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Aspects of a Theory of Syntax and Behaviourism

Introduction

In this paper the competence-performance distinction first proposed by Chomsky (1965) will be analysed in relation to behavioural science. The paper will consider three primary criticisms of behaviourism from the point of view of the competence performance distinction: (1) behaviourists decision to stick with describing speech patterns and habits prevent them from constructing a credible theory of performance (Chomsky 1965), (2) Behaviourists methodology of only dealing with performance and eschewing explanations in terms of competence precludes them from being a serious science (Collins 2007), (3) Behaviourists don’t engage in idealisations and are committed to counting every cough in an instance of verbal behaviour and hence reduce their science to triviality (Jackendoff 2002). It will be demonstrated by considering developments in behavioural science that these criticisms are not justified. To illustrate the point, I will discuss explanations in both behavioural psychology (as exemplified by relational frame theory), and behaviourism in philosophy as exemplified by Quine. These examples will illustrate behaviourists appealing to underlying competencies to explain behaviour as well as using idealizations.

The fact that behavioural scientists use idealizations and appeal to competencies, doesn’t tell us much about the truth of their overall theories. But for interdisciplinary interaction between behaviourists and cognitivists to be fruitful; it is necessary that they understand each other positions. To that end it is imperative that the behaviourist position in the competence-performance distinction is explicated in detail.

Chomsky on the Competence and Performance Distinction

Sixty years ago, in his ‘Aspects of a Theory of Syntax’, Chomsky first explicitly made his distinction between competence and performance. In Aspects he is clear that he is not arguing against the study of performance as a field. Rather he is claiming that if one wants to study performance, then one will need to do so armed with an understanding of underlying competence mechanisms (Chomsky 1965 p.10). When discussing competence and performance Chomsky makes a distinction between acceptability judgements made by subjects and the actual grammaticalness of sentences. He argues that acceptability judgements are performance data which can be explained by underlying competence mechanisms (Ibid p. 11).

He goes on to state that the following factors lead to unacceptability judgements; Repeated nesting, self-embedding, nesting of a long and complex element etc (Ibid p. 13). And he explains the unacceptability of, for example, repeated nesting, in terms of the finiteness of our memory (Ibid p. 14). Chomsky notes that people have been critical of generative grammar because of its focus on competence and lack of interest in performance. But he claims that the only research into performance that has had any theoretical interest, has been research that has been led by insights from underlying competence systems (Ibid p. 15). He went on to criticize descriptivist and classification philosophies as standing in the way of developing an adequate theory of performance:

“It is the descriptivist limitation-in-principle to classification and organization of data, to “extracting patterns” from a corpus of observed speech, to describing “speech habits” or “habit structures,” insofar as these may exist, etc., that precludes the development of a theory of actual performance.” (Ibid p. 15)

Chomsky doesn’t specify which theorists argue in this methodologically errant manner; but it will be demonstrated that his criticisms don’t apply to behaviourists in either psychology or philosophy.

Competence and Performance and Behaviourism

In this section I will look at the competence/performance issue from the point of view of behavioural science. I will argue that contemporary behavioural science cannot be described in terms of looking for “habit structures” or extracting patterns from the classification or organisation of data. Rather, behavioural science is discovering facts about the emergence of linguistic usage in the context of tightly controlled experimental settings. These discoveries in behavioural science such as (1) Rule-Governed Behaviour’s interaction with the contingencies of reinforcement, (2) the emergence of stimulus equivalence, (3) The emergence of relational frames, are experimentally controlled emergent properties of linguistic behaviour. Their discovery goes beyond mere “description” or “extracting of data from patterns”. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that such emergent species-specific performance data is explicable in terms of “habit structures”.

While the performance data discovered in behavioural science cannot be reduced to “description”, or “extraction of data”, or explained in terms of “habit structures”, behavioural scientists haven’t provided much by way of an explanation of how these capacities emerge. The reason that such an explanation is wanting is because of an uncritical reliance on Skinner’s crude pragmatist philosophy. However, pace Skinner, any attempt to explain emergent behavioural capacities will be reliant on a distinction between the emergent behaviours and the underlying capacities which make the behaviours possible. Any cogent explanation of emergent behaviours will rely on behavioural science adapting a distinction between competence and performance analogous to that recommended by Chomsky (1965). We will see later that some behaviourists are already moving in this direction when we discuss Hayes and Sanford 2014 later in the paper.

