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The main goal of this article is to discuss the place of psychology in the domain of natural sciences as an autonomous endeavor from neuroscience. However, given that psychology is not a monolithic field, it is necessary to specify which particular psychological approach is being taken into account. Here, I take B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism and behavior analysis as a case study. The focus on Skinner's behaviorism can be justified for at least 2 reasons: (a) Skinner is one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, and (b) he is well known for his defense of the autonomy of behavior analysis from neuroscience. The first part of this article is dedicated to the analysis of Skinner's arguments for the autonomy of behavior analysis from neuroscience in 73 of his works, published between 1933 and 1993. In the second part of this article, I analyze Skinner's arguments by taking into account contemporary neuroscience. Incredible advances occurred in neuroscience since the 1930s, and even the late 1980s, period in which Skinner developed his ideas. Therefore, it is important to discuss the pertinence of his arguments in light of today's neuroscience in order to evaluate the validity of his “autonomy” position. I argue that the relation between behavior analysis and neuroscience can shed some light on the more general debate about the relation between psychology and neuroscience by presenting an interesting nonreductionist alternative free of the problems faced by cognitivist theories.

A questão da definição de comportamento frequenta a literatura científica de diversas áreas do conhecimento há mais de um século, sem que os pesquisadores tenham estabelecido acordo sobre aspectos fundamentais envolvidos no tema. As principais discussões estão vinculadas à identificação ou não do termo com atividade, ação, relação, evento e interação. Este artigo recupera parte do contexto histórico de evolução do termo, aponta implicações derivadas de se optar por alguma dentre as principais definições disponíveis e elabora um cenário analítico que -espera-se -possa contribuir com a comunidade de analistas do comportamento para realizar escolhas consistentemente contextualizadas de uma definição de comportamento especialmente direcionada ao âmbito do comportamento operante tal como formulado pelo Behaviorismo Radical.Palavras-chave: comportamento; behaviorismo; análise do comportamento. ABSTRACTThe matter of defining behavior figures scientific literature of diverse areas of knowledge for over a century, but an agreement about the fundamental aspects related to the topic was not reached yet. The main discussions usually identify behavior with diverse terms such as activity, action, relation, event and interaction. This article brings into discussion some aspects of the historical context related to the evolution of the term 'behavior'. Furthermore, it discuss some implications of adopting the main definitions available and, in doing so, it also provides an analytical framework that we hope may be useful to behavior analysts in making consistent and contextualized choices on the definition of behavior, especially in the domain of operant behavior as formulated by radical behaviorism.

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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.