Behaviourism Is Back !

It was not long ago that behaviourism was almost a contemptuous epithet, if not a contretemps career epitaph, and few theorists wished to be mistaken for behaviourists. However, there has been a recent shift of alliances with the emergence of a new breed of researchers that openly advocate the incorporation of behaviourism into the study of consciousness. This critical essay is therefore devoted to the examination of Rodney Cotterill’s work whose theoretical orientation in the field of consciousness positions him among the eminent members of this growing group of theorists. Behaviourism was once a dominant movement in psychology, and, even as late as 1976, it was not uncommon to come across claims that ‘since the days of Chicago functionalism and Columbian Thorndikianism, no one has seriously doubted the hegemony of behaviourism’ and that any other theoretical predilection in psychology ‘existed more by contrast with behaviourism than as a school of thought in its own right. ’ (Wispé & Thompson, 1976, 346) Yet shortly thereafter, the “cognitive revolution” displaced behaviourism from psychology’s front page and, increasingly, from departments of psychology. But, what did happen? In his historical re-evaluation of behaviourism with an unreserved recommendation for its reintroduction into the mainstream psychology, John Staddon traces the eclipse of behaviourism by cognitive revolution back to two principal factors: the digital computer and the theoretical paucity of Skinnerian behaviourism. (Staddon, 1993) The appearance of digital computers ISSN 1393-614X Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 257-275 ____________________________________________________ Majid Amini 258 provided a feasible framework for mentalistic ideas to be simulated for the first time, and thereby cognitive psychology was enabled to parry behaviouristic criticisms that cognitive theories were inexact and anecdotal. Secondly, the appropriation of behaviourism by the Skinnerian radical rendition of it — with its strong bias against formal theory and its belief that psychology is nothing but the collection of orderly behavioural experimental data — deprived behaviourism of the necessary means to understand the multifarious manifestations of the mind and its inner workings. Staddon laments that the atheoretical excesses of radical behaviourism went to the extent that they ‘blocked advances within behaviourism so that connectionism, the next evolutionary step in the associationistic tradition of the early behaviourists, was forced to find home in cognitive, rather than behaviouristic, psychology. ’ (Staddon, 1993, 108) With appropriate theoretical chastisement, however, we are given to understand that the reformed behaviourist can offer a framework for scientific psychology that far surpasses conventional cognitive psychology in its explanation and prediction of mental phenomena. The new theoretical behaviourism, Staddon suggests, can deal with mentalistic problems like consciousness without ignoring them, obscuring the distinction between what is inside as opposed to what is outside the organism, or confusing what is felt with what can be measured, while remaining faithful to its fundamental insight about the mind, viz., behaviour. That is, “renaissance” behaviourism is promised to provide theoretical links between behaviour and the brain that have allegedly eluded cognitive psychologists thus far. It is, therefore, against this backdrop that the aims and achievements of researchers like Rodney Cotterill could be better appreciated. ISSN 1393-614X Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 257-275 ____________________________________________________ Majid Amini 259 In the Enchanted Looms, Cotterill is primarily concerned with the contentious core of the mind/body problem, namely, consciousness, within the broad framework of a computational approach, as suggested by the subtitle, Conscious Networks in Brains and Computers. Among the most profound puzzles like the origin of the Universe, the nature of time, and the relationship between the four fundamental forces of nature, Cotterill believes that ‘consciousness is fast becoming one of the last major bastions of mystery. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, xi) Yet, Cotterill’s contention is nothing other than to demystify consciousness. The tome is, thus, intended to answer questions such as how it is possible for conscious states to depend upon brain states, how technicolour phenomenology can arise from soggy gray matter, what makes the bodily organ called brain so radically different from other bodily organs like lungs, and how the combination of millions of individually insentient neurones can culminate in sentience and consciousness. In short, ‘how consciousness arises from the brain’s anatomy and physiology. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, 10) For Cotterill, however, the justification for delving into such matters substantially stems from the ‘ultimate need to judge whether conscious computers are likely to emerge in the foreseeable future. