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These are a bunch of quotes I collected while reading through some of Kantor's work. They will possibly be useful to someone wanting to quickly search for Kantor's opinion on a particular topic. Most quotes come from a book entitled Psychological Comments and Queries (1984, Principia Press). The book is a collection of short articles Kantor published under the name "Observer" in the Psychological Record from 1968-1983. The numbers preceding quotes indicate the page, quotes without such numbers come from the same page as the last numbered quote. Enjoy.
Psychological Comments and Queries(1984)
By Jacob Robert Kantor (1888-1984).
p. 3: “Terms are relevant only if they promote an intimate contact with things and events”
“Only the recognition of the supreme importance of such fields can facilitate understanding, prediction, and control”
p. 5 “An important example of the more positive benefits the psychologist derives from authentic interdisciplinary study is the interdiction of spurious explanations of psychological events”
p. 8: “Methodologically speaking, interpretive constructs are never more than tools for the description of events and not warrants for the transformation of the events themselves”
p. 9: “Is the vigorous stress of reinforcement based on the error of escalating a specific datum into a general principle?”
p. 16 “The importance of the conditioning principle in the evolution of scientific psychology can be measured by the degree in which it has helped to suppress the age-old dalliance of psychologists with private data, with such features of substantive mentality as sensations, images, ideas, intervening variables, and other occults `processes' which exist only in the vocabulary of the profession”
18 “The assumption that the brain is a complex of centres and the locus of forces or powers that determine the behaviour of the organism simply makes the brain the surrogate of the traditional soul, ego, or mind”
“A plausible suggestion is to observe two rules. First, the rule of specificity; no thing or event is something else, so each must be described as a field of its own specific factors. The second is the rule of natural limits; no confrontable event can be described as transcending the limits of observation and experimental manipulation”
19 “But unfortunately, psychology is still fettered by animistic traditions fashioned by ancient clerics, and its devotees, therefore, search vainly for scientific certitude and reality”
“The prevalence of the mistaken assumption that methods used by biologists and physicists for investigating confrontable events can be applied to what only exists as beliefs and utterances merely reflects the potency of scientific institutions. The entire history of psychology proves conclusively that only the behaviour of organisms yields any reliable data, however much they are later interpreted as correlates of mentality”
“He must (the psychologist) either forgo certitude and reality or discover how to make a science out of transcendental materials”
20 “science is an industry or occupation whose purpose is to ascertain the structure and behaviour of things and events commonly known or occasionally discovered, as well as the conditions under which they are observed”
21 “Scientific achievement depends entirely on the discovery of continuities and regularities whose description can yield relatively stable formal propositions dignified by the title of laws”
23 “Ideally, all scientific enterprises should be comparable in general design, and compatible in operation”
“How can we ignore the fact that specific things and events are refulgent with particularity”
“However true it may be that every event constitutes a specialised system of occurrences abstracted out of a giant matrix of similar and dissimilar happenings, still each particular concatenation of contingencies maintains its own identity”
“To promote the scientific candidacy of their discipline, psychologists would be better advised to show that psychology is different from physics rather than reducible to it”
24 “If the foregoing is even partially valid we may draw the conclusion that every science is unique and relatively independent though the data of each remain co-ordinated with but untrammelled by those of any other speciality”
25 “Not only must the psychologist deal with such behaviours as they occur, but he is not faithful to his task when he substitutes lame analogies for them as when their neural components are likened to a telephone switchboard, or when complex remembering behaviour is analogised as the storage and retrieval of a computer”
“What is the value of a levelling language if it imposes an identity where diversity actually prevails?”
“The further we analyse reductionism, the more apparent it becomes that it is a metaphysical enterprise. Now since metaphysics is a matter of personal attitudes and beliefs and not scientific investigation, our understanding of the (psychology to physics) reductionism is enhanced by glancing at some of the grounds for promoting this type of autistic construction”
“However, those who stand firmly within the boundaries of occurring events see clearly the fallacy of reducing one facet of dualism to the other when both are fabulous constructions”
27 “for the essential thing about a science is that it investigates some confrontable happening.”
28 “in neither case are the biological structures and functions of the organism a basis for something else called `behaviour'. The biological features of the organism obviously co-operate in a complex field with many other factors”
29 “We may then look upon the behaviour of the organism as relatively independent of its tissues and organs” (then gives the example of many speech variations from similar biological apparatus).
“Certainly to make the anatomy and physiology of organisms into supports for psychological behaviour is a flagrant vivisection of events and a traduction of observation and description”
“Cause is assumed to be a determining or creating power that produces something other than itself, so that some psychic process antedates and originates some type of behaviour or vice versa”
“The flame of a match in no wise determines or creates an explosion but only completes the syncrasy of the individual factors necessary for a certain event to occur, including the presence and flammability of the exploding materials”
“(due to the subtle yet complex componentry of the field) the response phase of an interaction is misinterpreted as requiring some motive power or causation resident in the organism”
30 “But even when the brain is glorified without an immediate suggestion of mentalism it leads to the development of analogical brain models which enforce the erroneous separation of that organ from the rest of the biological organism of which it is a single integral part”
32 “For reasons easily specified, writers have built up concepts and terms as interpretations of behaviour, though they bear little or no relevance to occurrences”
“The misleading influence of terms here simulates the vernacular implications that a person has or possesses certain talents or capacities instead of acting in a certain ways when the suitable stimulus and setting factors coincide. It is fatal to underplay the fact that psychological events consist of behaviour or processes, not things”
35 “The key to the solution of the problem here is to distinguish between biological and psychological evolution although they represent only different points on a developmental continuum”
36 “Unfortunately psychological test theory is derived more from assumptions about behaviour than from the actual events”
“Very little attention is accorded the fact that even when IQ constancy is contrived it does not in any sense signify that tests measure some inherent and transmissive properties of a psychic or neural entity called mind or intelligence”
37 “To trace the source of human behaviour to biological sources is to confess belief in the ghost of abstract determinism"
“To say that genes determine the character and effectiveness of psychological behaviour is to indulge in the wildest play of autistic imagination”
“It is fatal to allow social facts or forces to deform scientific theory”
“Though we accept the dictum that science is obligated to society, still we know the fateful consequences that follow the dictatorial domination of science by society”
38 “Here as else where it is wise to remember that nothing is but what it has become by various interactional evolutions”
39 “Here the literature is almost completely dominated by the fruitless debate between the upholders of mentalistic traditions who impose animistic interpretations upon linguistic performances, and the behaviouristic writers who reduce intercommunicative complexities to verbal articulations”
41 “To look upon language behaviour as definite field situations will enable psychologists to avoid both the phenomenological notion of language as the expression of ideas and the reduction of speech to organocentric word utterances”
50 (On how most things are unknown or dimly known) “The gloom of night is the fertile source of every variety of mysticism and the stimulant for the unbridled verbal creation of innumerable figments of imagination”
52 “The futile and invalid abstractions of heredity and environment and nature and nurture have arisen from this illegitimate polarisation”
53 “Along with the fervent assertion of the invariable coupling of mind and brain, the emphasis is on ignorance and the total absence of evidence of how such association is possible. Furthermore, there is not a word to indicate the appreciation that the difficulty of explaining the interaction of spatiotemporal cells and tissues with mentality might be owing to the nonexistence of spiritistic entities and powers aside from their verbal representation”
55 “It is metaphysical delusion to transform the qualities and organisations of confrontable things and events into `immediate' or `direct' psychic `experience'.”
