Dominique Sandu
Professor Morgan
Phil of Mind
26 October 2018
Why Behaviorism is False
Introduction
Behaviorism involves many factors that fail to produce relevant information of all behaviors. There is no complete definition of behaviorism among the behaviorists, but a simple way of explaining it, is the way we behave. However, contradiction occurs when someone demonstrates a behavior that is completely different from the characteristics that actually describes him or her. Due to the numerous examples provided depicting the contradiction of behaviorism; the theory is false as will be exemplified in this discussion. Ideally, this paper aims at providing a different perspective in relation to understanding the rationale for different behavior among human beings.
Response to Existence of Behaviorism
Behaviorism has many definitions such as the personality or way of perceiving empirical constraints on psychological state attribution. Besides, behaviorism can be illustrated as a framework that explains the way of doing psychological science itself. However, the key definition of behaviorism that is supported that many philosophers is that every actual instantiated phenomenal property is identical to dispositional behavior properties. Behaviorism is often found as a necessity due to some attractive factors. One of these factors is its ability to clarify what looks like necessary connections between behavior and consciousness. For example, someone who is in pain will display a pain-relate behavior. Another factor to why behaviorism is regarded as important has something to do with one’s knowledge of another’s mental life. For instance, one might say someone is conscious although he or she does not have direct access to her conscious and internal life. The only access one might have is the access to observable behaviors that are evidence that one is conscious. A behaviorist can explain this connection easily. For instance, if something break after being dropped, there is evidence it has a dispositional factor of being fragile. Some of the examples that explain behaviorism is the idea of showing pain or happiness. When one encounters a harmful stimulus, he or she responds by crying, looking sad, or holding the area that is hurt. The response – crying and holding the damaged part – is an observable behavior that explains the situation a person is facing.
Rationale of Why Behaviorism is False
On the contrary, they are real-life situations that prove that behaviorism is false. For instance, some of the actions are considered as a true representation of behavior when they are not. For instance, they are smiling does not necessarily mean happy. Many people especially men gives the wrong face behaviors to display masculinity. People, especially men believe that displaying emotion is a sign of weakness. For example, most men find it awkward to cry in front of people or display strong emotions to their friends. They might respond to awful situations by smiling to their significant others or friends to conceal their true emotions. In such a situation, behaviorism will focus on the external emotions that smiling, whereas the smile is pretentious and does not display the true feelings of the subject.
Furthermore, behaviorism is false because it is not just the physical things that cause a response but the internal constructs. Behaviorism focuses only on observable behaviors disregarding the internal emotions. Behaviorism is limited and restrictive in considering the role of the brain in controlling or producing behavior. A brain is no ordinary passive memory bank for environment or behavior interactions. The brain contains systems that encode or implement the representation contents that the environment has for someone. It is also a semantic engine or an interpretation machine that perform behavior controlling tasks. However, such interpretation and representation of the brain are ignored by behaviorism, and ignoring them poses great doubt on behaviorism. This is because an individual can use his or her brain to trigger a fake response for various purposes such as concealing true emotions.
Exemplification of Super Spartans
Showing pain does not necessarily mean that someone is hurt or experiencing a hard time. Phenomenal pain cannot be analyzed in behaviorist terms. For instance, during the World War II, soldiers pretended that they were suffering or in pain so that they could not be sent to battlefields. They faked the suffering since the battlefields were dangerous and the survival chances were very low. Some of them willingly injured themselves while others pretended they were limping to avoid going to war. This situation proves that behaviorism is false. If it were true, then the soldiers would be actually in pain. According to behaviorism, being in pain translates to showing pain behaviors when exposed to harmful stimulus. However, these soldiers were faking pain to avoid going to the battlefield and leaving their families behind. Therefore, behaviorism delivers a false feedback; it predicts that soldiers are in pain when they are not. Categorized in the form of an argument:
Argument one: If behaviorism is true, the soldiers are in actual pain
Argument two: Soldiers are not in pain
Conclusion: Behaviorism is false.
If behaviorism were true, the soldiers would be in actual pain meaning and the conclusion would be true as well.
Exemplification of Perfect Pretender
Furthermore, displaying happiness does not necessarily mean that someone is happy. There have been cases where depressed people pretend to be happy and they end up committing suicide. Those who are depressed or sad pretend to happy to avoid being judged by others. People are afraid of asking for someone’s time to explain their problems and they are often scared that they would negatively affect someone’s life, because who would desire to deal with someone’s problems. Moreover, someone may pretend to be happy as a result of stigma. One may open up to his or her friends and be referred to as an attention seeker or selfish. This tells people that they do not deserve to impose their own issues on others. Besides, one might pretend to be happy as a result of law motivation from depression. It becomes easier to pretend that you are feeling awesome than to tell others how you are feeling and why. Likewise, his situation has two different arguments.
Argument one: One is happy
Argument two: One is not happy, but pretending saw.
The conclusion between these arguments is that behaviorism is false.
Conclusion
Based on the two case studies, behaviorism can be defined as what is seen with two sets of eyes and not the reality of the situation. In the World War II case example, behaviorism suggests that soldiers are in pain while in reality they are not in pain. Furthermore, behaviorism indicates that one is happy when in reality, he or she is depressed. These two examples make behaviorism unreliable as it fails to account for the true feelings, which proves that the theory is false and should not be used to explain behavior. Also, contrary to the key definition of behaviorism there are no phenomenal properties that are identical with dispositional behavioral properties because the close correlation between neutral properties and phenomenal properties suggest that it is better to abandon behaviorism in favor of the neutral theory.