A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition
. What an object, particularly a living creature, does. There are problems and ambiguities: is intention, or at least controllability, needed for behaviour? Are heart-beats behaviour? Must behaviour affect the outer world and be publicly observable? Is silent thinking behaviour? Must behaviour described in one way (e.g. waving one’s arms) also be behaviour when described in another (accidentally breaking a vase)? Can the utterances of a parrot be called verbal behaviour? Should an uncontrollable reflex action, like a knee-jerk, be called behaviour of the knee but not of the person? See also ACTION.
D.Davidson, ‘Psychology as philosophy’ in S.C.Brown (ed.), Philosophy of Psychology, Macmillan and Barnes and Noble, 1974, with comments and replies, reprinted with replies but without comments in Davidson’s Essays on Action and Events, Oxford UP, 1980.
(One view of behaviour, causation, and rationality.)
D.W.Hamlyn, ‘Behaviour’, Philosophy, 1953. (Revised on one point in his ‘Causality and human behaviour’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 1964.)
G.H.von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, RKP, 1971, p. 193, n. 8 (Knee-jerk.)
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