*58 “Since such interpretations are subject to the constructional influence of the instituted assumptions localisable in particular intellectual communities, there always exists the probability that theories will be fashioned more by the inharmonious collation of cultural beliefs and protocols of observation than by the observations themselves”
“How influential cultural matrices are in the formulation and viability of theories may be gathered from some questions posed by the history of psychology. For example, why are rationalistic and intuitive theories of mentality favoured by continental psychologists, while empirical and atomic theories are more at home in the British isles? Why did Brentano oppose the experimental possibilities of psychology as against Hemholtz and Wundt?....
**59 “When we analyse the culturo-intellectual institutions that shape the basic beliefs and postulates of science, we discover an unwholesome intermixture of many mythological ingredients with observation, manipulation, and interpretation”
“Likewise, the psychologist accepts from the physiologist the myth that the brain directs and controls the actions of the organism"
61 “When describing speech, the linguist reports not the characteristics of the data but imposes upon them a priori traits of words, saying that a speaker utters or writes syllables, words, and sentences as the structural components of speech”
62 “...linguistic events are confused with descriptive tools and processes”
“...the two basic traits of all science, namely, the avoidance of interpretations prior to investigation and the prohibition of subordinating events to established intellectual institutions"
“Addiction to such principles (residing powers and innate) constitutes the most powerful obstruction to the approved trait of cleaving to occurring events”
63 “Anatomical actions are only phases of linguistic behaviour which involve just as much of the activity of the referee as auxiliary stimulus and the thing or event spoken of that is the adjustment stimulus”
“When language is considered as a structural hierarchy of things-phonemes, words, and sentences it is, of course, remote from psychological considerations”
“At the very least, objective psychology allows the linguist to avoid the Scylla of mystical intuition and the Charybdis of crude reward conditioning”
“...meaning is nothing more than a matter of usage within linguistic fields”
65 “It has become increasingly appreciated how potent a factor the misuse of language is in distorting scientific situations. By the use of words nonexisting entities are provided with status and longevity so that misinterpretations are perpetuated, thus restrictions are placed upon scientific advancement. Clearly, then, it is a great advantage to be alert to the nature and operation of language in general, particularly as it occurs in science”
67 “The domain of memorial behaviour offers outstanding examples of the misinterpretations of events by inept language descriptions”
68 “Assertions concerning the role of the brain in remembering are vivid testimonies to the power of words to conceal easily observed events”
“How is it possible except as a purely verbal exercise to identify complex remembering behaviour with the conduction of neurons?”
69 “What justification is there for reducing an organism to a part of itself?”
“In no other discipline is the restrictive rule not to base descriptive references on anything other than the ascertained traits of things more often violated. How common it is in psychology and neurology to transfer such terms or synonyms like `faculty,' `function,' `cognitive power,' `centre,' `seat of consciousness' from the traditional, mystical, and mysterious brain to the organ studied in a modern biological or psychological laboratory”
71 “Psychology seeking scientific status by attaching itself to physiology absorbed the mentalistic postulation propagated by physiology, thus introducing much permanent inconcinnity into psychology”
72 “In the background of the physicist, biologist, or psychologist is the cultural atmosphere in which he is brought up. It is this that may prevent the scientist from dealing with events as they occur instead of imposing upon them an intellectual patina that is really foreign to them”
73 “As it happened, however, both physiologists and psychologists were and are completely dominated by traditional metaphysics and so despite the aspirations of physiologists and psychologists to emulate physics and chemistry in working objectively and neutrally, they do not escape the spiritistic philosophy which hangs like a pall over the majority of scientists. The whole of physiology where it intersects with psychology (namely, in neurophysiology) is shot through with mythology and mystery”
74 “Although no psychologist has ever observed or worked with anything other than interactions of organisms with themselves, other organisms, and the factors in their environments, most constructions are made in terms of or are influenced by intangible processes and forces such as `sensations,' `perceptions,' `ego,' `mind,' `engrams,' `innate capacities,' and so on”
75 “Particularity, especially of the subtle types of action, is interpreted as private, internal, subjective-that is psychic processes”
78 “Must we not be aware, then, of the influence that social and political postulation exerts upon presumably scientific issues?”
80 “Dichotomies are verbal abstractions” & “It is high time, therefore, that such dichotomies as Nature-Nurture, Heredity-Environment be recognised as the traditional constructions that they are and dismissed from the scientific domain”
81 “let us not miss the implications here that the structures and functions of organisms supply potentialities not as determiners but as participants in the complex interactions”
“All terms are polysemous. The term `behaviour' refers to the functioning of cellular and tissue structures as well as to variable adjustments to unique and unrepeatable contingencies” >Vicki Lee takes this same line.
83 “Even behaviouristic psychologists remain permanently captive to `subjective' and `private experience' as well as similar articles of faith. We say articles of faith because the institution of subjectivity concerns conventions of psychic beliefs instead of confronted and observed events”
“To cling to notions of psychological `privacy' is to overlook the fact that no psychological events are more private than the events of geology, physics, astronomy, or chemistry. Every event is a unique occurrence under specific conditions in a space-time framework”
84 “What is remarkable about the preservation of the subjectivity institution is the clearly evident transcendental basis of such constructions. More remarkable still is the transparency of the sleight of hand by which events are transformed into metaphysical nonentities”
“It is indisputable how effectively the institutions of `subjectivity,' `privacy,' and `privileged access' have encapsulated intellectual workers in dualistic cocoons that separate them from the actual events encompassing them”
“A half century ago Kantor (1922) argued that the so-called privacy and innerness of the mind tradition was simply uniqueness of occurrence in the sense of intimacy or fleetingness, so that all metaphysical interpretations could easily be avoided”
87 “But it is still not generally realised how things on the earth, such as social and intellectual institutions including scientific doctrines, display spiral motions”
“It is not difficult to detect the influence of recidivistic doctrines of soul in the resurgence of the new-old law of mental faculties, cognitive psychology, the rehabilitation of the instinct doctrine, and the continuous search for mind correlated engrams”
88 “The refurbished soul doctrine really has not been retrieved. It was only awakened from its dogmatic slumber by the noise of an aggressive polemicist (Chomsky, 1968).
