Behavioral Pragmatism: Making A Place for Reality and Truth.
Radical behaviorism can speak of truth without contradiction by treating truth as what works, not what mirrors reality.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Schoneberger (2016) wrote a theory paper. He asked: can radical behaviorism talk about truth and still stay coherent?
He borrowed ideas from philosopher Richard Rorty. The goal was to keep behavioral pragmatism but leave room for reality.
What they found
The paper says yes. We can keep our useful, work-for-us pragmatism and still say some things are real.
The trick is to drop the demand for perfect mirror-like truth. Instead, we treat truth as what helps us act effectively.
How this fits with other research
Belisle (2020) extends the same stance. They give a concrete rule: pick the relational-frame model that predicts best in your setting. This turns the big philosophy into a daily decision tool.
Malott (1988) is an earlier seed. That paper showed how rules bridge big delayed consequences and tiny now ones. Schoneberger (2016) later uses pragmatism to explain why those verbal rules still count as real tools.
Mueller et al. (2000) push to include private events. Schoneberger (2016) pushes to include realist talk. Both say the field grows when we widen the vocabulary, not when we ban words.
Why it matters
You can stop dodging words like true or real in team meetings. Use them, but tie them to what works for the client. When two models clash, ask which one gives better outcomes, not which one is right in some cosmic sense. This keeps your practice nimble and your philosophic story straight.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In "Behavioral Pragmatism: No Place for Reality and Truth," Barnes-Holmes (2000) proposed a behavior-analytic version of philosophical pragmatism he called behavioral pragmatism (BP), a perspective which challenges two bedrock tenets of Western culture: (1) metaphysical realism, the view that an external, physical reality exists which is mind-independent and (2) the correspondence theory of truth (CTT), a theory which maintains that true statements are those which correspond to mind-independent reality. Many (perhaps most) behavior analysts accept both of these tenets (though they typically name and describe these tenets using different terms). By contrast, in lieu of the first, BP offers, as a replacement tenet, nonrealism, in place of the second, the pragmatic truth criterion. The account of reality and truth of BP has gained increasing prominence within behavior analysis because of its inclusion within relational frame theory, a perspective with a growing number of adherents. In this paper, I first argue that the realism/pragmatism dispute needs to be resolved because it threatens the coherence of radical behaviorism as a philosophy of science. Next, I present a detailed account of the differing conceptions of reality and truth as articulated within: (1) metaphysical realism, (2) behavioral pragmatism, and (3) Richard Rorty's version of pragmatism (Rortian pragmatism). Finally, using the insights of Rortian pragmatism (RP), I offer three proposals for modifying the core tenets of behavioral pragmatism. If adopted, these proposals would help narrow the realism/pragmatism divide, thereby reducing the threat to radical behaviorism's coherence.
The Behavior analyst, 2016 · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.87.2.337