eliminative behaviorism

alternative eliminative behaviourism

1. USuncommonuncountablehuman sciencesThe theory that mental entities do not exist and therefore, all statements of the mind must be referring to physical behavior.First known use 1971

   In effect, cognitive semantics mediates between dualism and its polar opposite, eliminative behaviorism, which repudiates the existence of any mental events or states by reducing them to bodily behavior.

   2000, Warren Buckland, The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 40

   2 more examples

   […] thus, to the establishment of a sort of eliminative behaviorism. Strictly speaking, according to this new account, there is no question of truth of falsity about what a man believes, hopes, intends, supposes, etc. Strictly speaking, we could encounter all the facts there are and not encounter any facts like these. So, it is all right if we cannot express in our purely extensional (or, anyhow, purely nonintentional) language—the language we reserve for such solemnities as formalizing physics—what we can express by reference to intentions.

   1979, William E. Cooper, Edward C. T. Walker, editors, Sentence Processing: Psycholinguistic Studies Presented to Merrill Garrett, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 420

   In rejecting mental language as false, this “eliminative behaviorism” in effect asserts that, contrary to what we have always believed, people do not act on their ideas, they do not have beliefs, and they are not swayed by emotions.

   1985, G. E. Zuriff, Behaviorism: A Conceptual Reconstruction, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 202