Introduction

David Barnes-Holmes (2000) in his ‘Behavioural Pragmatism: No Place for Reality and Truth’ criticized Quine for offering a non-solution to the problem of homology. The problem of homology sprung up when Quine was trying to explain how different subjects could assent or dissent from observation sentences. Quine tried to cash out the stimulus meaning of observation sentences in terms of the triggering of sensory receptors. But this led to a difficulty of explaining how two people whose sensory receptors could be triggered differently could converge on stimulus meanings. Quine’s non-solution was that the scientist in practice could ignore the problem because it wouldn’t affect their experiments (Quine 1974 p. 24). Barnes-Holmes argued that while Quine was counselling to ignore the problem based on pragmatic principles contextual behaviourists could remove the problem altogether by adopting a consistent pragmatist approach (Barnes-Holmes 2000 p. 197).

                Quine’s Darwinian Solution

            But Barnes-Holmes didn’t note that Quine (1996) had already come up with a different solution to the problem of homology which didn’t involve merely ignoring it on pragmatic grounds (Barnes-Holmes 2000 p. 196). Quine’s original definition of stimulus-meaning as being provided by the triggering of sensory receptors was difficult to sustain because of his publicity criterion in relation to observation sentences (Kemp 2019 p. 60). Given that people’s sensory receptors could be triggered in a myriad of different ways there is no real justification for assuming shared sensory triggering’s are responsible for our agreement on whether to assent or to dissent from an observation sentence at all.

            Quine though thought that shared stimulus meanings could be accounted for by assuming that humans have a shared perceptual similarity space which underlay their grouping of things together (Quine 1996 p. 161). This similarity space would be partly innate though modifiable through training (Quine 1995 p. 21). He argued that this perceptual similarity space would have survival value and hence would be passed on through natural selection. Put in Skinnerian terminology Quine speculated that the phylogenetic contingencies of survival would be responsible for our perceptual similarity space. And he argued that the nature of these similarity spaces could be determined empirically:

“But perception for all its mentalistic overtones, is accessible to behavioural criteria. It shows itself in conditioning responses. Thus, suppose we provide an animal with a screen to look at and a lever to press. He finds that the pressed lever brings a pellet of food when the screen shows a circular stripe, and that it brings a shock when the screen shows four spots spaced in a semi-circular arc. Now we present him with these same four spots, arranged as before, but supplemented with three more to suggest the complementary semicircle. If the animal pressed the lever, he may be said to have perceived the circular Gestalt rather than the component spots. (Quine 1974 p. 4)

All this is well within the remit of typical animal studies.

Quine was bringing in the notion of a partially innate perceptual similarity shared amongst humans to explain how we converge on the same stimulus meanings for observation sentences. And observation sentences were obviously meant as our empirical check point for our theory of the world. The purpose of this was to give us a naturalistic theory of how we go from Stimulus to Science. And shared innate perceptual similarities cashed out in terms of natural selection and neural structures is sufficiently objective for Quine to rest satisfied with the explanation.

    Barnes-Holmes Behavioural Pragmatism

Barnes-Holmes never mentioned Quine’s Darwinian attempt of a solution to the problem of homology. So obviously he never framed any reply. Before, considering what he may think of Quine’s attempted solution I will first briefly outline his own behavioural pragmatist solution to the homology problem and then relate his attempted solution to Quine’s Darwinian Solution.

 When outlining his behavioural pragmatism Barnes-Holmes notes that it relies on three key assumptions to justify the position. Assumption 1: What is known is always a behavioural function. Assumption 2: The activity of each organism participates in a different behavioural stream. Assumption 3: The activity of the behavioural pragmatist participates in a behavioural stream (Ibid p. 198).

            Each of these assumptions are extremely controversial. Assumption 1 argues that what is known is always a behavioural function not a behaviour independent reality. It isn’t particularly controversial to state that we know things through a function of our behaviour. Barnes-Holmes gives the example of an apple and states that we know the apple through its functions such-as how it elicits stimulations like salivation, or it being a discriminative stimulus for Verbal Behaviour such as ‘this is an apple’, or as reinforcing stimulus for saying something like ‘give me an apple’ (Ibid p. 197). The few examples he gives involve the ontogenetic interaction of a human subject with an apple. He doesn’t mention any phylogenetic factors which would go into the human’s behavioural interaction with the apple. Though presumably he would admit that phylogenetic factors may play such a role. Skinner long stressed that some phylogenetic factors will play a role in an organism’s behaviour (Skinner 1974 p. 228). Likewise, Hayes and Sanford (2014) suggest that to ensure that asking for an apple will have reinforcing consequences we will have to assume a cooperative instinct.

