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This chapter looks critically at what might be called “philosophical arguments” for the Representational Thesis (RT) view of linguistic competence. It considers an argument sometimes suggested although perhaps not embraced by anyone: the argument from the rejection of behaviorism. This rejection is compatible with many alternatives to RT.

Dogs have always been the focus of human interest about nature. In many cultures they even won the ‘prestigious’ title of being man's best friend, whilst in others dogs did not receive such sympathy from humans. This chapter reviews the history of dogs in science and puts the study of dogs into an ethological perspective that is interested in questions on function and evolution of behaviour in parallel with understanding behavioural mechanism and development. Comparative investigations lie at the heart of the study of dogs, and the chapter provides an overview on theoretical problems associated with the comparative method.

Problems of self-control as well as social cooperation may be seen as conflicts not between internal spiritual or neurological entities, but between highly valued overt behavioral patterns of differing temporal extents or social distances. For example, an alcoholic must choose between having a drink now—valuable in the short run—and being healthy, performing well at work, maintaining satisfying social relationships, etc. —valuable in the long run. The essential question addressed in this chapter is how the latter may come to dominate the former within a person's lifetime. A behavioral evolutionary process is proposed by which valuable temporally or socially extended behavior patterns evolve over an individual lifetime from simpler, shorter patterns. It is argued that complex patterns, such as social cooperation over long periods, arise from simpler patterns in behavioral evolution analogously to the way complex structures, such as the human eye, arise from simpler structures in biological evolution. The idea that complex, long-term behavioral patterns in conflict with short-term patterns, if they are not inherited in toto, must be generated by an internal and autonomous spiritual, neurological, or cognitive process is compared to creationism in biological evolution. The role of delay and social discount functions in measuring the extent of coherent behavioral patterns is explicated. Finally, the chapter examines several implications of teleological behaviorism for practical behavioral control.

This chapter provides a brief history of some of the theoretical strands that form the backdrop to contemporary debates among nativists about the evolutionary and cognitive underpinnings of culture, and the ways that culture shapes the mind. Summaries of the contents of each of the chapters in the volume are also provided.

The distinction between automatic and controlled cognitive processes was imported into social psychology, and formed the basis for a new generation of “dual-process” theories of social cognition and behavior. However, some social psychologists have gone further to claim that automatic processes dominate social interaction, leaving little room for anything like free will. For these theorists, human beings are machines — automatons — after all. However, no empirical evidence supports such a strong claim about human nature. In part, the automaticity juggernaut appears to reflect a reaction to the cognitive revolution in social psychology, with its implication that social interactions are mediated by conscious, deliberate, rational thought; in part, it may be a reflection of the biologization of social psychology. But it also seems to be a reflection of an emerging “People Are Stupid” trend within social psychology, as well as a throwback to the historical alliance between situationism and radical behaviorism. Finally, the emphasis on automaticity appears to be based on the “epiphenomenalist suspicion” that consciousness plays no role in human behavior, as well as the allure of the pinball determinism of classical physics.

This chapter provides an historical review and analysis of systematic attempts to characterize different forms of memory, and the central observations that support the idea of multiple memory systems. It reviews early ideas of multiple memory systems by the philosopher Maine de Biran, the distinction between habit and memory proposed by William James, the notions of behaviorism by Edward Thorndike, cognitive maps by Edward Tolman, schemas by Fredric Bartlett, and cell assemblies by Donald Hebb, and more. It also introduces insights from amnesia resulting from hippocampal damage in humans and from studies of animals that have suggested the hippocampus is critical to cognitive mapping, conditional and contextual association, and episodic memory, each of which highlights relational memory representation and flexible memory expression. Current research focuses on the mechanisms of relational memory and flexible memory expression, and on non-hippocampal memory systems.

This chapter introduces Behaviourism contra Cartesianism, the problems of inferential perception, speaking of a person versus speaking of a body, and first-person avowals. It also details issues concerning what we can too-easily call the description of inner content, real introspection as against metaphysically-misconstrued introspection, competing characterizations of self-deception, cases of self-representation in the arts, and the philosophical implications of Kierkegaard's ‘Diary of a Seducer’. The ‘outward’ criteria and self-knowledge are also mentioned.

Truthmaker theory promises to do some useful philosophical work: equipping us to argue against phenomenalism and Rylean behaviourism, for instance, and helping us decide what exists. But it has proved hard to formulate a truthmaker theory that is both useful and believable. This chapter outlines some of the most prominent accounts of truthmaking in the current literature, and argues that a neglected approach to truthmakers — that of Ian McFetridge — can surmount some of the problems that make other theories of truthmaking unattractive. McFetridge's version of the truthmaker principle invokes the concept of explanation: for every true sentence, it demands an explanation of why that sentence is true. It is argued that McFetridge's principle is intuitively plausible, powerful enough to argue against behaviourism and phenomenalism, and immune to some of the difficulties faced by the most prominent theories of truthmaking.

