Behaviorism is used in somewhat different

senses in psychology and philosophy. In

psychology, behaviorism was a twentieth-century

movement that maintained that the study of behavior

is the best or even the only way to study

mental phenomena scientifically. It is opposed to

the introspective methods for the study of the

mind emphasized in much psychology of the

nineteenth century. This is methodological behaviorism.

A methodological behaviorist might even

believe in an immaterial mind (see dualism), but

maintain nevertheless that there was no scientific

way to study the immaterial mind except

through its effects on observable, bodily behavior.

In philosophy, however, behaviorism opposes

dualism; the term means some form of the view

that the mind is nothing above and beyond behavior.

Logical behaviorists maintain that talk

about the mind can be reduced without remainder

to talk about behavior. Criteriological behaviorists

maintain that mental terms may not be

completely reducible to behavioral terms, but

they can only be given meaning through ties to

behavioral criteria.

Behaviorism is closely related to functionalism.

British Empiricism See empiricism.

Cartesian dualism See dualism.