On the Practical Value System Building for Behavior Science

Abstract The argument is made that because the work and products of science are necessarily impacted by the assumptions upon which scientists operate, it is incumbent upon scientists to systemize these foundations of their enterprises. The values of system building, identified as protection against semantic confusion, prevention of internal inconsistency, and facilitation of interdisciplinary collaboration, are exemplified as correctives for specific problems of these sorts in Behavior Analysis. It is suggested that the objection of behavior analysts to Kantor's Interbehaviorism, pertaining to a perceived absence of dependency relations in his formulation, is a misunderstanding arising from the incomplete systemization of Behavior Analysis. Key words: Interbehaviorism, Kantor, Behavior Analysis, system building, dependency relations, interdependency. ********** In his book, About Behaviorism, Skinner cites 20 common misunderstandings of behaviorism, and comments as to their likely sources. From his perspective, the most important source of the misunderstanding of the philosophy of the science of behavior was a misunderstanding of the science of behavior. In his words: "Its most active investigators, and there are hundreds of them, seldom make any effort to explain themselves to non-specialists" (Skinner, 1974, p.8.) This circumstance has changed very little in the thirty years since About Behaviorism was published, and it no doubt continues to have this consequence. Still, if we had to guess, we would say that Skinner's isolation of this as the most important source of misunderstanding was not so much what he believed to be the case, as what he thought he might be able to do about it by saying so. For our part, we think behaviorism is misunderstood because understanding it is threatening. We think J. R. Kantor's Interbehaviorism is misunderstood for the same reason. The threat in the latter case is a different one, though, and it operates upon a different audience. We will return to this issue after first agreeing with Skinner's contention about ignorance, and perhaps for the same reason. Very few behavior analysts are familiar with Interbehaviorism. Most have probably never even heard of it. The same is true for the larger psychological community, if inclusion of this perspective in textbooks, even textbooks on the history of psychology, is a good indication of community awareness. It is also the case that among the behavior analysts who are familiar with Interbehaviorism, many harbor the sorts of reservations about it that could only come from a misunderstanding of the position. It seems useful, thereby, to address these issues. More specifically, we wish to address why this position has attracted so little attention and why it has been so misunderstood by those attending to it. With regard to the first of these issues, it has been argued that Kantor's position was ignored because his work was difficult to read. Certainly it is the case that Kantor's style was unusually formal, and his vocabulary unusually large. We don't think this was the reason that his work was ignored, though. Rather, we believe that Interbehaviorism showed up on the intellectual scene at an inopportune time. Kantor's first major works, Principles of Psychology and An Outline of Social Psychology, were published in the twenties. This was a time in which the field of Psychology was undergoing significant change. Prior to this time, Psychology had claimed independence from its historical subservience to spiritistic philosophy, and had emerged as an experimental science. By the twenties, pragmatism was in vogue, and learning theories, on the model of Pavlov's work, were attracting critical attention. Societal circumstances had been disrupted by the war, and the difficulties attendant to the reintegration of soldiers into society placed explicit demands on the discipline to be of service. …