Now we may not be quite like computers, but presumably the principles which govern our behavior are at least as complex as those that govern a computer, so we may reasonably expect that formulating hypotheses about our own internal states and processes will turn out to be the most effective way of explaining and predicting our behavior. At the very least, it seems clear that it would be a mistake to rule out a priori any theory which made use of such hypotheses. Mentalistic accounts are not genuinely explanatory. Skinner argues that many supposed explanations are really just made up on the spot and do not provide a genuine account of one's behavior. The explanatory emptiness of much of our ordinary talk about mental events is not evidence that mentalistic notions can find no place in a genuinely scientific account of human behavior.
Mentalistic explanations are typically redundant.
Skinner claims that mentalistic explanations really just restate the facts of behavior in more obscure language. Here there seems to be at least a trace of the linguistic thesis of philosophical behaviorism as exemplified by Carnap and, at one time, Hempel. The idea seems to be that the mentalistic statements have the same meaning as the behaviors that count as evidence for them. Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second link is not lawfully determined by the first, or the third by the second, then the first and third links must be lawfully related. At first sight, this looks very reasonable.