Broadly, behaviourism refers to the doctrine that understanding behaviour is fundamental to understanding mental events. Scientific and philosophical forms of behaviourism can be identified. Scientific behaviourism has its origins in the work of J.B.
Watson (1878–1958) but was given its most vigorous defence by B.F.Skinner (1904–1990). Strict behaviourists argue that behaviour is all that there is to measure: that mental terms and events are of little or no value; and that internal neural events are of no value, in that all behaviour can be described in its terms of actions and the environmental events that precede and follow them. Scientific behaviourism came under attack from cognitive scientists, and in particular from those with an interest in LANGUAGE, a process that behaviourism has great difficulty in accounting for. Behaviourism is still of value in that it generated a series of terms and tools for investigating processes of LEARNING and MEMORY (see for example CONDITIONING and OPERANT CHAMBER), and in its clinical manifestations (see BEHAVIOUR THERAPY). Philosophical behaviourism was concerned with the analysis of the meaning of mentalistic expressions; it no longer has impact.
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