still" (Skinner, Note 5). Is 'standing still' an example of physical behavior? If so, what is the notion of
'physical' being employed here?
23B. F. Skinner has commented on this point in the following way:
The main issue concerns what Kitchener seems to regard as the physicalistic position of
behaviorism. What is the organism doing when it is behaving perceptually? What he overlooks is
the necessary external origins of all such inner behavior. I quite accept the impossibility of
describing the behavior with the instruments available to me, and that is why I turn it over to
physiology (not because I simply make the standard assumption that everything is physiological).
The best way to begin is to look at the pure tact as I developed it in Verbal Behavior. If the
reinforcement is completely generalized, as it can be because it is the listener who takes practical
action, the tact is "totally" controlled by the occasion. It is pure reference in the logician's sense of
the word, but its dynamics have not disappeared. The stimulus control is the product of contingen
cies. Since we have the response itself, the issue remains "physical."
If, now, you look at the parallel case of the enormous number of occasions upon which we see
things and do a fantastic number of different things about them, we have something more or less
corresponding to the pure tact. The stimulus control survives even though there is no specific act or
consequence to be taken into account. I doubt very much whether there is ever pure observation or
contemplation, but if there were, it would be the by-product of a very large number of reinforced
responses under stimulus control. What is going on inside short of the explicit response to be found
in the tact is the kind of thing I must leave to the physiologist, but the genetics of the case, the long
history during which we learn to see, must not be forgotten.
An earlier point: I may have appeared to insist on public observation of behavior in the
Behavior of Organisms, but I was certainly talking about private events seven years later in my
Operationism paper, and I returned to that again in 1953 and 1957 (Reference Note 4)
As I understand Skinner's reply, both in the case of the pure tact and of perceptual behavior we have an
original "public" response which becomes private, but nevertheless is still under stimulus control. This
reply seems to me to be inadequate however. For the crucial issue that remains is: in what sense is the
original, public act of perceiving physical? When another person is perceiving some stimulus, what indeed is
this perceptual behavior? Bodily orientation or eyes focusing on an object (Skinner, 1953, pp. 265, 271) may
indeed be our evidence for perceptual behavior occurring but the behavior of perceiving must be something
else, e.g., some kind of discriminative behavior such as an "identifying response." When I close my eyes
and "see" a four-leaf clover (Skinner, 1953, p. 271) what kind of behavior is this "seeing"? When I close
my eyes and see Venice in my "mind's eye," I am engaging in the behavior of seeing Venice (Skinner,
1974, p. 83). But the question left unanswered is: what is this original behavior of 'seeing Venice'? This
indicates, I think, a need for operant behaviorists to explicate, in more detail, what account of perception they
believe to be adequate.
63
this article of faith amount to? It does not place any constraint whatsoever on the operant
research program since it really does not indicate what types of things are to be excluded.
The effect however of holding such an assumption might be to discourage one from
studying private events (as indeed historically it has). But, as Skinner clearly saw, the
operant approach can be applied to private events. The belief in physicalism seems to
play no crucial role in this paradigm at all. In fact if private events turned out to be
non-physical after all, what would be the effect on operant psychology? I can think of
nothing important that would be affected.
If this is so, then it seems an operant response need not be physical, but could be as
"mental" as one wished. For after all the heart of the paradigm seems to be the
experimental analysis of behavior by means of the strategy clearly delineated by Skinner
concerning reflexes: some kind of private response (e.g., thinking) is observed (by the
subject) to occur with some frequency. That response can be brought under experimental
control by making reinforcement (via self-reinforcement) contingent on some property of
that private event. Likewise the private response can be brought under the control of a
private/public discriminative stimulus. The result of this may turn out to be regular
functional relations ("smooth curves"). Surely this is precisely the way behaviorists
would accommodate private, mental events, the fundamental assumption being that
private responses are subject to the same laws as public responses are.
Neal Miller's "Liberalization" of S-R Psychology

This approach is similar in several ways to that of Neal Miller (1959) who has
suggested that S-R psychology must be "liberalized." His approach to the definition of
'stimulus' and 'response' is close to that of Skinner's procedure in defining an operant.
