Antidualism and Antimentalism in Radical Behaviorism

• Published in: Behavior and philosophy 2016-01, Vol.43, p.1-37
• Main Author: Burgos, José E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1053-8348; 1943-3328

Radical behaviorism (RB) is antidualistic and antimentalistic. Antidualism is the rejection of ontological dualism, the partition of reality into physical and nonphysical. Antimentalism is the rejection of the ontological theses that mind is causal, internal, subjective, and nonbehavioral in nature. Radical behaviorists conflate both rejections, based on depictions of mentalism as inherently dualistic. However, such depictions are fallacious. Mental causation and mind as internal are fundamentally incompatible with dualism and hence inherently materialistic. Mind as subjective and nonbehavioral in nature are compatible with dualism, but can be construed materialistically. I exemplify with the mind-brain identity theory. The same arguments apply to functionalism, which is also materialistic and provides a more plausible philosophical interpretation of cognitive psychology as a paradigmatic example of mentalism at work in psychology. I propose that radical behaviorists’ accusations of dualism against mentalism rely on an invalid redefinition of “dualism” in terms other than the physical-nonphysical partition. All of this only weakens RB’s antimentalism. Radical behaviorists are advised to stop making those accusations and adopt a behavioristic ontology of mind, such as mind-behavior identity, to reject alternative nondualistic ontologies.