Contingency Horizon: on Private Events and the Analysis of Behavior

Abstract

Skinner's radical behaviorism incorporates private events as biologically based phenomena that may play a functional role with respect to other (overt) behavioral phenomena. Skinner proposed four types of contingencies, here collectively termed the contingency horizon, which enable certain functional relations between private events and verbal behavior. The adequacy and necessity of this position has met renewed challenges from Rachlin's teleological behaviorism and Baum's molar behaviorism, both of which argue that all "mental" phenomena and terminology may be explained by overt behavior and environment-behavior contingencies extended in time. A number of lines of evidence are presented in making a case for the functional characteristics of private events, including published research from behavior analysis and general experimental psychology, as well as verbal behavior from a participant in the debate. An integrated perspective is offered that involves a multiscaled analysis of interacting public behaviors and private events.

Drug discrimination and the analysis of private events.

“…Skinner noted that this treatment of private events is a primary point of departure of his version of radical behaviorism from the so-called methodological behaviorism which was, and continues to be, a dominant view in the behavioral sciences. He and others (Day, 1983; Leigland, 2014; Marr, 2011; Moore, 1980; Palmer, 2009; Schnaitter, 1978; Zuriff, 1979) made clear that private events are not merely physiological mediators or mental precursors of overt behavior. That is, they are not the inner causes of behavior in the colloquial sense that one thinks before he acts or senses pain before he flinches.…”

Still some explaining to do: A review of The Escape of the Mind by Howard Rachlin

“…Rachlin also seems to assume that Skinner's view of private events involves responding to the “qualia” or subjective experience of events occurring within the skin. But when Skinner talks about private events, he is referring to a complex self‐discriminative repertoire that is shaped over time by the verbal community (Leigland, ; Marr, , ; Palmer, ; Schlinger, ; ). It is no more dependent on the “qualia” of discriminated events than is the descriptive repertoire involved in reporting one's overt behavior or any other overt event.…”

“…In what follows, I summarize the book's chapters and try to abstract an accurate description of Rachlin's teleological behaviorism before offering a critique. Because I have little to add to the several already published responses to Rachlin's (and Baum's, , they are similar but not identical) position on private events (Catania, ; Dougher, ; Leigland, ; Marr, , ; Moore, ; Palmer, ; Schlinger, ) and Rachlin's article () on whether a computer could be made human (McDowell, ; Schlinger, ), my critique will focus on the book itself and what I perceive to be its strengths and limitations.…”

On Having a Goal: Goals as Representations or Behavior

“…When focusing on what effects goals have on human behavior overall, what should be analyzed is not a goal as an object but the relationship between these two functional classes of human behavior. It is thus a behavior–behavior relationship (Hayes and Brownstein 1986; Leigland 2014). If a person states a goal and then acts to achieve it, he or she is interacting with his or her own behavior in the moment, not with a future object.…”