            None of this will be particularly controversial. There are empirical details to fill in about the nature of our behavioural interactions with entities such as apples. And debates about the role of perception as opposed to brute behaviour in our knowledge of things like apples. But depending on how we construe behaviour it is eminently sensible to suggest that we only know something though our behavioural functions with it. But Barnes-Holmes goes further than this. He isn’t content to claim we only know something through behavioural interactions with it; he goes on contrast this with a belief in a physical apple at all:

“In commonsense terms, the apple is a physical thing that exists independently of behavior. For the behavioural pragmatist, however, the apple is defined only in terms of its behavioural functions that emerge in a particular stream of behavioural interactions.” (Ibid p. 197)

In the above quote the notion of a physical thing which exists independent of behaviour is rejected. He isn’t claiming that a mind independent apple doesn’t exist; rather he merely states that the behavioural pragmatist’s definition of apple doesn’t rely on notions of physical objects that exist independent of behaviours. Though he does go on to say that behavioural pragmatist will sometimes talk as if some objects exist independent of behaviour (Ibid p. 198). But such talk involves no ontological commitment as Verbal Behaviour in the technical sense doesn’t ‘refer’ or ‘correspond’ to an external reality (Ibid p. 199).

            It is important to be clear about the commitments they are making. When Barnes-Holmes is making claims about defining objects in terms of their behavioural functions the examples he gives of behaviour are of classical conditioning where an object elicits salivation in an organism, discriminative stimulus which increases the probability of a particular tact being used, and operant processes being involved in making the likelihood of a Mand being used increase (Ibid p. 197). A difficulty with this conception is that internal to theorising about the origins of Verbal Behaviour there is a consensus that Verbal Behaviour first emerged about 100,000 years ago (Hayes and Sandford 2014 p. 114). Furthermore, there is compelling evidence that the capacity for a creature to learn through conditioning of any kind began about 520 million years ago (Ginsburg, S, & Jablonka, E. 2019 p. 293). So, if we think of things such as Cyanobacteria which our best theories tell us existed for billions of years before either the evolution of a capacity to be conditioned or a capacity to engage in Verbal Behaviour (Schirrmeister et al 2015 p. 777). Given the capacities Barnes-Holmes uses to illustrate behavioural functions we use to define an object, he appears to be committed to the view that Cyanobacteria did not exist until creatures with a sophisticated behavioural capacity emerged on the scene, with the capacity to engage with them is a manner sophisticated enough to develop a verbal and non-verbal repertoire in relation to them. It could be argued that this position is a behavioural version of Berkeleyan Subjective Idealism where we must deny the existence of a behavioural independent world.

            Barnes-Holmes would deny that he is engaging in any type of Idealism. He has argued he is not making some anti-realist argument, rather he is making an a-ontological claim about reality. He says that the anti-realist is arguing that either nothing exists beyond scientific language, or that scientific language doesn’t capture reality as it really is (Barnes-Holmes 2005 p. 68). Whereas he defines a-ontological claims as claims which remain silent on behaviour independent reality (Ibid p. 68). Furthermore, he would argue that Cyanobacteria do enter into the behavioural stream of our working scientists, so we are therefore justified in postulating their existence internal to our overall theory of the world. But given that our best theories tell us that entities existed prior to creatures who have behavioural capacities like the ones Barnes-Holmes mentions; why remain silent about their ontological status. Why remain happy to say that it is sometimes ok to talk as if these entities existed, or that to the extent that these entities enter a scientist’s behavioural stream we are justified in saying they exist?

