Like Watson, Skinner denied the existence of a
separate realm of conscious events. He believed
that what we call mental events are simply verbal
labels given to certain bodily processes: “[My] position
can be stated as follows: What is felt or introspectively
observed is not some nonphysical world
of consciousness, mind or mental life but the observer’s
own body†(Skinner, 1974, p. 17). But, said
Skinner, even if there were mental events, nothing
would be gained by studying them. He reasoned
that if environmental events give rise to conscious
events, which, in turn, cause behavior, nothing is
lost and a great deal is gained by simply doing a
functional analysis of the environmental and the
behavioral events. Such an analysis avoids the many
problems associated with the study of mental
events.
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