Humans are social creatures, so it’s natural to approach humans by studying the things they do. Behavorists have gone so far in this direction that they believe that human actions or behaviors define human ideas and emotions such as pain and joy. This concept conflicts with the ideas of Materialists and Dualists, who both are branches of Philosophy that say that the human mind is an internal thing, not an external one.
1. So, what is Behaviorism?
According to Behaviorists, mental activities, such as emotions, are defined by a likely-hood to act in a certain way. For example, when you are in pain, it is likely that you will cry, scream, yell in pain, etc. This seems like a pretty good theory considering that is the way we understand pain within one another every day. When the idea first came into being, it quickly grew in popularity because of the criticisms against its opponents: Dualism and Materialism. Those two schools of thought claimed that since mental occurrences were strictly internal, it is impossible to ever know what someone else is thinking or if someone else is acting sanely or insanely. People didn’t like this idea because they knew that people are able to see one another’s emotions and level of sanity all of the time because of their behaviors. So Behaviorism became very popular.
2. Is it true then?
Despite its initial wide popularity, Behaviorism is now considered to be a foolish way of looking at the human mind. It is mostly criticized for being an oversimplification of the mental process. According to a Behaviorist, pain is defined by the behavior of acting in pain. One will instantly see flaws in this idea; isn’t pain more than that? Can we not feel pain but choose not to show it. Humans are capable of not displaying signs of pain by force of will, but obviously that pain still exists, right? Likewise, cannot someone pretend to be in pain when they really aren’t at all? The problem with Behaviorism is that it is a confusion between the result of the emotion and the emotion itself. A common way to illustrate this is to think of a disease, such as the Common Cold. Now the symptoms of the Cold are caused by the Cold itself and seen by the person who has the cold, but we could not call the symptoms a Cold would we? We would call it the symptom of the Cold. In the same vein, we do not call pain behavior pain, we call pain itself pain.
3. What can we learn from it?
Even though Behaviorism is no longer considered a good way of looking at the philosophy of the human mind, it is still an important part of philosophical history because of its reaction to the “private mind” ideas of Materialists and Dualists. There is something to be said for the significance of the connection between the mind and behaviors resulting from the mind that Behaviorism officially made. There is no arguing that humans do demonstrate behaviors that convey our inner emotions, and this fact must be noted with all future philosophical theories about the mind.