            Why not accord these entities robust realist ontological status? The following passage is instructive as an explanation of Barnes-Holmes reluctance:

“Assumption 3, however, appears to preclude the possibility, in behavioural pragmatism, of finding a scientific truth statement that corresponds to an ontological reality. In effect, if the scientific activity of the behavioural pragmatist is the product of a behavioural history, then he or she can never claim to have found an ontological truth, because a different or more extended history may have produced a different truth (an ontological truth, by definition, is immutable, absolute, and final).” (Barnes-Holmes 2000 p. 198).

So, assumption 3 notes that even the behaviourist’s behaviour is a product of their learning history as they interact with their own behavioural stream. Which means that a different learning history would give them a different theory.  From this Barnes-Holmes concludes that since an ontological truth is by definition “immutable, absolute, and final”, contingent creatures such as us can never arrive at such ontological truths.

            But one wonders why he thinks that we need to parse ontological truths as truths which are immutable absolute and final. Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to discover the basic furniture of the universe. To discover what is in the most general sense possible. In traditional philosophy ontology was opposed to epistemology. Famously, Kant argued that reality as it is in itself is unknowable, and that we can only know reality in so far as it conforms to our mode of cognition. So true reality in its ontological form is something which we can never know. Hence, Kant argued that metaphysics should give up the proud name of ontology. In this sense of ontology, we cannot say anything about ontology; even statements about whether it is “immutable, absolute, and final” would be out of place because whatever the nature of ontology beyond our mode of cognition we would not be justified in speaking about it.  So, it is doubtful, whether Barnes-Holmes meant ontology in the sense the Kantian sense.

            Older versions of ontology which would have begun with Plato would involve studying entities in the world and trying to discover their accidental and essential natures. The discovery of essences would in this sense would typically be conceived of as “immutable, absolute and final”. Metaphysics in this sense would have ontological purport and is still studied to this day in philosophy departments. If Barnes-Holmes is critical of this type of ontology that is one thing, however, it doesn’t follow that because the behavioural scientist is critical of ontology in Plato’s sense that it should therefore become a-ontological.

            There is another strand of ontology which doesn’t involve appeals to ‘immutable, absolute and final” properties and that version of ontology was developed by Quine who Barnes-Holmes discussed in the paper. It is surprising therefore that he didn’t criticise Quine’s view of ontology directly.

            Barnes-Holmes argues that the issue of scientific truth is defined ultimately in terms of whether it achieves certain goals; and for the behaviourist the ultimate goal is prediction and control. So, ontology doesn’t come into the issue at all. He explicates his a-ontological position by arguing that “no fundamental or final or absolute assumptions are ever made about the nature or substance of behaviour independent reality” (Barnes Holmes 2005 p. 68). In effect they ignore issues in relation to realism-vs-anti-realism and stick doing behavioural science involving the prediction and control of organism’s understudy.

“Functional relations, at least in behavior analysis, are correlational, and no mentalistic, cognitive, or intentional act of reference from the response to an ontologically real stimulus is implied when functional-analytic terms are used in a behavioural explanation. For the behavioural pragmatist, therefore, a technical analysis of ontological talk will be cast in terms of patterns of stimulus-response-stimulus interactions, not semantic reference, literal meaning, or some form of word-referent correspondence. The procedural instruction “set the tone to between x and y cycles per second,” for example, could be interpreted as a relational network of derived stimulus relations (Barnes-Holmes, Hayes, & Dymond, 2001; Barnes-Holmes, O’Hora, et. al., 2001) or an instructional stimulus composed of Tacts, intraverbals, relational autoclitics, and the like (Skinner, 1957), or perhaps a combination of both interpretations (Barnes-Holmes, et. al., 2000). In neither case, however, is semantic reference or literal correspondence to an ontological reality included as part of the explanatory nomenclature. The technical terms of behavior analysis are simply empty with respect to ontological reality, and thus neither realism nor antirealism is implied.” (Barnes-Holmes 2005 pp. 73-74)

Despite above writing that the technical terms of behavioural analysis are ontologically empty, he notes that ontological talk is regularly used in report sections of daily articles and in ordinary scientific activities (ibid p. 74), arguing that such talk is fine as long as it doesn’t involve talking about the fundamental nature of reality.