“In the mean time, they overlook the fact that all valued characteristics of man—virtues, ideals, refinements of feeling—are naturalistic developments under the auspices of social, economic, political, moral, and esthetic institutions among which men live”
89 “...unfortunately, traditional ways of thinking are frequently victorious over the records of observable events”
“Now while learning is a form of development, not all development is learning”
92 “Again the organism, and especially the brain, is regarded as some sort of Aladdin's lamp which requires only to be agitated or shocked to be productive of the universe and all that is in it. So disastrous, futile, and metaphysical metamorphosing of a biological organ goes counter to all observed events and defies all rules of scientific explanation and competent judgement”
93 “...the experimental work of Newton was firmly set in a matrix of metaphysical dualism and mathematical abstractionism”
95 “It is often remarked how wide is the gulf between the actual operations of investigating scientists and the neat, smooth formulae or equations they present at the completion of their labours”
“Scientific work is an exercise in oblivescence”
“Worse still is the resort to the creation or borrowing of some irrelevant and misleading analogical formulation”
“It is fatal for scientists to forget that constructs are not the events studied but at best are products of reactions to the things with which one works”
“Lest we forget, we must constantly be reminded how psychologists avert their eyes from the concrete events of remembering and forgetting to pursue the mirages of pseudobiological brain models as substitutes for actual behaviour”
96 “Even highly competent neurologists seem not vigilantly to realise how very different are magnetic wires from biological neurons. Every psychologist knows that ever since the brain was made the surrogate of soul, improbable analogies have been cultivated about the brain and the nervous system”
“To abide by the available observations is fully to recognise the futility of making the brain into a computer, with or without the accompanying notion of individuals retrieving `ideas' from their inner consciousness”
97 “The fact is that we have available perfectly adequate ways of describing remembering and forgetting in terms of activities that anyone can observe”
98 “The question arises why we should attempt to construct imaginary, analogical brain processes in order to describe and interpret these dramas of human behaviour”
99 “Succinctly put, personality study is usually not the study of persons”
“Individual persons are sacrificed to the abstractionism of words and to transcendental conceptions”
100 “What amazes the observer of the psychological scene is that despite the fact that a naturalistic treatment of psychological events including personality is readily available, the power of tradition and of prior commitment, along with the fashions of the moment, induce the neglect of occurring events”
101 “Still, psychologists prefer to deal with verbal abstractions instead of readily observed data”
“What the personality testers wish to test are self-created variables that supported by nothing more than the verbal substance attached to them by the inventors”
“In one of its moods psychology aspires to match the other disciplines in the quest for knowledge concerning events but in another it remains captive to ancient cultural systems”
“Query: Aside from the speculation and verbigeration of theologians and transcendental philosophers has there ever been a [mind-body] problem? No observation or investigation of any person or behavioural event has ever cast up such a dualistic construction”
102 “.. the term `personality' is a borrowing from the local vernacular”
He also covers the diversity of psychological approaches as a result of implicit epistemic influences here. He really was a sharp bugger, so many things I have read were previously covered by him.
103 “It is a common belief shared by some theoretical scientists that mathematical theories and models can be constructed at the desk, which by some miracle fit observed events”
“There can be no stone wall between the freely flowing events observed and the fixity and finality of interpretive equations”
“It is becoming more and more appreciated that science is exists in the shadow of its cultural matrix and background”
105 “...an obnoxious semantic confusion of `behaviourism' with `operant conditioning'”
106 “...then there is the phenomenon of auto-shaping... which nullified the importance of reinforcement entirely”
“Condemnatory it is to identify the important and enriching behaviouristic movement with an arbitrary and limited technique such as operant conditioning. It is an inexcusable myopia not to see that behaviourism constitutes a heroic and successful attempt to extrude from psychology the spiritism and mentalism that has polluted the discipline since the beginning of the present chronological era”
107 “Nothing is more certain than that the entire scientific enterprise consists of the investigation of the behaviour of things and events in the specific fields which encompass them, on the basis of particular conditions”
“For a clear vision of science, it is essential to observe the restraints, reductions, and selections research introduces into the study of psychological or any other class of events”
“Depreciation of operant conditioning need not be more than a rejection of the exclusively reinforcement descriptions and interpretations of psychological events, because such events are too complicated for such simplistic treatment”
>More on the faults of operantism follows here (p. 108)
108 “However, the inflation of the conditioning process into an explanatory principle to account for the most complicated interactions of persons in human situations constitutes a violent travesty of scientific thinking”
“A critical observer of the psychological scene need not deplore the oppositions displayed by scientific workers”
109 “But since the goal of investigation is to ascertain the behaviour of particular things, the risk of distorting them, is always present, or overemphasising the particular conditions of observation and the effectiveness of the instruments used”
“Psychologists who disdain field study reduce their discipline to the simple and trivial, losing sight of the great range and intricacy of actual psychological adjustments”
110 “Determiners are constructions built out of assumed powers, but not observable processes”
112 “Dewey assumes that psychology is concerned exclusively with psychic entities rather than the behaviour of organisms in concrete situations under extremely diverse circumstances”
113 “Although Dewey wrote as though he were concerned with the science of psychology, his entire intention and practice are aimed at metaphysical unification and are hardly involved with confrontable events”
“His [Dewey's] abstract terms bear little relation to the observable behaviour of organisms”
“No wider chasm can be imagined than that which separates the actual adjustments of organisms to their new environments from the mental and verbal descriptions as presented in Dewey's article”
115 “What is the relevance for the science of psychology of interpretations derived not from observations of behaviour events but from the archaism of theological speculation?”
116 “To Dewey belongs the merit that while he never freed himself completely from the shackles of Hegelianism, he was at times influenced by circumstances to waiver in his faith and to write naturalistically about psychological events”
117 “As rooted in differential behaviour, in variation of action and with variation in the properties of confrontable objects and situations, discrimination is certainly the basis for effective adjustments to the complexities of environments"
“Social discrimination against people of different colour, sex, or country of origin constitutes an extremely virulent form of indiscrimination. Reasonable adjustments to things and events are replaced by institutionalised beliefs, and mythological assertions respecting the cosmic environment, its origin and history, as well as man himself, his origin and nature, and destiny”
“ If philosophy is the apex of human ratiocination, it continues to be involved with the pseudoproblems of God, Freedom, and Immortality”
“Despite the fact that scientific work is to a great extent the development and practise of refined discrimination, its various departments are replete with the errors of indiscrimination. The following samples bear witness to that”
>I am confused by the last sentence on p. 117, what is he saying here?
118: “...brain is regarded as a master organ that harbours a nest of seats and centres for mentality and actions”
“...the nervous system is regarded as a transducer of electrochemical events into psychic processes...”
“Always there is the urge to generalise that results in the use of verbal blankets to conceal the many different properties and qualities of things. It is a grievous failure to realise that if A is not the case, then B is not necessarily the case, since C or D might be the correct formulation”
119 “Grays are more common that exclusive and separable blacks or whites”
“One finds in the literature of philosophy the argument that this [not being able to disprove god] is because science is impotent with respect to ultimates. But it is not realised that all ultimates are only concrete verbalisms. The argument bypasses the obvious fact that all absolutes and universals are only assertorial inventions by those who feel the need for such pseudo realities. Both assertors and deniers unwittingly assume what they believe themselves to be disagreeing about. Their most extreme indiscriminations are based upon ignorance of the origin and the environing circumstances of traditional beliefs”
“The obvious fallacy here is the above-mentioned confusion of the observer and the observed, which amounts to converting scientific observation into some mystical form of introspection”
“Adherence to the principle of specificity is to discriminate sharply between acts and products of construction, versus stimulating things and events. Such discriminative alertness makes it possible to judge whether the descriptive and explanatory constructs are or are not derived from actual events, and if they are, whether the properly represent those events”
120 “An important advantage derived from the cultivation of precise discrimination is the ability to evaluate how strongly one is influenced by early teachings, and how powerful is the magnet of populous and accepted establishments”
121 “They did not know that the history of psychology made plain the socio-political source and origin of the myth of mind, as well as the need for scientific psychology to liquidate the myth”
“There is no intellectual profit to be gained from pondering upon the putative gulf that separates the career of the unified and intuitive soul of Lebiniz, Locke, Kant, or Reid versus the atomic sensations and associations of Berkley, Hume, the Mills, or Wundt.
122 “Above all, the entire behaviour of scientific persons consists of naturalistic activities, whether or not they yield to the temptation of verbalising about transcendentals along with their interactions with things and events”
He then outlines some factors negatively influencing science and psychology.
