Abstract

GONGORA, Maura Alves Nunes  and  ABIB, José Antônio Damásio. Questions referent to causality and private events in Radical Behaviorism. Rev. bras. ter. comport. cogn. [online]. 2001, vol.3, n.1, pp. 9-24. ISSN 1517-5545.

It is examined a still frequent question among radical behaviorists and psychotherapists: after all, are or not private events causes of behavior? Two themes from radical behaviorism are investigated in this paper with the purpose of searching out this question. It is examined, in the first place, the concept of mind in radical behaviorism, including it, partially, in the realm of public events. Second, it is examined the access to private events and the self-knowledge acquisition based on public social practices. From the analysis of these two themes, the common characteristics of public and private events, and based on a relational paradigm, it is defended a contextualist interpretation of radical behaviorism. It is suggested that the contextualism differs from the dualistic and mecanistic styles of thought. Therefore, there is no sense in asking whether private events are causes of behavior or not; in fact, it is a matter of formulating questions, whose answers will describe possible relations between public and private events.

Keywords : Private events; causes; radical behaviorism; contextualism.

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