Who, What, and When: Skinner's Critiques of Neuroscience and His Main Targets

Abstract

Skinner is commonly accused of being against neurophysiological explanations of behavior. However, in his writings, he did not criticize neuroscience itself as an important independent field from behavior analysis. The problem was in how some authors were using a pseudo-physiology in the explanation of behavior. Skinner was explicit in showing which authors and theories were using physiology incorrectly. Therefore, my goal is to present an analysis of the main targets of Skinner's critiques against neurophysiological explanations of behavior. This analysis will be divided as follows: (a) the targets of Skinner's critiques, (b) when the critiques were presented, and (c) the specific critiques that were made. The analysis was based upon 73 papers written by Skinner that were selected through keywords related to the issue. When placed in proper historical context, Skinner did not criticize neuroscience, but the misuse of pseudo-physiological theories in the explanation of behavior.

Keywords: B. F. Skinner; Conceptual nervous system; History; Neuroscience; Physiology; Radical behaviorism.

Fig. 1

Skinner’s targets and number of mentions from the 1930s to the 1990s. The ellipsis is used after the “1990s,” it is to indicate that every text published after 1989 was added to this period (including the ones published posthumously)