The four causes of behavior: Aristotle and Skinner

Abstract

This article deals with an application of Aristotle�s four causes, the material, the formal,\nthe efficient, and the final causes. Based on an initial systematic application, a new\napplication is proposed in which some previously unconsidered aspects of Aristotle are\ndeveloped. According to this new application, the material cause would be found in the\norganism as a whole (and not just in neurobiological substrates), the formal cause would\nbe the prior model on which a certain cause is based (and not an internal representation\nor a formal analogy of behavior), the efficient cause would be conceived as an agent (and\nnot only an antecedent event), and the final cause would be the teleological function of\nthe behavior. The main implications of this review of the four causes are consolidation\nof the analysis of behavior on the molar plane of an organism (with no �neuroscientific�\nreductionisms), establishment of the notion of the person as the origin of behavior (without\nresorting to the mechanicism of �private events�), and the possible consideration of a\nradically human behaviorism that would place behavior at the center of the historicalcultural\ncontext (not as dependent on laboratory analysis of animal behavior).

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