From fringe to mainstream: The Garcia effect.

The rejection of research results is sometimes thought to be justified in cases of individuals embracing fringe ideas that depart significantly from prevailing orthodoxy, or in cases of individuals who lack appropriate expertise or credentials. The case of John Garcia exhibits both of these dimensions, and illustrates that such rejection can delay scientific advancements. Garcia's work decisively challenged what was the orthodoxy in psychology in the midcentury: behaviorism. Behaviorist learning theorists suffered from theory-entrenchment insofar as they failed to acknowledge Garcia's anomalous research findings that ran counter to their theoretical expectations. The case study also illustrates that theories on the margins can become embraced as a result of advancements in adjacent research fields. Studying how Garcia's work moved from fringe to mainstream results in lessons for the philosophy of science and epistemology more generally. Only when we see the mechanisms of exclusion at work can we understand how science and other knowledge production systems can inadvertently act counterproductively via gatekeeping practices that filter out unorthodox points of view.

Archival oddities: Rosalie Rayner's application to take graduate classes.

In the history of psychology, Rosalie Rayner is known as a research assistant to behaviorist John B. Watson in the study of a baby named Albert, coauthor of articles describing that research, and coauthor of Psychological Care of Infant and Child. Rayner also wrote two magazine articles about her experience as a mother and the wife of Watson (Harris, 2014). Thanks to archivist James Stimpert, the author discovered that she was never a candidate for a graduate degree. In fall of 1919, she applied to take graduate classes at Hopkins and was accepted (Figure 1). However, she applied 2 weeks after classes had begun and never registered for any courses in the fall or spring semesters. Even more interesting, her application was approved by Watson on the same day she applied, which was a Saturday. The current author agrees with Romano-Lax and suggest that we appreciate Rayner's life and work without claiming her as a psychologist. While she deserves credit for her contributions to the Albert study and coauthored book on child care, her own voice is best heard when she looked beyond the field of psychology. In her 1932 article, "what future has motherhood?" she addressed the broader question of how the family could be restructured, which was being debated by feminists and other social reformers. While not consistently feminist, her perspective was dramatically different from her husband's. In Rayner Watson's view of the future, child care and other domestic work would be collectivized, as was being tried in the Soviet Union, freeing women for any activities they choose (Harris, 2014; R. R. Watson, 1932). Clearly, she had long left the laboratory, and her contributions should not be reduced to the "study of behavioral psychology" (Smirle, 2013). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Criticizing Danaher's Approach to Superficial State Deception.

If existing or future robots appear to have some capacity, state or property, how can we determine whether they truly have it or whether we are deceived into believing so? John Danaher addresses this question by formulating his approach to what he refers to as superficial state deception (SSD) from the perspective of his theory termed ethical behaviourism (EB), which was initially designed to determine the moral status of robots. In summary, Danaher believes that focusing on behaviour is sufficient to determine whether SSD occurs. My general claim is that Danaher's approach to SSD based on EB is implausible since it results in the impossibility of conceptualizing SSD, e.g., it does not enable determining whether or not SSD occurs in a particular case. Moreover, I show how Danaher's approach to SSD needs to be transformed to become plausible. To make my point, I (1) examine the main features of EB and distinguish its two versions by showing how Danaher revised the original EB in response to criticism; (2) discuss Danaher's approach to the problem of deception from the perspective of EB; (3) criticize that approach by showing that it requires revisions analogous to those that have already been recommended in reference to EB, and (4) propose an alternative method for determining the presence of SSD that covers diverse, plausible approaches to SSD.

Minding behavior.

Perhaps the most popular definition of psychology is the science of mind and behavior. However, the interrelation between mind and behavior is one of continuing controversy. The present paper examines this enduring issue from the perspectives of George J. Romanes, an early comparative psychologist, Edwin G. Boring, an influential experimental psychologist, and Howard Rachlin, an estimable recent behaviorist. Their respective positions shed considerable light on both the theory and practice of behavioral psychology.

The voluntary operant and the operant nature of volition: Three views.