Miller suggests that the basic concepts in an S-R psychology are to be "functionally
defined" so that for example a response is anything that can be shown, by experiment, to
be attached to a new clue and hence learnable (1959, p. 241).
These definitions free the S-R theory of thinking from being restricted to
proprioception, allowing the theory to exploit images, response-produced drives
and rewards, perceptual responses, perceptual learning of acquired distinctive
ness or similarity, and the possibility that central responses can contribute to the
focusing of attention (1959, p. 242).
Presumably such "mentalistic" notions as images are to count as behavioral responses
not because they are physical?a superfluous assumption?but because they are re
sponses (or activity) that can be attached to a stimulus.
Miller proceeds to point out however what he believes to be a fundamental assump
tion of S-R psychology (and, we might add, operant psychology) that distinguishes it
from cognitive psychology, namely S-R psychologists "clearly assume that these central
processes follow the same laws [of learningjas do peripheral stimuli and responses"
(1959, p. 243).
This seems to be one essential feature distinguishing behavioristic psychology from
cognitive psychology and seems to lie at the basis of Skinner's claim that "private"
covert responses do not have a nature diferent from public, overt responses.
This assumption provides the basis for recent work on "mentalistic" concepts by
behaviorists. For example, Lloyd Homme has introduced the notion of coverants (covert
64
operants) which "are events the layman calls mental. These include thinking, imagining,
ruminating, reflecting, relaxing, daydreaming, fantasying, and so forth" (1965, p. 502).
The behaviorist's assumption that covert behavior is subject to the same laws of learning
as overt behavior and can therefore be shaped, reinforced, extinguished, etc., lies at the
basis of a whole volume devoted to "The Psychology of Private Events" (Jacobs and
Sachs, 1971).
Summary
If this account is correct, then the concept of response (and behavior) has now been
extended to cover not only the physical movements of the organism and their effects on
the environment, but also the private covert "responses" of the organism (normally
called such things as 'seeing' and 'dreaming') along with even the "absence of respond
ing." As some thinkers have suggested this extension of the concept 'behavior' to
include all of these examples may be tantamount to draining the term of any clear sense at
all. Whether this is correct or not, such an extension certainly takes the "sting" out of
behaviorism. For now there seems to be nothing really controversial about it, nor for that
matter distinctive. For given such a characterization who would not count as a be
haviorist?
What seems to have happened is that 'behavior' or 'response' has come to be equated
really with whatever is a dependent variable that can be brought under stimulus control
(Staddon, 1967), and this would include a perceptual response which was as non
physical as you like!
If this is correct, then the concept of behavior as used at least in operant psychology
and recent S-R psychology has now come to cover actions instead of movements?at
least if actions are interpreted as including (at least) purposive and cognitive concepts ?
and moreover it now includes actions both in the sense of physical actions but also actions
in the sense of mental actions, e.g., solving a problem in one's head, and "refraining"
from doing something. What sense at all can be given to the claim that behavior is
equivalent to physical movements?
VI. General Summary

After this long historical survey what can we say concerning the concept of behavior
in behaviorism? First of all that there is no single concept present in all thinkers that call
themselves 'behaviorists,' To say, as philosophers are wont to say, "'behavior' means a
physical movement of the organism" seems, to put it boldly, simply false. There are
important differences separating behaviorists, especially concerning the nature of be
havior. No single formula can capture their divergent views. But, more importantly, is
there a single behaviorist who would endorse such a view? As I have attempted to point
out this definition will not even characterize Watson (unless several important qualifica
tions are added). Although this description of 'behavior' has a germ of truth in it, it also is
misleading. For it suggests behaviorists, who seem to adopt such a view, are really
interested in movements as their subject matter. But as I have pointed out even these
behaviorists are not interested in physical movementsper se but only as they help them to
understand behavior as action. To put it simply, behaviorists generally have been
65
Richard F Kitchener
interested in actions instead of movements. Although they have studied classically

conditioned movements this was a part of their overall strategy of how best to understand
more complex forms of behavior.