Theorists have long critiqued behaviourists for failing to adequately account for the distinction between competence and performance. For example, philosopher John Collins has argued that behaviourism is not a serious discipline because it doesn’t even try to explain the underlying capacities responsible for behaviour (Collins 2007 p. 883). Arguing further that a focus on competence doesn’t involve ignoring performance; rather it involves explaining performance, through explicating the mechanisms underlying linguistic competence (Ibid p. 883).

Collins’s claim that behaviourism is not a serious discipline is problematic. Experimental work in behaviourism over the last hundred or so years has yielded a wide range of experimental results which wouldn’t have been possible without research into behavioural science. The discovery of classical conditioning, and operant conditioning has revolutionized both psychology and biology. Since Chomsky wrote his ‘Aspects of a Theory of Syntax’ 60 years ago the field of behaviourism has continued to flourish demonstrating that it is a serious discipline which has made considerable advances over the last 60 years. Some discoveries in behavioural science of note have been Robert Rescorla’s discoveries of predictive mechanisms underlying classical conditioning (Rescorla 1969), the use of these predictive mechanisms to explain taste aversion in rats (Hayes & Sanford 2014), experimental literature demonstrating contingency insensitivity in rule following creatures (Galizio 1979, Shimoff et al 1981, Skinner 1984), the discovery of emergent stimulus equivalence (Sidman 1971), the discovery of emergent relational frames (Hayes & Thompson 1989) (Hayes 2001).

Even Skinner’s much maligned book ‘Verbal Behaviour’ has spawned hundreds of experiments on human subjects which have demonstrated some experimental control over his seven verbal operants (Sauter & Leblanc 2006). Likewise, behavioural science has demonstrated its use in applied disciplines, such as Applied Behavioural Analysis. So, any claim that behaviourism isn’t a serious discipline is conclusively refuted by the incredible predictive control it gives us over certain domains of interest.

Nonetheless, Collins does have a point. There is a reluctance of some in behavioural science to provide explanations of the behavioural patterns in terms of underlying competencies some of which may be innate. This reluctance doesn’t demonstrate that behaviourism isn’t a serious discipline, but it does pose serious limitations on the explanatory capacity of the discipline to account for the discoveries they make. Later in the paper I will explore some recent tentative attempts to explain competencies underlying our capacity to relation frame. I will argue that these competencies demonstrate that these tentative steps are a step in the right direction in bridging the gap between behavioural science and cognitive science.

What is Linguistic Competence?

When discussing Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance it is typical to justify the distinction in terms of idealizations which usually occur in any discipline. When Chomsky is talking about linguistic competence, he notes that he is doing so using a series of idealizations which are necessary to understand the complex object under study:

“Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.” (Chomsky 1965 p. 3)[1]

A grammar will then be a description of the rules the idealized subject is using when understanding or speaking their sentences (Ibid p.4). Chomsky’s notion of an idealized subject’s competence is analogous to the idealizations which physicists use all the time to gain traction over the physical phenomena they are studying. A cliched example is of a physicist using idealizations such as studying a frictionless plane to give them an understanding of force and energy (Jackendoff 2002 p. 33).

Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance which relies on idealizations is a sensible proposal and one which has led to success in gaining traction on the nature of language. While the use of idealizations is justified and common practice in science; Chomsky’s use of idealizations has had its critics. While most theorists would agree that some level of idealizations are needed it has been argued persuasively that Chomsky’s use of idealizations and his competence/performance distinction has ossified in such a manner as to make aspects of his theories irrefutable:

“Still, one can make a distinction between “soft” and “hard” idealizations. A “soft” idealization is acknowledged to be a matter of convenience, and one hopes eventually to find a natural way to re-integrate the excluded matters. A standard example is the friction of a frictionless plane in physics, which yields important generalizations about forces and energy. But one aspires eventually go beyond the idealization and integrate friction into the picture. By contrast, a “hard” idealization denies the need to go beyond itself; in the end it cuts itself off from the possibility of integration into a larger context…It is my unfortunate impression that, over the years, Chomsky’s articulation of the competence-performance distinction has moved from relatively soft…to considerably harder.” (Jackendoff 2002p. 33)

Other theorists have made similar points (Lakoff, G. 1987 p. 181, Palmer, D. 2023 p. 528).