Many philosophers, psychologists, and lay folk associate volition with autonomy (actions are independent of an individual's environment) and free will (individuals originate their actions). Most behaviorists hold these views to be incompatible with behavior analyses. The present paper describes volition as interpreted by B. F. Skinner, Howard Rachlin, and Allen Neuringer. Skinner relates volition to positively reinforced operant behavior. That works because, like operants, voluntary actions are free, in the sense of not physically constrained; they affect their environments, often resulting in positive outcomes, and are sometimes unpredictable. Rachlin, while incorporating Skinnerian methods, interprets volition within his own Teleological Behaviorism framework. For Rachlin, reinforcement of an individual response is often incompatible with voluntary control, thereby disagreeing with Skinner. Responses are voluntary only when they are members of extended response patterns. Neuringer also begins with Skinner's operants, but argues that, under the control of reinforcing consequences, both voluntary actions and operant responses are sometimes predictable and other times "truly" unpredictable. Neuringer does not assume that environments determine voluntary actions, thereby disagreeing with Skinner and Rachlin. Taken together, the agreements and disagreements among these three behaviorists may help to shed light on the relationship between operants and volition.

The Weltanschauung of Howard Rachlin: Interdependencies among behaviors and contexts.

Through his broad perspectives and curiosity, Howard Rachlin took behaviorism, added critical perspectives and behavioral economics, and contributed substantially to developing behaviorism as an approach to addressing complex human actions and engagements. This essay describes the influence of Rachlin's work in three areas that reflect this broader growth of the field: 1) teleological behaviorism as a response to essentialist thinking about behavior, typified by Ryle's category mistake and including concepts in psychopathology; 2) self-control as choices among rewards differing by amount and delay and the application of this model to clinical and preventive interventions; and 3) behavioral economic modeling of social support as a commodity substitutable for other commodities of interest such as nicotine. These and the body of Rachlin's work suggest a view not only of interdependencies among behaviors, patterns of behavior, and their consequences, but more broadly, of interdependencies among different settings and their effects on behavior, leading to a behaviorism of systems and contexts. Replacing essentialist discourse of individuals, individual behaviors, and discrete influences, a world view or Weltanschauung emerges of diffuse interdependencies across patterns, individuals, settings, systems, probabilities, and consequences.

Matching, behavioral economics, and teleological behaviorism: Final cause analysis of substance use and health behavior.

Howard Rachlin and his contemporaries pioneered basic behavioral science innovations that have been usefully applied to advance understanding of human substance use disorder and related health behaviors. We briefly summarize the innovations of molar behaviorism (the matching law), behavioral economics, and teleological behaviorism. Behavioral economics and teleological behaviorism's focus on final causes are especially illuminating for these applied fields. Translational and applied research are summarized for laboratory studies of temporal discounting and economic demand, cohort studies of alcohol and other drug use in the natural environment, and experimental behavioral economic modeling of health behavior-related public health policies. We argue that the teleological behavioral perspective on health behavior is conducive to and merges seamlessly with the contemporary socioecological model of health behavior, which broadens the contextual influences (e.g., community, economic, infrastructure, health care access and policy) of individuals' substance use and other health risk behaviors. Basic-to-applied translations to date have been successful and bode well for continued applications of basic science areas pioneered by Howard Rachlin and his contemporaries.

Lessons from behaviorism: The problem of construct-led science.

Yarkoni makes a number of valid points in his critical analysis of psychology, but he misses an opportunity to expose the root of its problems. That root is the poor practice around the derivation of explanatory constructs. We make comment on this with an example from behaviorist history and relate this to the recent discussion of scientific understanding in the philosophy of science.

Is behaviourism really dead? A scoping review to document the presence of behaviourism in current medical education.

Behaviourism is the underpinning learning theory of many teaching and assessment tools utilised to enhance the effectiveness of learning. Feedback, reinforcements, motivation, learning outcomes and objectives are a few among many which are implied by the medical teachers while teaching both basic and clinical sciences to students. The claim of behaviourism being redundant or dead is not based on realities. The behaviourist approach is and will remain the most powerful theory to be implied in educational processes for gaining successful outcomes.

How Cognition came into being.

Jacques Mehler and I started Cognition, to break the grip of empiricist associationist behaviorism and stultifying style requirements on scientific discourse, and to liberate Cognitive Psychology's contributions to social issues. The journal provided opportunities for upcoming generations to expand Cognitive Psychology, publishing new concepts unhindered by established topics and standard formats. As the journal matured, Jacques kept. it fresh for 4 decades, seeking young scientists, novel ideas, and elegant writing, as it midwifed the emergence from Reductionist Behaviorism through Cognitive Psychology to rationalist Cognitive Science. The journal now has opportunities to nurture further progress in the future of Cognitive Science. I speculate that the field will keep associationist processes but integrate them with a new kind of non-reductionist theory that eschews detailed predictions, and which which interprets the brain as an enactor of thought, but not its structural cause. Ideally it will provide a set of constraints on the action of brain and mind that subsume and explain behavioral regularities, the role of frequency, how the brain externalizes those constraints and how the externalization processes emerge developmentally as a function of innate factors, structures unique to the mind and brain, experience and natural law.