            The idea that it is ok for behavioural analysts to talk about a behaviour independent reality when describing the results of their experiments, but this talk isn’t to be taken seriously as a description of the reality.  Part of the motivation is that Barnes-Holmes wants to avoid being committed to making assumptions about the fundamental or absolute nature of reality. So committed  is he to avoiding speaking about absolute reality is he that he goes as far to define something as true in so far as it achieves certain scientific goals (prediction and control). Aside from the fact that this assumption is arbitrary; why for example is prediction and control given priority over explanatory depth?

            More importantly the behaviourist can achieve their goals without bending over backwards and trying to eschew all talk about a mind independent reality. A more realistic goal would be to treat ontology as a part of science; and treat ontological commitment as the working out of what theoretical presuppositions cannot be done away with to make sense of our total theory of the world. If we cannot make sense of our experimental results without presupposing certain entities, then we are justified in admitting into our ontology. Quine, argued that a good technique to lay bare the ontological commitments of a science are to translate into the syntax of first order logic arguing that:

“a theory is committed to those and only those entities to which bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true” (Quine, 1953 pp. 13-14)

And he used this technique to try and dis-entangle philosophical disputes on ontological commitment in subjects like mathematics.

            It could be argued that while mathematicians and physicists can do their work without solving debates about ontological commitment all behavioural analysts are asking for is the freedom to do their work without solving debates about ontological commitment. However, I don’t think that this is a fair way of interpreting the debate. The behaviourists aren’t just eschewing ontological talk in some innocent theory independent way; rather they are making truth relative to their own personal goals; and judging a theory as to whether meets those goals adequately. Anything outside of these personal goals are deemed irrelevant.

     Quine and the Pre-Established Harmony.

Barnes-Holmes describes the problem of homology as a problem which arises when we assume a correspondence between observation sentences and ontological reality (Barnes-Holmes 2000 p. 195). Quine’s attempted solution does indeed make assumptions about ontological reality. His assumptions are largely physicalist. He is assuming mind independent world with features such that an organism must track if it is to survive, he assuming that creatures whose neural structures with innate standards of perceptual similarity which tend to harmonize with trends in the environment will be more likely to survive than animals whose innate structures don’t harmonize with the environment (Quine 2008 p.204).  And this assumption is then used to explain how human’s shared neural perceptual similarity structures will explain how they converge on stimulus meanings of observation sentences.

            One may or may not agree with Quine’s account of how humans shared perceptual similarity standards lead to similar stimulus meanings which accounts for agreement on observation sentences. But his account is no more ontologically profligate than behavioural scientists appeal to group selection for cooperation to explain the emergence of frames of coordination in children’s ontogeny (Hayes 2014 p. 123). Or when behaviourists explain taste aversion in rats through natural selection resulting in the temporal parameters of classical conditioning becoming distorted (Wilson and Hayes 2018 p. 53).

            It could be replied that behaviourists like Barnes-Holmes have difficulties not with appeals to neural structures, or sensory receptors being impinged on. Rather they want such explanations cashed out functionally instead of in terms of shared structures (Barnes-Holmes 2000 p. 201). But this reading cannot be correct. Behaviourists emphasize the central importance prediction in their theories. And Quine’s appeal to shared structures is making predictions which are eminently testable by future science. It would be churlish to critique Quine for appealing to shared structures if this appeal involves empirical check points and predictions which could be tested. Furthermore, explanations of distortions in classical conditioning in taste aversion which behaviourists unproblematically study involve appeals to shared structure in rats.

            Barnes-Holmes though could argue that it is not just Quine’s appeals to shared structure which he has difficulties with. He also had difficulties with Quine’s appeals to Observation Sentences as part of his check points which are used to ensure that theories are tested for truth. Barnes-Holmes has difficulties with any non-pragmatic appeal to truth as his assumption 3 that scientists views develop as a result of their learning history means that with a different learning history, they may have held different theories of the world. Barnes-Holmes believes that assumption 3 means that we can never hold “immutable, final, absolute” ontological truths. But when Quine speaks about ontology, he is not speaking in terms of “absolute, immutable, and final” truths. Quine’s entire philosophy is built around the concept of radical revisability of our overall theories of the world, and no aspect of our web-of-belief is immune from potential revision; including mathematics or logic.  Therefore Barnes-Holmes criticisms completely miss the mark when it comes to Quine, as when he speaks about ontology he is never speaking about absolute, immutable and final truths.  

                         Bibliography

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