Foundations for a natural science of philosophy.
Philosophy is just verbal behavior, so we can study it like any other operant.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The author asks a bold question: what if philosophy is just another kind of science?
He maps philosophical talk onto Skinner’s verbal-behavior categories.
The paper is a thought experiment, not an experiment with people.
What they found
Philosophical statements become tacts, mands, or intraverbals.
That move puts philosophy inside behaviorology, not the humanities.
The goal is to turn armchair debates into data-driven puzzles.
How this fits with other research
Crosbie (1993) already urged us to push verbal-behavior work into the mainstream. Ribes-Iñesta (1999) goes further and swallows the whole philosophy department.
Schmitt (1984) wanted to rename our field "praxics" to dodge philosophy. Ribes-Iñesta (1999) keeps the name behavior analysis but redefines what counts as philosophy.
Eagle (1985) said behavior analysis can power economics. Ribes-Iñesta (1999) says it can also power philosophy.
Why it matters
If you supervise RBTs who ask "why are we talking about mind stuff?", this paper gives you a script. You can treat every philosophical claim as verbal behavior to be shaped, not argued with. Next team meeting, try labeling a coworker’s statement as a mand or tact. The conversation turns from belief to data, and that’s the habit Ribes-Iñesta (1999) wants us to build.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The functional relations among philosophy, science, technology, and intuition are examined. Those domains are each defined as behaviors, and each of them is then classified either as verbal, nonverbal, or both. Finally, those classes of behavior are organized into one integral behavioral system. The concept of a science of philosophy is introduced. A science and technology of philosophy are not only possible but necessary. Such an approach to the discipline of philosophy could lead to a new disciplinary structure for philosophy. Philosophy could be taught in academic departments as a verbal behavioral science. The discipline of behaviorology provides the foundations necessary to capacitate the traditional discipline of philosophy as a science and technology of verbal behavior commensurate with its potential cultural mission.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 1999 · doi:10.1007/BF03392950