In any case it is time that philosophers took a look at what behaviorists actually mean
by 'behavior.' If they do they will find there is a wide divergence of opinion about this
notion. Moreover such an examination will reveal not only fundamental disagreements
but also a belief held by some behaviorists that 'behavior' means 'purposive actions' and
even 'mental acts.' Whether behaviorists are entitled to maintain such views is of course
a separate question, but I have at least sketched a possible line of defense of that claim.
But it is absolutely essential that if a correct answer to the second question is to be given,
an adequate notion of what behaviorists actually mean by 'behavior' be carefully and
thoroughly discussed.
Secondly, although there is a remarkable heterogeneity of views concerning be
havior, there is widespread agreement that a fundamental distinction must be made
between molar behavior and molecular behavior. How to correctly draw this distinction
remains controversial but the importance of such a distinction seems to be endorsed by all
behaviorists. Different answers have been given to the questions, what is molar be
havior? and what is molecular behavior? It has been suggested that molecular behavior
includes what I have called molecular movements?muscle twitches and glandular
secretions?molar movements or both. The biggest controversy has centered however
on how one could characterize molar behavior: as grossly observable behavior (macros
copic), as movements that have certain effects on the environment, or as behavior that is
directed towards certain goals. Summarizing all of this we might say there are several
senses of 'behavior' employed by behaviorists:
(1) Molecular movements

(2) Neural activity
(3) Molar movement
(4) Molar movement with an environmental effect
(5) Goal-directed molar behavior
(6) Human action
(1) Muscle twitches and glandular secretions (molecular movements) are mostly
unobservable to the outside observer since they lie "under the skin." Ordinarily sophis
ticated instruments must be used (e.g., EMG) but not always (e.g., salivary condition
ing). Molecular movements are largely limited to the peripheral nervous system.
Whether this kind of behavior belongs to psychology or physiology is perhaps not clear,
since Pavlov, who would represent this type of work at its best, may be classed either as a
physiologist (as he desired) or as a psychologist (although why he is thought to be a
psychologist is a question rarely discussed).
(2) Neural activity is a second kind of behavior (in a limited sense of that term). For
example, suppose someone is investigating the conditioning of brain waves. (S)he may
be said to be investigating the behavior of the brain (although not perhaps the behavior of
the organism). But whether such an individual would be classed as a physiologist or
psychologist also remains unclear. Intuitively neural activity (together with the activity
66
of the central nervous system) does not seem to be behavior. Someone who was studying
the "behavior" of the brain (e.g., in learning or memory) would not seem to be a
behaviorist, unless all neurophysiologists are behaviorists (which seems slightly odd).
But how then can one legitimately call someone investigating brain activity a behaviorist
at all? This is a question rarely, if ever, discussed, but it is of crucial importance if we are
to evaluate the program of behaviorism. Unless behaviorism is to collapse into an
uninteresting thesis equivalent to scientific objectivity, it must be distinguished from
mentalism and also from a neurophysiological approach to psychology. Otherwise for
example there will be no way to distinguish logical behaviorism from the central state
identity theory, nor Skinnerian psychology from neurophysiological psychology. One
can talk about behavior in the sense of 'neural firing' but it has never been clearly
indicated how this is behavior at all, a point which applies with equal force to molecular
movements. Traditionally at least 'behavior' has been limited to 'overt behavior' and to
the peripheral nervous system but this is arbitrary since there is no natural (much less an
ontological) distinction between the peripheral and the central nervous systems. What
this means I think is that it is time to evaluate the entire concept of behavior as it applies to
anything inside the organism and especially to molecular movements. Otherwise be
haviorism will become watered down to the point of calling all neurophysiologists
'behaviorists.' This would make behaviorism no longer controversial or interesting. On
the other hand the concept of behavior should not be limited to molar movements since
there are important similarities between molar and molecular movements. Because there
is a sufficient "positive analogy" one may extend the use of the term 'behavior' to these
internal events. This seems to be what has happened historically to the notion of
'behavior.'