“One of the most valuable lessons to be learned from a critical study of the history of psychology is the constant necessity of scientists to restrain the tendency to intermix presuppositions with the observational descriptions of events”
123 “The physical-mental dichotomy clearly represents a basic cultural influence”
“Are not the goals of science to ascertain the structure and function of things and events substantially compromised by the necessities of laboratory manipulation?”
124 “Just as the naturalistic metaphysics of the Greeks became transmogrified into spiritistic verbalism, so the human organism became dichotomised into a soul and a body. The former, as is commonly known, became successively transformed into mind, consciousness, and finally mental states and functions resident in a part of the body, especially the brain”
“What the history of psychology makes clear, is how all the traditional mysteries and puzzles of psychic privacy, subjectivity, mental powers, and misinterpretations of behaviour might have all have been averted by cleaving to the plain observations that all powerful and competent actions are definitely the cumulative developments of interactions with the things persons, and events constituting their environments”
125 “It is the lack of field construction ideas that has been a stumbling block in the way of scientific progess throughout the development of science”
125-126 “Especially in the field of psychology the notions of independent and dependent factors are simply heritages of the old metaphysical cause. Actually, the so-called dependent and independent factors are interdependent. All differentiations and emphases of dependence and independence are only partial constructions of workers and should not be confused with any sort of dependence or independence in the events that are studied”
“Freedom from metaphysical misconceptions permits the contemplation of the vast events in the biological domain as well as all the complex interaction of organisms as they discriminate, hope, create, judge, reason, and perform the intricate behaviour which is required by the evolution of organisms and their complex world”
127 “One of the most acute consequences sustained from the ancient metaphysical dichotomy of the world was the long-lasting prejudice against the so-called nonexact sciences”
“No scientific discipline is reducible to any other. There is a stable and valid criterion for every discipline in the existence of specifically different event fields”
129 “In other words, the perennial mind-body problem is no scientific problem at all”
130 “All propositions alleging that the acts of organisms consist of spatiotemporal bodily movements plus `motivational,' `emotional,' or the `cognitive' processes are purely verbal constructions. They are derived from the dogmas laid down by the church fathers and their multigenerational successors”
131 “Even when specific fields consist of interdependent and interlocked physiological, general organic, mathematical, psychological and other components none can be reduced to any other, nor can any type of component field be regarded as the cause of any others”
132 “Obviously the similarity of the macromolecules of chimpanzees to those of the humans argues for the relative independence of biological and psychological evolutions”
“Accordingly, the biological evolution level and the hygienic conditions of organisms serve as potentialities and limits for psychological behaviour”
“Organisms provide no more substance to total events than the indispensable conditions or circumstances that interact with them”
135 “Psychology, assuredly, is a cardinal discipline devoted to the observation and analysis of exceedingly important events, and thus worthy of meticulous pursuit”
136 “What may be judged as progress in science? The plain answer is an increase of knowledge, that is, an improvement in orientation on the part of investigators toward the things and events which attract the serious interest of scientists”
“Self observation and autoexperimentation are important valuable sources of scientific sophistication”
“It is only authentic knowledge that allows one to discriminate between events and historical constructs. Whether or not the knowledge obtained is put to utilitarian use is a secondary consideration”
>how do we know when our knowledge is authentic?
137 “Great as are the zeal and the resources of psychological workers, no little amount of effort is expended upon Fads and Fancies”
“But unfortunately, there are potent circumstances that hinder naturalistic thinkers from becoming a general institution among psychological workers”
140 “4. Semantic Confusion & Inconsistency of Axioms and Operations”
146 “The value or advantage of a model or theory consists exclusively in the degree of its conformity with the things and events from which it is constructed”
147 “From the standpoint of actual intercommunication there is little or no ambiguity”
149 “It is cultural or institutional establishments which are reflected in the language one speaks, religious and political beliefs and practises, mythological attitudes, societal customs and manners”
150 “Science must be bias-free”
151 “An instructive instance of the nature and effects of cultural conditions upon thinking concerns the hold upon psychologists of the Body-Mind or Brain-Mind syndrome”
“The B-M syndrome often masks its derivation from the dualistic tradition that imposes a false dichotomy upon organisms and vitiates scientific investigation and theory”
“An excellent illustration of the B-M Syndrome is the perennial search for the `engram,' a preoccupation described as `perhaps the most fundamental and challenging problem in psychology and the neurosciences' (Thompson, 1975)
“Obviously, psychological behaviour, as always the performances of integrated or mutilated organisms, involves the participation or lack of anatomical structures and functions, but this is an altogether different situation from that in which the brain or other part of the nervous system is causing learning or storing `memories.' 2
2 The observation that cause is only correlation, while correct, is irrelevant
152 “The question that needs consideration is whether the search for engrams is or is not premised on the cultural notion that unlike any other biological system the nervous system has two types of functions-one of them the natural biological activities of conduction and coordination, and the other constructed psychological properties operative in the modification of behaviour generally called “learning.”
153 “Despite the advantages succeeding generations of psychologists enjoy through the increased availability of new apparatus and instruments, there seems to be no relief from the bondage of instituted mentalism”
“Is this not an opaque tribute paid to the ancient supernaturalism of traditional theology?”
154 “The style of the rhetoric harks back to venerable mind-body assumptions which are only masked by linguistic drapery”
He mentions that Shimp (1976) claims that memory is unobservable, and then says: “Clearly this suggests an arbitrary personal belief rather than a proposition of natural science”
“How can an investigator justify unobservability in science with the consequential faith in `psychic data'? One way is by analogising memory with the constructed products of description and calculation, and then baptising such products as unobservable data”
“In view of actually occurring remembering and memorising behaviour, how can anyone believe otherwise than that they are plainly observable?”
