Behaviourism

• The aim of behaviorism is to provide a strong scientific status to psychology, rejecting obscure theoretical hypotheses and reformulating mentalistic terms like emotions, mind, thoughts etc.
• According to John Watson, psychology should be understood as a natural science and needs to be reformed, following the aftermath of the 19th century epistemological crises.
• Introspection is the main 'enemy' of behaviorism, as it is seen as the main cause of the foundation of this movement.
• A radical change of science was needed, in order to make it able to tackle the epistemological challenges progressively emerging.
• The main role in behaviorism is attributed to sense experience, as it is intersubjectively accessible and subject to control.
• Psychology as the behaviorist views it is seen as an objective and experimental branch of natural sciences, with the final goal being the prediction and control of behaviour.
• Introspectionism sees psychology as an analysis of complex mental states divided into simpler elementary constituents and a reconstruction of complex states, focusing on unobservable elements while physical stimuli are seen as mere means to reach the end (mental state).
• John Watson refuses the introspectionist approach completely, endorsing the independent value of behavioral data.
• Introspectionism attributes errors to the subject and their introspection, while natural sciences find errors into the experimental apparatus.
• Watson believes that the time has come for psychology to detach itself completely from anything related to consciousness and become a discipline founded on the continuity between humans and animals, the concept of adjustment to environment and the processes related to it.
• Psychology attempts to formulate principles or laws about the adjustment of individuals to every-day life or uncommon situations and it strives to control human behaviour so that society can adjust.
• Psychology should aim at guiding society in modifying the environment to suit human ways of acting and in moulding individuals when the environment can’t be modified.
• According to Watson, behind every human act there is the same structure, composed of a reaction/response and a stimulus/situation provided by the external environment; these are theoretical assumptions that have to be accepted in psychology in order to study complex processes.
• In behaviorism, the goal of psychology is to predict the response given the stimulus or vice versa, it’s generally about the laws governing stimuli and responses.
• Behaviorism rejects common sense categories, such as mind, intentionality, freedom, will.
• Human beings do not act by means of intentional deliberation, according to behaviorism.