On the Expressive Potential of Behaviorist Language

Abstract

This article treats two central doctrines of behaviorism, namely, peripheralism and associationism, as doctrines which place semantic and syntactical constraints on acceptable language for the discussion of human beings, and assesses the consequences of these doctrines for the description of educational goals and methods. It is shown that peripheralism and associationism are philosophical doctrines inherited from British Empiricism, and that they are more appropriately treated as part of the philosphy of psychology, rather than as testable empirical claims. It is argued that the constraints that this philosophy places on a language render it incapable of expressing some meaningful educational goals, rule out some meaningful empirical hypotheses, and undermine some important ethical distinctions.