“How can anyone escape the fact that if remembering is occurring it is the behaviour of an organism. Only by falsely assuming that remembering is a matter of consciousness or mental states and not the interactions of organisms can one set up propositions about hidden, mythical, and mystic states of cognition. Anyone who assumes the existence of transspatial entities, states or powers is only shadow boxing with words as weapons”
155 “Though we use the same language, we should not depart from a naturalistic approach because certain behaviours are more subtle and more difficult to observe than others”
“Scientists must avoid the pitfalls incidental to the exigencies of language usage. It is only by verbal legerdemain that one can create such units of consciousness as sensations, perceptions, thoughts and memories, and endow them with structural and functional properties so that they can be paralleled with organismic behaviour. Authentic interpretations, however, are not free-wheeling words, but rather descriptions and evaluations are developed on the basis of observing events”
“..abstractionism or conceptualism, a type of theorising that makes concepts or abstractions the data of psychology. This argument encourages the confusion of events and constructions, so verbal descriptions become identified with the activities described. Thus, devotees of cognitivism disseminate fairy tales about individuals storing up information in capacious memories from which they later retrieve it”
“...so autistic as to assimilate the fantasy that acquired information can be stored in an unknown manner in the nervous system”
155-156 “Psychologists with the ambition that their discipline shall achieve the status of a natural science may well regard cognitive reversionism as a tragedy”
157 “...within particular scientific situations linguistic circumstances can and do influence both theory and research. A classic circumstance is the detrimental influence of such terms as `stimulus' and `stimulation' in the history of psychology”
“Basic to the traditional concepts of stimulation are (a) some form of psychophysical premise, (b) the influence of studies on physiological preparations, and (c) metaphysical notions of cause and effect. Finally, there is (d) considerable disregard of complex human and cultural behaviour”
158 “It is simply impossible to construct a valid theory of stimulation (or responses, for that matter) on the quicksand of historical mentalistic foundations”
“It is common knowledge that the term `stimulus' is derived from physiology. In that discipline the term is used to refer to any agency, mechanical, electrical, thermal, which puts a conglomeration of cells called an organ or an organism into action”
“The (see last sentence) model is the classic notion of cause and effect with the cause occurring first and producing the effect after an interval of time. This model contrasts greatly with a field construction in which stimuli and responses are reciprocal actions in a complex event”
159 “..the notion that a stimulus is something to make the organism act fades completely away”
“While it is unfortunate that the differences between physiological and psychological data have not given rise to suitable new language, that fact offers no excuse for confusing one type of datum with another”
“On the latter basis the entire argument of circularity in definition is completely irrelevant”
161 “Only on the physiological level may stimuli and responses be regarded as separate unit factors”
“A glaring defect here is to ignore the great difference between stimulation as a description or theory, and stimulation as a behavioural event”
On how controlled experimentation leads to reduction and substitution which give rise to analogies unlike the actual events: “A notorious categorisation in psychological circles is exemplified by the polarisation of dependent and independent variables which leads to the confusion of events with constructions. To accept such terms as essential descriptions of stimulation is to adorn oneself with blinkers against the great cosmos of uncaged behaviour”
164 “...he [the physicist] reduces data concerning movements and general behaviour of bodies to mathematical propositions”
165 “...some writers have likened laws to postulates, hypotheses, or theories, that is operational aids, while others have regarded them as axioms in the sense of finalistic explanations imposed upon events”
“I propose that laws in science be considered as constructions based solely upon events and their observation”
“...only those laws or formalised statements are valid that are as free from cultural and authoritarian influences as possible. Because the sciences are corrigible, depending upon both observational exigencies involving technological facilities and modifications in events, laws are not immutable but only temporally stable”
“...the evaluation of laws in science can be made on the basis of the underlying philosophy”
“Transcendental philosophy either ignores ongoing events or translates them into extraspatial entities or processes by exclusively verbal methods. It divides the universe into crude matter and spirit while persons are dichotomised into spirit and flesh, soul and body, or mind and body. Being oblivious to occurring events metaphysical philosophers seek absolute reality and the arcane mysteries of the supernatural”
166 “...scientific philosophy is free from the delusion that it can transcend transpiring events”
“...laws in science are generalised descriptions of single events or constellations of events as they have been observed and measured under specific conditions, there is no hindrance to the development of laws in any scientific discipline”
167 “...explanations only specify the conditions under which stimulus object-organism interaction occurs”
169 “That the soul construct has attained a massive longevity and even immortality, in disregard of all its improbability and futility, is evidenced by the entire history of psychology”
170 “As a name for the mutable repertoire and style of an individual's behaviour each organism is a number of personalities”
171 “Similarly, the soul tradition is clearly influential in the conception of mind as a store-house for ideas or other psychic processes called memories”
172 “Depending on context or auspice any particular meaning is only a matter of usage”
“Attention to the specificities of situations aids the differentiation of confrontable happenings from soul infested descriptions”
173 “It is a common observation that the establishment of a particular type of social institution such as a belief or ritual spreads through a population, and even carries over to dissimilar forms of things and behaviour”
“Cognitivism constitutes a counter-revolution to the behaviouristic revolution that promised to promote psychology to a scientific status by banishing the mythology that inflected it since the Hellenistic period of occidental history”
174 “Mentalists assumed that psychologists on the whole were too deeply bitten by Pavlov's dogs”
“Also there existed clear-cut evidence that there was no warrant to attribute to psychological behaviour such mystical entities and processes as soul, mind, self, and ego”
175 “What is the experience of a sensation or a feeling but an action of an organism with things, persons, and conditions as the stimulus objects with their attending conditions”
“But actually, the use of the term cognition turns out to be a means to bring back to psychology or to preserve it in the ancient mysticism and verbigeration of the spiritistic philosophers”
176: “Whereas the scientific scientist is concerned with the behaviour of a scientist while observing independently existing events...” > but we are never independent of what we observe, as we are part of the field, so is this an error by Kantor? Also “he fails to appreciate that an event does not depend upon an observer for its properties or existence”
178 “As is evident, knowledge of the turning point in the continuity of a science demands knowledge of the persons concerned and an acquaintance with the conditions in which they lived”
History of experimental psychology: Kant (1786) Herbart Fechner Hemholtz Wundt (1832-1920).
180 “Wundt entertained no other hypothesis than that the observation of an organism's action under stimulation reveals the nature and operation of the mind or soul”
“Wrong and improper postulation can never enter the kingdom of science. Except by default”
“Only that discipline obtains scientific standing in which hypotheses and postulation match the behaviour observed”
(18/09/97)
184 “Strictly to respect the difference between constructions and events promises well for an adequate naturalistic understanding of mankind. Propositions derived from events and their meticulous observation are excellent substitutes for the mystical metaphors originating in nothing more substantial than verbalistic lore”
185 “Authentic biology properly understood should eventually drive out the brain mythology which even penetrates the pages of Science (Wade, 1978). Printed in that journal is a quotation to the effect that Einstein's brain had caused a revolution in physics and quite possibly changed the course of civilisation”
“It is customary to think of organisms just adapting themselves to their independent environments. That is an error. What basically happens is that the changes are reciprocal; organisms and environments change in parallel, and exist symbiotically. An outstanding example is the relationship between the Yucca moth and the Yucca plant.
186 “...there is no place in the description and interpretation of human behaviour for internal processes or absolutistic determinations by imaginary powers”
“..influence of words upon the belief in inner states or processes”
“Consider the utter vacuity of such expressions as `man is mind'...”
187 “Actually psychological treatises are short on discussions of behaviour in religious, moral, social, domestic, industrial, and legal situations—in brief, behaviour in actual human circumstances. Thinking, imagining, and creating are treated only if they are reduced to theories about the working of imaginary brain models”
188 “Absolute and a priori philosophy plays a large part in modern psychology”
“A most important word of caution: The entire origin, perseverance or decline of talents, capacities, beliefs and social habits can be observed in the evolution of psychological responses and their products, in particular human situations”
189 “A human neonate is not more psychologically advanced than a vegetable”
“It is the culturalisation process that accounts for the fact that scientists entertain transcendental beliefs and assumptions”
191 “Undeniably, Sperry imposes on his mind-brain propositions ideas he absorbed in his early childhood”
“...such philosophical systems originate as futile mechanisms for escaping from harsh and unbearable living conditions”
193 “But events scientifically envisaged are not fixed and self-enclosed either in space or time; rather, they form an ever changing continuum”
“Foretelling the future in specific situations is not invariably an elusive problem since there is a continuity between the circumstances of current date and changes in the happenings of some time to come”
194 “The future of psychology certainly calls for the development of better basic postulates. If psychology is to become a full-fledged science, it will be necessary to extrude from it every vestige of transcendental influence”
195 “Mainly because language is the medium of science, it is an urgent requirement for the scientific advancement of psychology to be extremely meticulous with respect to semantic problems. For one thing, words must never be confused with things or events, whether existent or imagined. But this is a common practise; the terms sensation, idea, personality, instinct, motivation, intelligence, mind, and so on are regarded as names of trans-experiential entities”
“All names must be used as references to performances of the interactional type”
196 (on a list of dogmas)
4. That conditioning is a universal cause of the behaviour of organisms
5. that experimentation is simply manipulation
198 “It is irrational to convert the necessary presence of biological factors into a sufficiency for the genesis of cultural behaviour”
“It is a primary thesis of these comments that current dualistic psychology cannot accomplish anything in the way of human improvement”
199 “To make conditioning applicable to complex human behaviour it is necessary to reduce it to simple mechanical terms. Also it appears necessary to annex unacknowledged borrowings from more adequate views to cover up the inadequacy of the principles of mechanical manipulation and control of human behaviour”
208 “Obviously such an argument rests on nothing more than the prior illegitimate presupposition that there is some thing or person that either exists or does not exist”
“It is unmitigated fallacy to say that there is no proof either of the existence or nonexistence of a deity or the validity of the mind metaphor, since we no the origin and career of such inventions”
211 “It is in the abstractionistic phase of all theory construction that smoothes the way for the errors of scientific description and interpretation”
215 “What is required above all is a good understanding of the science of psychology”
217 “For the most part, writers adopt the traditional dualistic postulates and consequently mythologise the history of psychology”
218 “First the term `soul' became to theological looking and so the term `mind' was substituted for it”
“Consider the paradox of the philosopher Lovejoy (1922) who thought behaviouralists could not think because behaviourists thought thinking was the activity of individuals with respect to things thought about, rather than psychic processes”
219 “Sperry (1970) himself faced the invalidity of his pronouncements when he worked with a 19-year-old California college student born without a corpus callosum and without the split-brain results and conditions of his laboratory subjects. Mythological materials make possible all sorts of magic.
