FROM DARWIN TO WATSON (AND COGNITIVISM) AND BACK AGAIN: THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMAL-ENVIRONMENT MUTUALITY

ABSTRACT: novel cognitive psychology presents itself as the revolutionary alternative to behaviorism, nevertheless there are blatant continuities between new cognitivism and the mechanistic kind of behaviorism that cognitivists have in mind, of the like kind as their commitment to methodological behaviorism, the stimulus-response schema, and the hypothetico-deductive [i]modus operandi[/i] Both mechanistic behaviorism and cognitive behaviorism remain trapped within the dualisms created through the traditional ontology of physical sciencedualisms that, single way or another, exclude us from the "physical world." Darwinian theory, however, deposit us back into nature. The Darwinian emphasis on the mutuality of animal and environment was further lay opened by, among others, James, Dewey, and Mead. Although their functionalist approach to psychology was overtaken by means of Watson's behaviorism, the principle of animal-environment dualism continued to figure (though somewhat inconsistently) within the work of Skinner and Gibson. For the clearest insights into the mutuality of organism and environment we ne to station the clock back quite a not many years and return to the work of Darwin and the early functionalist psychologists.

Key words: Darwin, ecological psychology mutualism, behaviorism, cognitivism

I distinguish between the moves of the waters and the shift of the bed itself; granting there is not a sharp distinction of the individual from the other. (Wittgenstein, 1969 ?§?§97)

Traditional theories have separated life from nature, mind from organic life, and thereby created mysteries. .Those who talk most of the organism, physiologists and psychologists, are ofttimes just those who display least faculty of perception of the intimate, delicate and astute interdependence of all organic arrangements and processes with one another. . .To see the organism in nature. .is the answer to the point in disputes which haunt philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen to be in, not as marbles are in a chest but as events are in history, in a moving, growing not at any time finished process. (Dewey, 1958, pp 278 295)

Behaviorism continues to figure centrally within the history and demonology of novel psychology. As Gustav Bergmann one time said about John B. Watson, although psychologists no longer bother to confute behaviorism, they still invoke its name "to scare little children in the existentialist dark" (Bergmann, 1962 p 674)

Placing behaviorism within the history of psychology however, is far from easy. As Arthur Lovejoy (1936) warned us lengthy ago, doctrines designated by names ending in "ism" usually move round out to be untidy coalitions of distinct and flat conflicting doctrines, and this is real of behaviorism. Recent historical scholarship upon behaviorism does not suggest the existence of a simple historical entity. plane the works of individual behaviorists appear riven with contradictions, and it does not help to appeal to the mete "behavior" as the definitive subdue matter of psychology, let alone behaviorism. The meaning of the terminus "behavior" has always been wide open: from the molar to the muscle-twitch, from the structural to the functional, from the purposive to the mechanical.

I want to question the place given to behaviorism within the histories of the so-called cognitive revolution. Cognitivism is real much a continuation of the kind of mechanistic behaviorism it claims to have undermined. I shall argue that that kind of behaviorism supplanted an earlier, more radical psychology that, although having little use for the limit "behavior," placed a central emphasis upon the mutual coordination of animal and environment, and this emphasis was perpetuated, although inconsistently, in the work of Skinner and Gibson. I regard this early Darwinian-inspired psychology as the real revolution, and this article will therefore be an attempt to put the clock back in psychology a certain quantity of hundred years or so.

Behaviorism and the "Cognitive Revolution"

In 1968 in their summary of a conversation on "verbal behavior and general behavior theory," Horton and Dixon conclud that "contemporary psychologists, whether they call themselves S-R theorists, associationists, or functionalists, overwhelmingly subscribe to the behavioristic paradigm. In other words, they adopt the technical language commonly associated with general S-R theory and, in substance methodological behaviorism." They went upon to take note of the theoretical tensions highlighted by dint of several of the contributors to the discourse had highlighted: "To us, it appears that a revolution is certainly in the making" (Horton & Dixon, 1968 pp 578 580)

From the starting-point cognitivism has presented itself as the revolutionary antithesis of behaviorism. Certainly, several of the early pioneers did mean serious business, and a number of them have in novel years come to express troubles about just how tame the revolution has prov to be (eg Bruner 1990; Garner, 1999; Martin, Nelson & Tobach, 1995; Neisser, 1997)1 As Garner lately complained, "cognitive psychology lost on the outside to the received view, with its operational and reductionistic way . .The old won without over the new!" (1999, p 21) However, a advantageous number of the early pioneers were clear from the commencement that they saw themselves as extending rather than undermining the behaviorist framework.2 There was also a serviceable deal of "hype," with the suppos revolutionaries enthusiastically invoking Thomas Kuhn's muddl notion of scientific revolutions in their cause (Bruner 1983 p 85; diocese also Goodwin, 1999, p. 407): "Every single toted around their little transcript of Kuhn" (James Jenkins, cited in Baars, 1986 p 249)