This chapter focuses on relations between second-family Individual Representationalism and other standpoints that either reinforced it or began to undermine it. Sense-data theory was the prevailing form of Individual Representationalism in mainstream philosophy during the first half of the 20th century. By the early 1950s, the influence of sense-data theory was fast evaporating. Sense-data theories did not influence subsequent philosophizing except negatively. Apart from their departures from common sense, sense-data approaches were rejected on two main grounds: they were criticized as subjectivistic and atomistic. Philosophical work at mid-century took on a more realist, more objectivist flavour. It emphasized dependence on context, public availability of expression, and interlocking psychological capacities that make cognition and language use possible. Many philosophers insisted on a role for language even in perception and the simplest perception-based thought.

This chapter glosses the terms ‘naturalism’, ‘physicalism’, ‘intentionality’, ‘aboutness’, ‘mental’, ‘content’, ‘mental content’, ‘representational content’, and so on, in ways that may seem unorthodox but should not. It points out that dispositions like belief dispositions cannot — metaphysically cannot — be (mentally) contentful entities. It argues dutifully for the existence of things that obviously exist, not only conscious experience, but also, more specifically, cognitive conscious experience as opposed to sensory experience. The chapter presents the case for saying that (1) the only truly intentional entities are conscious experiential episodes. It argues that although one can (with Humpty Dumpty) use words like ‘mental’ and ‘intentional’ as one likes, there is in the end no tenable ground between (1) and (2) full-blown Dennettian behaviourism/instrumentalism/antirealism about the mind; as Dennett himself agrees. To accept (2), however, is to have completely lost touch with reality.

This chapter argues that education was a key arena for spreading the influence of psychology. This is not a novel view, but it is argued that too much emphasis has been placed on the role of psychology in mental testing and child guidance as a tool of regulation, and too little on its significance for a more progressive pedagogy. It is argued that the latter reached well beyond the pioneering activities of figures like Montessori, the Russells, and A. S. Neill, and highlights the excitement about psychology among teachers exposed to the new ideas through teacher training. The role of psychological advice in childcare is considered, downplaying the influence of behaviourism and highlighting the ambivalence of psychologists towards popularization.

There has always been a close association between psychology and the philosophy of science. Although some individuals over the past 200 years have suggested that psychology had little to offer philosophy (Kant and Popper), many more have expressed a contrary opinion. The chapter shows that psychology influenced philosophy of science mainly through four areas: perception in the form of psychophysics (on Mach, Peirce, and James) and in the form of Gestalt psychology (on Carnap, Hanson, and Kuhn), animal behavior in the form of behaviorism (on Russell, Bergmann, and the logical positivists), and cognitive psychology (on Popper, Giere, and Thagard). On the basis of the present findings, the conclusion is reached that better understanding of science is considerably dependent on knowing how the mind works, which is an idea as old as the British empiricists and the Würzburg school and as young as contemporary cognitive science.

This chapter provides an overview of early studies of spatial cognition, focusing on maze learning. It begins with a description of the first maze studies which were based on the Hampton Court maze. Next, it considers behaviourism and its early proponent, John Watson. Watson and his colleagues argued that animals do not need vision or other senses to solve a maze, but rather rely on a sequence of well-learned motor responses, termed motor kinaesthesis. One of the challenges to this view comes from a series of studies on spatial learning by Edward Tolman and colleagues. Tolman argues that rats, in running through a maze, develop a representation of its entire layout. This he referred to as a cognitive map.

Decision theory is multidisciplinary. Philosophical decision theory formulates principles of rationality for decisions. Its principles treat primarily instrumental rationality and cover both procedural and substantive rationality. My school evaluates an option in terms of its consequences, using an agent’s preferences taken in the ordinary, nonbehavioristic sense. This book generalizes principles by removing selected idealizations and making adjustments for their absence.

This chapter focuses on how and where Josephine raised Philippa. Josephine based the way she disciplined her child on the ideas of John Broadus Watson, founder of a school of psychology called behaviourism. His advice was to treat children as young adults, never hug and kiss them, and let the parents' behaviour always be objective and firm. Dr. Watson discounted heredity and instinct as important factors in a child's development, and Josephine, though having difficulty with some of these ways of parenting, continued to accept the thesis. George and Josephine began to treat their daughter, from a very early age, as an intellectual equal and when they talked Philippa always listened attentively. Philippa was still under observation of NYU School of Education thus still depriving her with normal life.

Considers the neo-Walrasian approach to general economic equilibrium. The conquest of the existence theorem is compared with the defeat on the grounds of uniqueness and stability. Examines the developments in the new welfare economics in the light of Arrow's impossibility theorem and Sen's critique of utilitarianism. Concludes with the controversy on marginalism in the theory of firm.

The main alternative accounts of perceptual consciousness are briefly discussed, including scientific-psychological; neuroscientific; dualist; physicalist; Wittgensteinian; Sartrean; behaviourist; other kinds of functionalist; pure representationalist (Dretske, Tye); higher-order perception (Armstrong); higher-order thought (Rosenthal, Carruthers). The book concludes with a reminder of its core points.