“Organisms are reduced to sets of neurons or neural junctions and entire integrated organisms are left out of account”
“...and so...the Broca area is mythological”
224 “...a resurgence of psychology has taken place currently under the banner of cognitive psychology”
“Psychological fields are continuous with those of other sciences though very different. For example, the interbehaving organism not only interacts with objects on the basis of physiochemical properties but also on the basis of functions or characteristics developed in the life histories of the interacting components”
225 “Elementary psychology students enter psychology classes with unshakeable though horribly fallacious ideas about the `mind' and its home in the brain”
227 “Thinking, loving, planning, inferring, hating, guessing, as the unique performances of persons in no wise warrant the belief in mentality any more than does the uniqueness of the falling stone”
228 “Now it may be said confidently that all views about minds, consciousness, and psychic elements consist entirely of verbal constructions”
“Those who hold that sensations of X's mind cannot be transferred to Y's mind simply are asserting that some quality or property of stimulus objects responded to belongs invariably to that object in a psychological interaction and to no other object”
229 “'A directly felt pain' is a descriptive construction of a reaction performed in association with a pain producing stimulus object, a heavy weight or a needle, knife or flame”
“What is clearly private or specific about pain situations is that by contrast with other fields the stimulating functions are localised on or within the anotomical structures of the responding organism”
p. 230: “The behaviourist does not realise that in a world where every event is `private,' that is unique, there is no problem of privacy”, “Mysteries of privacy owe their source only to unacknowledged vestiges of transcendental thinking”
p. 231: “Temporary or permanent ignorance may well be a potent factor in separating private and public behaviour”
231: >He lists everyday usages of "private" using a Wittgenstein type approach.
234: >Eloquently points out that he had a lot of Gibson's ecological ideas long before Gibson did.
238: “Perceiving acts are semi-implicit. In performing a perceiving response we do not merely react to a thing as it stands before us, but rather to what the object means—in other words, its possibilities as a behaviour object”
239 “How complete can conversion be after a long life of fidelity to the psychistic faith?”
“...valid observations can only reciprocate with events”
“what a waste of time, money, and energy is the consequence of ignoring the description of psychological events as they actually occur instead of as tradition demands”
241 “Surrogation is the process of interacting with something by means of something else”
247 “...personality development depends on the availability of objects and events as stimulus objects with which to interact, and to build up more effective and more reasonable behavioural traits”
250 “For example “round” is an adjective, a noun, a verb, an adverb, or a preposition”
254 “The sentences representing the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle are regarded as cosmic existents”
255- more on verbal sleight of hand and jugglery.
264 “It is clear that they try to support confusions of words with things and events by assuming that nonexisting powers are deposited in some part of the brain or in the entire nervous system”
271 “Item 7. Presume artifacts of manipulation of behaviour events to be the events themselves”
“Psychology will not be a science until students of interbehaviour join into a unity of realisation that no science can tolerate the belief in supernormal happenings which are nothing more than verbal assertions that have been institutionalised as cultural traditions”
274 “No authentic science can deal with a brain that is not a biological organ performing conducting and integrating functions or actions, but as a so-called mechanism misnamed memory in which `sense data' are stored for perceptual inferences”
275 “...one may be deeply immersed in certain problems and master much knowledge in that particular field and still misinterpret events worked upon because of a faulty intellectual framework”
276: Various examples of how learned men can still be oblivious to new, better ideas.
277 “...the paradox of knowledge, investigation, and science as the obvious outcome of the farthest evolution of mankind wearing the badge of retardation and serving to obstruct cultural advancement”
“All learning and knowledge develop and exist in an all-embracing cultural system”
284 “...writers assume that what the ancient clerics thought of as the soul really exists, although there is no rational warrant for this whatsoever”
284-285 “Moreover, the evidence is definitely available concerning the early development of naturalistic psychological data and their transformation at the hands of churchmen, transcendental philosophers, cultivators of common sense ideas, callous practitioners, and other spiritistically inclined thinkers”
“Another fallacious procedure, which is regarded as a correction, is the use of similarities and analogies from the established sciences” (gives examples of physics, chemical, and biological analogies with psychic states)
286 “...particular events selected from the great event continuum”
287 “...there must be an awareness of basic postulation and that the findings must conform to the original basic postulates”
“But since all descriptions and interpretations of psychological events must be conveyed by language or speech, there is enormous scope for insufficiencies and inaccuracies”
291 “The unfortunate consequence of dragging the tabula notion into linguistics whether accepted or rejected is the preclusion of linguistics from becoming a scientific discipline. To espouse a positive or negative attitude toward tabulae is to confine oneself to a heap of verbal abstractions with a neglect of the biological and psychological details of the evolution of organisms and their adaptations to their surroundings”
297 “Not only are all the events of nature, their occurrence and significance enshrouded in sentimental curiosity with overtones of personal `salvation,' but it is all done by the juggling of empty verbal abstractions”
300 “The entire matter of psychological meanings hinges upon the functions of stimulus objects”
301 “What things and events mean depends upon previous history with objects of an analogical and similar or dissimilar character”
302 “It is an interesting but inexcusable practise for persons interested in psychology on a scientific basis to postulate a universe divided into two phases”
“All the time, there is lost from sight the concept that in remembering one is interacting directly with a substitute stimulus and indirectly with the objects or situations that are remembered”
303 “The transactionalists draw their intellectual stance from the bottomless well of Hegelian objective idealism, in which actor and thing acted upon are one, the knower and the known, are interfused in one giant spiritial cosmochaos”
306 “Those who unwittingly accept the dogmas of the Church fathers concerning the existence of two worlds, two essences-minds and bodies, as well as other mentalistic dualisms decry behaviourism despite the fact that their observations and experiments never concern anything but the cognitive and affective interactions of organisms with concrete objects through the mediation of direct or substitute stimulation”
From “The aim and progress of psychology and other sciences” (1971):
6 “All scientific work constitutes a set of operations upon events which comprise points on a continuum”
10 “Now to make a science out of this product of popular belief and philosophical tradition, the thing to do was simply to study it as a correlate and manifestation of the workings of the organism”
12 “To blow up the elementary facts of relative interactions between persons and things into a metaphysics of consciousness is absolutely uncalled for in any scientific investigation”
14 “For example, serious destruction of the middle portion of the left cerebral hemisphere may take place without consequent aphasia or intellectual disturbance”
15 “...psychology as a science has moved on from the position of describing or explaining an entire complex event by factors localised within the organism”
20 “For the most part it appears more expedient to twist facts into conformity with established doctrine than to modify those ideas”
22 > Psych is science when based upon 1) observation, 2) manipulation, and 3) inference (based upon 1 & 2).
