analytical behaviourism

alternative US analytical behaviorism

1. uncountablehuman sciencesSynonym of behaviorism

   The other opposing direction is represented by analytical behaviourism which attempts to reduce mental states to patterns of actual and possible external public behaviour.

   2007, K. T. Maslin, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge; Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, →ISBN, page 23

   2 more examples

   In philosophy, behaviourism did (naturally) take a metaphysical form: chiefly that of analytical behaviourism, the claim that mental ascriptions simply mean things about behavioural responses to environmental impingements. Thus, ‘Edmund is in pain’ means, not anything about Edmund’s putative ghostly ego, or even about any episode taking place within Edmund, but that either Edmund is actually behaving in a wincing-and-groaning way or he is disposed so to behave (in that he would so behave were something not keeping him from doing so). ‘Edmund believes that broccoli will kill him’ means just that, if asked, Edmund would assent to that proposition, and, if confronted by broccoli, Edmund would shun it, and so forth.

   1996, William G. Lycan, “Philosophy of Mind”, in Nicholas Bunnin, E. P. Tsui-James, editors, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, page 169

   Thus we arrive at analytical or philosophical behaviourism: just as fragility is the disposition to break on dropping […] so desire for beer is the disposition to behave in what we believe is a beer-getting manner, and this is a reflection of our very concept of desire for beer.

   1997, David Braddon-Mitchell, Frank Jackson, Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, Blackwell Publishers, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 31

   Synonyms: analytic behaviorism, analytic behaviourism, analytical behaviorism, behaviorism, behaviourism, logical behaviourism, philosophical behaviorism, philosophical behaviourism