Present-state dependency in valuation of the future.

Ainslie's target article provides a map of distinct mechanisms relevant to self-control, potentially providing needed precision to the field. He also breaks new ground in characterizing the symbiotic relationship between suppression and resolve. In this commentary, I argue that one behaviorism-based feature of his framework, present-state independence, is unjustified and unnecessary for the broader claims of the theory.

Memories of 100 years of human fear conditioning research and expectations for its future.

This special issue celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Little Albert study, published in February 1920, which marked the birth of human fear conditioning research. The collection of papers in this special issue provides a snapshot of the thriving state of this field today. In this Editorial, we first trace the historical roots of the field and then provide a conceptual analysis of the many ways in which human fear conditioning is currently used in theory and treatment development, with special reference to the contributions in this special issue. Ivan P. Pavlov allegedly claimed that "If you want new ideas, read old books". We could not agree more; it is our conviction that tracing the roots of our field illuminates current trends and will contribute to shaping new directions for the next 100 years of research.

Danaher's Ethical Behaviourism: An Adequate Guide to Assessing the Moral Status of a Robot?

This paper critically assesses John Danaher's 'ethical behaviourism', a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot's moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to some entity that has moral status, such as a human or an animal, then we should ascribe the same moral status to the robot as we do to this human or animal. The paper argues against ethical behaviourism by making four main points. First, it is argued that the strongest version of ethical behaviourism understands the theory as relying on inferences to the best explanation when inferring moral status. Second, as a consequence, ethical behaviourism cannot stick with merely looking at the robot's behaviour, while remaining neutral with regard to the difficult question of which property grounds moral status. Third, not only behavioural evidence ought to play a role in inferring a robot's moral status, but knowledge of the design process of the robot and of its designer's intention ought to be taken into account as well. Fourth, knowledge of a robot's ontology and how that relates to human biology often is epistemically relevant for inferring moral status as well. The paper closes with some concluding observations.

Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism.

Can robots have significant moral status? This is an emerging topic of debate among roboticists and ethicists. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it presents a theory-'ethical behaviourism'-which holds that robots can have significant moral status if they are roughly performatively equivalent to other entities that have significant moral status. This theory is then defended from seven objections. Second, taking this theoretical position onboard, it is argued that the performative threshold that robots need to cross in order to be afforded significant moral status may not be that high and that they may soon cross it (if they haven't done so already). Finally, the implications of this for our procreative duties to robots are considered, and it is argued that we may need to take seriously a duty of 'procreative beneficence' towards robots.

Beyond Neural Coding? Lessons from Perceptual Control Theory.

Pointing to similarities between challenges encountered in today's neural coding and twentieth-century behaviorism, we draw attention to lessons learned from resolving the latter. In particular, Perceptual Control Theory posits behavior as a closed-loop control process with immediate and teleological causes. With two examples, we illustrate how these ideas may also address challenges facing current neural coding paradigms.

Reevaluating the initial impact of John Broadus Watson on American psychology: The necessity of comparative parameters.

In recent decades, various studies have challenged the traditional view that John Broadus Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto prompted a psychological revolution. However, methodological hindrances underlie all these attempts to evaluate the impact of Watson's study, such as the absence of comparative parameters. This article remedies this problem by conducting a comparative citation analysis involving Watson and eight other representative psychologists of the time: J. R. Angell, H. Carr, J. M. Cattell, J. Dewey, G. S. Hall, W. James, E. L. Thorndike, and E. B. Titchener. Eight important American journals were scrutinized for the period between 1903 and 1923, a decade before and a decade after the publication of Watson's Manifesto. The results suggest that even if Watson's study cannot be taken as revolutionary, it had an impact between 1914 and 1923 that was close to Dewey's, Titchener's, and Thorndike's and higher than Angell's, Carr's, Cattell's, and Hall's, although distant from James's. Finally, some methodological implications of this study are discussed.