“...the actual work of the psychologist is to interbehave with an organism's interbehaviour with things or organisms”
“The intense occupation of psychologists with the physiological basis or the `physical dimensions' of consciousness is nothing but a means of unwittingly concealing their traffic with non-natural phenomena”
23 “Naturally such formulations are abstractive in the sense that all observation and all reference to things or events imply the selection of certain of their aspects”
24 “...the behaviourists simply take over the conceptions of stimulus, physiological functioning etc., with merely a rejection of psychic factors”
25 >hassles the objection to the rejection of dualism in psychology by reference to chaos etc, by saying that such notions are actually irrelevant to what physicists do.
27 “In the matter of the specific energy doctrine Helmholtz follows Muller and psychologists perhaps without exception follow Helmholtz”
“When we add the testimony found in Fechner's transformation of the objective results of Weber, the case is complete for the view that experimental psychology has given us a varied set of modifications of dualistic tradition”
“The power of dualistic tradition in psychology is excellently manifested by those psychologists who attempt to spatialize mind or consciousness by transforming it into a function of the brain or other biological organ"
28 “We may well conclude that every form of neural or biological theory, whether parallelism or identity, can only block the evolution of psychology to a natural science”
29 A list of postulates
30 “Obviously all sciences are interrelated, since all crude data are abstracted from a single manifold...”
29-30 “Psychology in common with all other sciences marks off a portion of this great manifold of events and proceeds to investigate it with the instruments and techniques (field and laboratory observation and experimentation) most useful in studying such phenomena.”
30 “It is an unfortunate consequence that in the attempt to side-step occultistic entities psychologists borrowed constructs which physicists and biologists obtained from operating on their crude data”
“By crude data we understand the events which set the problems for the scientist and constitute the bases for his formal constructions (verbal descriptions, mathematical formulisation) after he has investigated them”
“The psychologist's borrowing of scientific materials has brought about an unsatisfactory relation to his own”
“This transformation, however, serves either to convert psychological events into non-objective substances and processes or reduces them to physiological functions”
“Natural phenomena cannot be transformed or reduced to simpler forms”
“Certainly the analytic descriptions we make of phenomena are not to be regarded as identical with the phenomena described”
“In this sense psychology may be regarded as a much more concrete science than physics”
31 “It is an interesting paradox that scientists frequently assume an air of superior condescension toward the knowledge of the layman”
“Howsoever lofty the structure constituted by science it must stand upon the foundation of common objects and events”
32 “...organisms interact with objects on the basis of their own properties, biological, biophysical etc., and upon the properties of the objects. This is a reflex level. It is assumed that the ascertainment of the properties mentioned can be determined by the various techniques of the physical, chemical, and biological sciences”
>on a higher level, organisms have freer contact with objects, and the interaction is influenced by the cultural conditions surrounding the psychological event.
“We have already suggested that because psychology more than other sciences has been integrated with the prevailing culture of Western Europe, its history consists of a series of variations of the primordial dualistic theme”
33 “To assume that postulates are forms of interbehaviour with scientific foundations undoubtedly helps to control and limit prejudgements as well as to modify or replace assumptions when contact with phenomena indicates that they are no longer tenable”
“It is assumed here that the organism is a unique and in the normal state a complete single individual, the psychological activities of which are always movements, postures, or more elaborate activities performed in indissoluble relayion with specific objects and events”
34 “...the psychologist is obliged to construct a descriptive unit simple and stable enough to enable him to understand what is essentially continuous and integrated. Such a descriptive tool he constructs in the form of a behaviour segment”
“Though behaviour segments like all events are unique and unrepeatable, they can be more or less simulated when certain of the original factors in the situation are recombined in a similar way”
35 “Underlying all dualistic descriptions of perception is the theory that there is a definite correspondence between the physiological mechanisms and sensation or consciousness qualities”
35 onward, here he critiques the notion of correspondence between mental states and neural conditions (equating psychological with physiological). Points out that the physiological research of his time was revealing facts that destroyed and notion that specific sensations are associated with specific neural aspects.
38 “There is abundant material in the field of neural conduction to support the view that the physiological functions all cooperate toward a unified operation of the total organism in interrelation with the objects and conditions in its surroundings”
39 “...there is not a single fact to warrant the belief that the cortex is the seat of mind or consciousness”
> the facts of reception and conduction support no dualistic approach, and as a result, the brain has been postulated as the explanatory mechanism (it all happens once the `info' gets to the brain).
42 “What then shall we make of the fact that loss of every pary of the cortex does not prevent the organism from continuing activities it has previously performed or building up such interbehaviour after the extirpation?” ??? >I wasn't aware of this fact, he goes on to use it in destroying the localised brain functions hypothesis.
45 “Traditionally the stimulus conception was borrowed form biology. The biologist regarded a stimulus as a condition (chemical, thermal, mechanical, electrical) which puts a cell, tissue, or perhaps an entire organism into operation”
“When we turn to psychological events... the idea of a stimulus as a condition putting an organism into action lacks pertinency altogether”
46 “When the objects acting upon organisms clearly indicate their insufficiency as causes, psychologists have gone no further than to hypothesise goals and corresponding drives and motivations”
“In contrast top the conventional conception we propose that a stimulus is what the object or organism interacted with does”
“A stimulus is in no sense a cause of a response, though when we stress the response as an adjustment we may regard the stimulus as an eliciter of the response”
46-47 “However, the inception of a psychological event always implies that both the organism and object have already entered into an interbehavioural situation”
49 “Scientific experience indicates that the psychological event must be regarded as enormously more complicated than any electrical or gravitational phenomenon”
51 “According to interbehavioural psychology meanings constitute those features of interactions that are describable as repetitions and continuities of specific interbehaviour of persons and objects” ??? I'm not really up with him here.
52 “Not only must he begin with such materials, but he must continuously check the propositions of his expanding scientific structure by constantly inquiring how far his manipulations and experiments depend upon these basic phenomena as compared with capricious invention and the conventionalities of his particular field of work”
53 “...the breach between Mach's admirable inattention and his lack of achievement”
“...sensations are merely names for particular contacts of organisms with such coloured and sounding objects”
54 “There is no observation which requires to abjure the doctrine of the homogeneity of science”
“Even if such fervent embrace and worship of mathematical symbols are to a degree justified, they certainly to not warrant the implied misinterpretations of the nature of language, symbols, and the place of mathematics in science”
55 “Physicalists assert that mathematical symbols constitute the only scientific language on the plea that only scientific descriptions employing such symbols can be accurately made. There is a palpable non-sequitur here. Of course scientific descriptions must be accurate, but what can accuracy mean when dynamic events are fixated in static symbols, or when the fullness of nature is translated into contentless propositions?”
