Private Events in A Radical Behaviorist Account
Radical behaviorism differs from other forms of behaviorism in that it treats everything we do as behavior, including private events such as thinking and feeling. Unlike John B. Watson's behaviorism, private events are not dismissed as "epiphenomena," but are seen as subject to the same principles of learning and modification as have been discovered to exist for overt behavior. Although private events are not publicly observable behaviors, radical behaviorism accepts that we are each observers of our own private behavior.
Many textbooks, in emphasizing that Skinner held behavior to be the proper subject matter of psychology, fail to clarify Skinner's position and implicitly or even explicitly posit that Skinner ruled out the study of private events as unscientific. This is Watson's position, not Skinner's.
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