One possible way out of this dilemma might be to suggest that the concept of behavior
be delimited by a very complex "boot-straps" effect. We begin with a paradigm case of
behavior?a bar press?and as we investigate it together with other relevant variables we
construct a theory about it (e.g., an operant theory). As we develop our theory we
proceed to apply it to other areas of related interest that do not seem to fall under the rubric
'behavior,' e.g., thinking or EEG patterns. As we do we learn that these "non-behavior"
areas prove to be amendable to an analysis according to our theory (e.g., we discover
thinking?whatever its behavioral status?can be brought under stimulus control or can
be reinforced). We then extend the term 'behavior' to cover this area because our theory
can deal with it. In so doing we, in effect, redefine behavior theoretically (i.e., as
dictated by our theory) as whatever can be learned?classically conditioned, operantly
conditioned, brought under stimulus control, controlled by our subject, etc. We may then
distinguish those things that are "non-behavior" according to our theory and con
sequently delimit behavior in the central nervous system from "non-behavior" in the
central nervous system. This in fact seems to be what has happened historically to
behaviorism, especially to operant behavior.
(3) An observable movement of the body (or a part of the body) is a third sense of
'behavior' (molar movement). In principle it is describable kinematically and is relatively
atheoretical, e.g., an arm rising, a kicking of the leg, a blink of the eye. It covers much of
what Skinner seems to mean by response topography and coincides with what action
theorists seem to mean by a movement.
67
(4) A molar movement with an environmental effect is a prevalent conception of

molar behavior. This seems to be one way perhaps of defining an operant and it is also
the view held by Hull and Spence. When psychologists talk of molar behavior they
seem to have this notion in mind.
(5) Molar behavior as goal-directed (purposive) is molar behavior in a different
sense from the preceding account. This is the notion of behavior emphasized by
Tolman, Holt, and Perry and also that notion Guthrie and Hull were criticizing. It is not
equivalent to (4) since 'goal-directedness' is not the same property as 'having an effect
on the environment.' The former includes (according to Tolman) at least the properties
of persistence, plasticity (docility) and cognition. But none of these properties is
included under the notion of behavior contained in (4).
(6) Human action is perhaps yet another category of behavior, since it has proper
ties not contained in (5). It is intentional for example and performed by an agent. But
how intentionality is to be related to goal-directedness is not easy to answer. It certainly
seems to be broader than goal-directedness and almost certainly involves linguistic or
proto-linguistic aspects. As our survey has indicated behaviorists have (until very
recently) virtually ignored the characteristic features of human behavior.
Thirdly, a basic issue separating various behaviorists is the relation between molar
behavior and molecular behavior. Watson believed molar behavior could be reduced to
molecular behavior in a relatively simple way since molar behavior was a simple
collection of conditioned reflexes, linked together by frequency and recency. Such a
view was naive and abandoned by all neo-behaviorists. Guthrie for example believed the
basic elements were not conditioned reflexes but simply movements occurring contigu
ously with various cues. His composition law was simple however?contiguity. Hull
however abandoned such simple composition laws in favor of very complex ones
involving goal-gradients, redintegration, habit-family hierarchies, etc., and his basic
units were molecular stimuli and responses linked together by reinforcement. Both
Guthrie and Hull believed it was possible to explain purposive behavior along mechanis
tic lines. A similar belief is shared by Skinner who believes contingencies of reinforce
ment can account for such aspects. But Skinner has little to say concerning the relation
between movements and more complex forms of behavior. He simply begins with
operant behavior and the problem of response equivalence is never really faced. He trusts
"response induction" and transfer via common elements to account for such properties
but has really little to say beyond this. Tolman however (along with Holt) believes such
accounts ignore the crucial feature of molar behavior?their emergent properties.
In this paper I have attempted to point out the various senses of 'behavior' to be found
in behaviorism. There are similarities between these views but there are also important
differences. The nature of the '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.
68
REFERENCE NOTES
1. Kitchener, R. F. Hugo Munsterberg's causal and purposive psychology. Unpublished manuscript.
2. Kitchener, R. F. Emergence: how to get something from nothing. Unpublished manuscript.
3. Kitchener, R. F. Skinner's theory of theories. Unpublished manuscript.
4. Skinner, B. F. Personal communication, January 5, 1977.
5. Skinner, B. F. Personal communication, March 10, 1977.
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