“...but today it is obviously deleterious to make every kind of phenomenon conform to the procrustean bed of geometry or mathematics”
“...accuracy in science is not be obtained by an indiscriminate application of mathematical symbols, but by ascertaining th best way of referring to events as they occur”
57 “The scientist always strives for a law or general principle which sums up and integrates innumerable instances”
“All events are intrinsically unique and we must distinguish between those that allow more abbreviation and even distortion and those that do not”
“Mathematics is undoubtedly the most abstractive domain of science, since its subject-matter is relations and specified operations”
“Psychology probably constitutes the least abstractive domain, since here the specificity of occurrence must receive its fullest recognition, unless one employs mystic factors to fill out gaps”
58 “Instead of reducing the intricacies of events to abstract geometry, geometry itself through relativity theory with its basis in light has become a function of natural events”
60 “Yet upon this restricted foundation has been erected structures reaching the dizzy heights an absolute indeterminism of nature”
66 “... scientific success is a definite function of the freedom from conventional bias with which the scientist approaches his field of operation”
69 “When in any given situation we are unable to observe the details of the interbehaviour, we can only assume, as in the case of every other science, that this incapacity is owing to nothing more than the intricacy of the phenomena or the ineffectiveness of our techniques”
72 “It is a curious item of scientific research that usually only previously held conceptions concerning investigative details are undermined, while fundamental issues are very rarely disturbed” (pp. 72-73).
75 “Such physiological findings might stimulate the psychologist to a far-reaching revision of his conceptions, but the power of traditional thought must be reckoned with and the only result is to endow the brain with magical powers”
76 “As the writer has so often pointed out...”
79 “It is frequently repeated that science cannot be based upon unique events and that unless phenomena are repetitive they cannot be generalised”
“It is a fact, then, that induction as the goal of science can best be served in psychology by taking account of actual occurrences rather than by constructing elaborations and extrapolations which appear so much more definite and manageable than the concrete operation of event factors”
82 “Certainly the terms [stimulus and response] are not used with precision”
94 he outlines four field approaches: organismic, psychanalytic, Gestalt, and interbehavioral.
96 “Fields, then, are essentially loci of interbehaviour of response and stimulus functions on the basis of successive contact conditions between organisms and stimulus objects”
97 “There is no doubt that for Bridgeman the fundamental significance of operationism is that it serves as a check upon the arbitrary construction of mathematical equations in physics”
100 “An especially vexing consequence is the failure to observe that numerical data can be of no greater importance than the performances from which they are derived”
105 “...deductivism implies an extreme formalism which is never salutary except when dealing with abstract entities”
“There is only one rule, namely: that the descriptions should fit the events described”
106 “Logic must be regarded as a definite human enterprise, and it is possible that logic depends upon psychology as much as psychology depends on logic”
107 “...mathematical propositions and procedures can be attenuated and abstracted from the operational matrix in which they are so indispensable and built up into abstract theory and even dogma”
107 “To be sure, mathematical components of scientific theory are not only useful but are necessary.”
110 “...by stressing deduction, which he forgets is always interrelated with induction in scientific work”
“But such empiricism is really not opposed to a hypothetical-deductive interpretation of science, if by that term is meant an emphasis of hypotheses and postulates as essential guiding processes”
“Similarly, rationalism in science stresses the scientist's activity with results of investigation, whereas empiricism emphasises the influence of stimulus objects or subject matter in scientific behaviour. Both of these, naturally, turn out to be merely mutual and reciprocal phases abstracted from single investigative events”
114 “In this sense, the dread of philosophy of many psychologists is well warranted, since an understanding of what their basic postulates imply would mean a necessary shifting of position” this sounds very Vickiish.
198 “In general, we might conclude that it is most essential for the purpose of psychology that the various workers should agree upon fundamental propositions”
199 “To divide an organisms action into mental and physical and to make the data of psychology into anything but responses and stimuli is not a scientific enterprise but a metaphysical one”
203-204 he argues for the independent and objective existence of worldly phenomena.
211 “This means that on the stimulus side he has substituted for his original crude data constructions developed by the physicist for other situations altogether”
212 “We are passing away from the grand tradition... of dividing the universe into primary and secondary qualities”
“Scientists carry into the laboratory their scientific traditions as surely as they carry their linguistic cultural background into their conversation”
some errors he lists in the psychological domain of colour perception:
225 “...science must be periodically inspected for parasitic conventions which adversely influence methods and results”
226 “It is no far-fetched assumption that the way out of the present scientific impasse depends on the liberation of science from domination by the dualism which originated in the Hellenistic period of our culture”
228 “All phenomena are natural events—in other words, spatiotemporal in character”
229 “A useful distinction can be made therefore between interbehaviour with natural things and that with imagined objects”
Chapter 20 “The role of language in logic and science”
330 “Nor is grammar anything else than an arbitrary fixation of nebulous and shifting usages”
337 “Wittgenstein states (Tractatus 3.26) “the name cannot be analysed any further by any definition. It is a primitive sign... Obviously the above proposition can only be accepted by taking into account the operations of the name given”
340 “Although symbolinguists originally asserted that statements not admitting a truth decision or verification11 are metaphysical and devoid of sense, they finally had to abandon that position” (see for example, Wittgenstein).... Confirmability they exchange, therefore, for verifiability.
341 “It is well known how fear of ignorance and hopelessness in the face of it induces us to create intellectual fortresses and certainties by exercising our capacities for linguistic and symbolic construction”
Some other Bits and Pieces:
“Kantor excoriates the conclusion that the principle of indeterminism in quantum mechanics somehow nullifies or compromises causality and the predictability of physical events” (Schoenfeld, JEAB, 12, p.340).
“ A law is nothing but a formula that an investigator works out to summarise his observational contacts with certain arbitrarily isolated happenings” (p. 49 of Interbehavioural psychology and the social sciences. Journal of Social Philosophy, 1935, 39-53).
(In preface to psychology and logic: “...no matter how logic is defined, it entails a psychological dimension which must be taken into account” & “...although logic is obviously a human enterprise [logicians] inevitably regard it as ultimate, universal, and transcendent”
Later on (p. 339 of JEAB 12) “causal events as data consist of particular interrelationships of observed happenings”
From The principle of specificity in psychology and science in general: “...few psychologists realise the difference between acts or movements, and psychological adjustments,” & “...what differentiates psychology from physics and biology is that in the former what constitutes the essential data are the functions of acts and their stimulus counterparts”
“Causal changes in any field constitute a rearrangement in the simultaneous coexistence of factors in a unique pattern,” & “Causal knowledge is knowledge of the pattern of events” (P&L, Vol. 2, p. 174 & p. 157).
“Not until the 20th century has there been any serious protest; then the behaviourist, with his roots in biological science, threw away the mental half of the constructs of his predecessors. This we might call an adjustment to dualism, not a fresh start” (I.B, p. 5).
“In general, behaviourists believe that the organism as a whole or in its specialised structures consist of a locus of acts or functions—for example, learning, discriminating... (I.P, p. 5).
“The insidious character of this doctrine lies in its claim to articulate with certain biological facts. For example, its proponents fall back upon the fact that losses and desruction of tissues and organs preclude the performance of certain psychological actions” (I.B, pp. 13-14).
“...the behaviouralistic system imposes upon all psychological data constructs derived from animal conditioning” (I. B. p. 14).
“Banished are all constructs, such as mind, body, ego, sensation, which lack correspondence with events” & “...any factor dissected out for research purposes must always be handled with direct reference to the entire unit from which it was taken” (I. B. p. 19).