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, 172) To set the scene for discussion, it would help to give an outline of Cotterill’s eleven-chapter odyssey in the Enchanted Looms. The book could be effectively divided into three parts. Part one, consisting of the first two chapters, offers an overall view of the project, its problems and the history of mind in terms of its physics. The second part, covering the next six chapters, describes the cortical anatomy and neurophysiology of brain in great details with an emphasis on ISSN 1393-614X Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 257-275 ____________________________________________________ Majid Amini 260 how a computational theory could be used to explain cerebral activities. Concerning the latter, however, Cotterill is very insistent on distinguishing between computational constructions inspired by the brain and the actual neuronal networks present in the brain, where it is the latter that one should aim for in the quest for understanding consciousness. In the final part, forming the last three chapters, Cotterill attempts to explain the emergence and functioning of a range of mental phenomena such as sensation, thought, emotion, intelligence, introspection, and language from a neurological-cum-philosophical perspective. It should be noted that Cotterill himself is one of the leading researchers in the field with an expertise in biophysics, and naturally his approach to the question of consciousness is heavily informed by his empirical background. His account could, therefore, be embedded within the greater camp of constructive naturalism, according to which consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon and its explanation must be solely constructed in terms of physical notions and concepts. In this spirit, Cotterill develops a scientific approach to consciousness by linking conscious experience to observations from neuroscience and cortical anatomy about correlated brain activity and function, and to the descriptions of mental processing that come from psychology and cognitive science. A characteristic feature of Cotterill’s naturalistic approach is its bottom-up strategy, whereby the aim is to synthesise a multi-cellular picture from the available knowledge of how individual nerve cells behave. (Cotterill, 2000, 29) That is, to present an explanation of conscious phenomena in terms of the underlying processes at the neuronal level. Whereas a top-down route takes its starting point observations on the behaviour of the complete person and uses these to draw conclusions about the nature of the underlying ISSN 1393-614X Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 257-275 ____________________________________________________ Majid Amini 261 mechanisms. Although Cotterill agrees that a full and complete explanation should include both strategies (Cotterill, 2000, 321), he insists that a proper appreciation of the top-down route could be obtained only through prior consideration of what the bottom-up strategy is able to offer. From a philosophical perspective, however, the merit of Cotterill’s work lies in its sensitivity to and concern for issues surrounding consciousness in philosophy. Obviously, the first port of call in the quest for a constructive account of consciousness is to give a delineation of what one is looking for, viz., ‘what consciousness actually is. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, 9) However, as Cotterill concedes and most other researchers in the field readily attest, the concept has turned out to be very elusive and hard to elucidate. Nonetheless, Cotterill offers an interesting diagnosis for the difficulty to pin down the ‘bare essentials’ of consciousness: it is the failure to separate consciousness from its products. Cotterill contends that the elusiveness emerges from the sheer abundance of mental and experiential phenomena mediated by consciousness which has eclipsed the nature of this fundamental attribute. On his reading, one must differentiate between the underlying mechanism of consciousness and its mere consequences, i.e., ‘the tall and richly varied oaks of our conscious experiences and the little acorn of the underlying mechanism. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, 332) Cotterill thus proposes that ‘it is the mind that is the product of consciousness. ’ (Cotterill, 2000, 10; original emphasis) With this ontological reversal and in pursuit of exposing the bare essentials of consciousness, Cotterill adopts a paradoxically “refreshing” approach by appealing to behaviourism and motor theory of mind. Within the constructive naturalist camp, Cotterill is espousing a type of neoISSN 1393-614X Minerva An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 257-275 ____________________________________________________ Majid Amini 262 behaviourism — he in fact calls it quasi-behaviourism. (Cotterill, 2000, 344) According to classical behaviourism, there was nothing over and above behaviour or disposition to behaviour to the mind. However, behaviour