The Darwin of Ontogeny?

Abstract

The year 2024 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of About Behaviorism. In this work, Skinner revisits themes on which behaviorists and non-behaviorists traditionally disagree. Causes of behavior, innatism, knowledge, thought, inner world, perception, and verbal behavior are some of the topics that Skinner reexamines in the 1974 work. T his article discusses the causes of behavior, which constitute a central pillar of his philosophy of the science of behavior. The artticle presents the conception of causality that supports radical behaviorism and the conception that directly challenges it: the psychological creationism, a perspective that posits the existence of an autonomous agent that initiates behavior. The article also examines the causal status that behaviorists assign not only to environmental events but especially to events occurring inside organisms, which is thought to be the headquarter of the autonomous causal agent proposed by psychological creationism. Furthermore, selection is discussed as a causal mode that explains not only the emergence of biological species but also the genesis of a significant portion of the behavioral repertoire of organisms. It is suggested that the Skinner´s science intends to dismiss the autonomous agent assumed by psychological creationists, just like evolutionary biology dismissed a divine creator.