The Future Lies Ahead? Which Way Toward a Refined Behaviorism?

Abstract

123 Harzem advocates the compatibility of behaviorist and non-behaviorist positions and calls upon us to “enable behaviorism truly to come of age.” This envisioned “maturation” would entail the merging of the two positions in conformity with Harzem’s interpretation of Watson’s goal: “a psychology based on behaviorism but not a science different from psychology” (Harzem, p. 54). While we surely favor enhancing radical behaviorism’s influence on, and favor with, the rest of psychology, we find Harzem’s proposed “new behaviorism” to be neither new nor free of its own contradictions and conceptual muddles. His essay is nevertheless instructive because it highlights some aspects of the behavior-analytic conception that need either further development, clarification, or both. Harzem’s argument for a new behaviorism is based on the comparison between methodological and radical behaviorism, asserting that these behaviorisms “are identical in almost all of their basic principles.” However, contrary to Harzem’s equating methodological behaviorism with Watson’s position, the record reveals that Skinner (1945, p. 292) coined the term “methodological behaviorism” in

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