How behavior is explained outside the context of radical behaviorism is a fascinating subject laden with errors, misconceptions, invalid constructs, inventions and (perhaps) most importantly heavy political baggage. Such fortuitous explanations including the mind, choice, will, intentionality, cognitive structures, intelligence, personality are familiar to almost anyone. The current “go-to” word in psychological subjects, however, is the “brain”.
Ledoux (2014, p.150) identifies coincidental selectors – factors that change the later probability of response, where the behavior has not produced the reinforcer – in other words any behavior in the particular situation would have been reinforced. This phenomenon is more commonly known as superstition. All of cognitive psychology and behavioral explanations including the brain are complex-sounding variants of this.
Let’s begin by seeing how the present discourse of psychology looks like:
Discourse of psychology
If one checks the psychology subreddit practically any day, the top posts always include references to the brain, how it works, how to change it’s functioning etc. Some posts among the top ones from two dates:
- Our brains reveal our choices before we’re even aware of them, study finds (2020-09-27)
- A world-first study has found that severely overweight people are less likely to be able to re-wire their brains and find new neural pathways, a discovery that has significant implications for people recovering from a stroke or brain injury (2020-09-27)
- In this special episode of *Your Brain in the Time of COVID-19*, we discussed the book Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. We explored loneliness, self-image, how to cope with the quarantine isolation, and realistic representation of mental health struggles in books and movies. (2020-11-14)
The references to the brain as some entity besides the person is so widespread, that it is reflected in common language. Statements such as “I can’t get it into my brain”, “my brain works strange sometimes” are not uncommon. Conversations regarding behavior are filled with cerebral inputs:
How did this come to be
Two main ways come to mind when thinking about how the brain became the golden standard in psychological explanations:
The first is due to the boom of neuro-imaging studies. Psychological curricula include and hold in high esteem among its research methods various brain scanning studies. Examples include MRI, PET, EEG. What is quite sad and pathetic that psychologists often have no access to such methodology and also often cite brain studies in search of explanations. A sample statement from Dean Burnett’s (2018) book The Happy Brain:
So important do our brains think social interactions are, they’ve evolved specific, dedicated emotions to regulate them! Thankfully, happiness doesn’t seem to be one of these, although as we’ve seen, it’s a lot easier to be happy with other people than without.
Perhaps inevitably given all this, the people we relate to and interact with play a big part in our sense of self, our identity. Scanning studies have revealed that when we contemplate being part of a group or think about those we identify with, we see raised activity in areas like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior and dorsal cingulate cortex. But these areas also show raised activity when we think about our sense of self. The implication is that the groups and communities we belong to are a key part of our identity. This shouldn’t be surprising; we saw earlier that our possessions and homes inform our identity, so it’d be weird if the people we surround ourselves with didn’t.
Burnett (2018) – The Happy Brain (p. 70)
This passage demonstrates the short-sightedness of the author and the significance of coincidences. Some spurious data is taken into account and enormous implications are made as a result. Do remember, that all behavior is represented in brain – it can be said that the activity of the brain is behavior itself or part of behavior. Anything that one does will have related brain activity – this should not be taken as proof for any construct (i.e. verbal behavior) the author is already conditioned to say. In summary, neuro-imaging studies have their proper place in neurophysiology and medicine, but not in psychology.
The second way of the cerebral proliferation is the ever elusive search of the internal agent. Various circles have accompanying constructs that represent the inner homunculus:
- Theology has the Soul
- Philosophy has the Mind/Self/Consciousness (a radical behaviorist account of consciousness)
- Psychology has the Brain
While the first is simply discarded, the second somewhat controversial, the third is widely accepted – the brain lends some plausibility as the organ really exists. Alas, this is yet another comically bizarre, somewhat scientifically sounding explanatory fiction – some agency is put into the “brain”. The absurdity is revealed when one says “my brain”. Whose brain? Where then am I? How can one separate oneself and his/her brain? Isn’t this a delusional way to see reality, described in the diagnosis of schizophrenia? These are all facets of the same fallacy and are forever condemned to failure in explaining behavior:
Even then consciousness won’t be found in the brain—no behavior will be. We need to be cautious about searching for the location of behavioral traits in the brain, what psychologist William Uttal has called “the new phrenology.”
Henry D. Schlinger Jr. (2020) – Consciousness is Nothing but a Word – in Operants (Q2, 2020, p. 23)
So much for description, now it’s time for some explanation:
Mereological fallacy
To ascribe psychological attributes to the brain is to commit a mereological fallacy – akin to claiming that it is aeroplane’s engines, rather than aeroplanes, that fly, or that it is the great wheel of a clock, rather than the clock as a whole, that keeps time. (p. 8)
In the first place, brain/body dualism commits a mereological fallacy. Where Descartes ascribed psychological attributes to the mind, crypto-Cartesian scientists ascribe much the same functions to the brain – which is but a part of a human being. Moreover, both do so in order to explain the psychological functions of human beings. But not only is it mistaken to ascribe such attributes to the brain, it fails to explain anything. (p. 15)
Hacker (2012) – The Relevance of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology to the Psychological Sciences
The confusions and fallacies that are under scrutiny concern the brain as a part of a human being in the same sense in which the heart is part of the human being. (p. 2)
Kenny (1984) used the term ‘homunculus fallacy’. He argued that ascribing psychological predicates to the brain invites the question of how the brain can for example see or remember something. Since it does not make sense to say that the brain sees or remembers something, Kenny argued that ascribing psychological predicates to the brain leads to the absurd consequence that one has to assume a homunculus in the brain. We prefer the term ‘mereological fallacy’ because the fallacy is about applying predicates to parts (not to an alleged homunculus in the head) of living creatures. This also clarifies why the fallacy extends to machines. Aeroplanes fly and clocks indicate time, but it makes no sense to say that the engine of an aeroplane flies or that the fuse´e of a clock indicates time. (p. 2-3)
Smit & Hacker (2017) – Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy
Moral of the story: assigning properties of the whole to its parts is always sus (using contemporary language from the game Among us) – do it and you might just become a psychologist whose best explanation of anything human related: “brains work that way”.
Radical behaviorist clarity
But many contemporary psychologists, following the quest of these predecessors going back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, now seek the elusive agent in the brain. In either case the agent is circularly inferred from the same behavior to be explained (p. 22)
No matter how fanciful or far–fetched the theory, some physiological activity is always present to be correlated with the behavioral events said to be external representations of whatever internal functions the theory hypothesizes—an approach prone to fallacies and low on the quality scale in scientific practice. (p. 24)
Fraley & Ledoux (1997) – Origins, Status and Mission of Behaviorology
Both the mind and the brain are not far from the ancient notion of a homunculus—an inner person who behaves in precisely the ways necessary to explain the behavior of the outer person in whom he dwells.
Malone & Cruchone (2001, p. 47) – Radical Behaviorism and the Rest of Psychology – A Review-Precis of Skinner’s About Behaviorism
The CD reinforces the reality that with regard to having a brain, there is only one entity, the whole person, that makes the statement sensible (Schlinger, 2005).
Phelps (2007, p. 218) – Why We Are Still Not Cognitive Psychologists: A Review of Why I Am Not a Cognitive Psychologist
The syntax and structure of everyday language, however, create the confusion of a duality of ‘‘me and my brain’’ when no such independent duality exists (Hineline, 1980).
No explanation of behavior is provided by analyzing the functions of any internal organs – the focus on the external/internal environment and individual history is unavoidable.
Radical behaviorist leftist 