Jackendoff isn’t arguing that we shouldn’t use idealizations or a competence-performance distinct rather he is warning of the possibility of an idealizing assumption becoming so hardened that it shields a theory from considering alternative ways of dealing with the data of experience. Thus, as we saw above Chomsky championed ignoring things like memory limitations, shifts of attention etc. But other work which doesn’t make this idealization actually use memory limitations to explain the hierarchical embedding in our language (Christiansen and Chater 2023, Christiansen and Chater 2016). Likewise, speech errors which Chomsky tells us to ignore in the name idealization have been used as productive data in explaining the cognitive processes underlying speech production (Hofstadter et al. 1989, Wijnen, F., 1992). Nonetheless, even Chomsky’s sternest critics would admit that his appeals to idealizations and the competence performance distinction have yielded interesting linguistic generalizations.

Jackendoff argued that the need for Chomsky to make the distinction between competence and performance was that other disciplines had failed to make the distinction:

“Chomsky makes the competence-performance distinction in part to ward off alternative proposals for how linguistics must be studied. In particular, he is justifiably resisting the behaviourists, who insisted that proper science requires counting every cough in the middle of a sentence as part of linguistic behaviour.” (Jackendoff 2002 p. 30).

While it is undeniable that behavioural science has a difficulty in explaining its own data because they do not always explain behaviour in terms of underlying competencies, nonetheless, Jackendoff in the above quote is engaging in a wild caricature of behaviourism.

Some behaviourists do obviously argue that that the subject matter they are interested in are actual instances of behaviour in a particular context (Palmer, D., 2023 p. 528). And in criticisms of Chomsky’s conceptions of linguistics they do argue that as behaviourists they are not obliged to explain possible sentences created by linguists which conform to the purported grammatical principles but never used in actual verbal behaviour. If speakers do not actually use such verbal forms while behaving in relation to each other the behaviourist considers it beyond their purview to explain them (Ibid, p. 529). But whatever one thinks of this behaviourist philosophy; it doesn’t entail the extremes that Jackendoff attributes to it.

Jackendoff attributes to behaviourists the view that scientists should “count every cough in the middle of a sentences as part of linguistic behaviour”. This claim amounts to the assertion that behaviourists do not think that scientists should use idealizations. This is an absurd accusation; any science which deprived itself of idealizations would be overwhelmed with complexity and wouldn’t be able get off the ground. It is simplifying idealizations which makes it possible for a scientific theory to gain any prediction and control.

But contrary to Jackendoff’s wild claim behavioural science was from the start engaging in idealizations. Studying Classical and Operant Conditioning in a laboratory setting was an idealization which assumed that these artificial experiments could explain the complex learning processes of animals in the wild. Furthermore, in his Verbal Behaviour Skinner used a variety of idealizations. Skinner divided language into seven main verbal operants and treated them separately and under different types of stimulus control. But he noted that this was an idealizing assumption and that in practice the verbal operants would be intertwined and could be acquired together (Skinner 1957 p. 188).

Furthermore, the notion of an operant was concerned with kinds of behaviour, that shared an effect on the environment and that, as a kind, are demonstrated to vary lawfully in their relations to other variables (Smith 1987 p. 289). Importantly, in his ‘Behaviourism and Logical Positivism’ Smith noted:

“The actual movements involved in pressing a lever, for example, might vary from instance to instance (e.g., left paw, right paw, nose), but they are equivalent with respect to producing reinforcement and they demonstrably function together in the face of changing conditions.” (ibid p. 289)

So even in the case of the operant itself idealisations are being used which results on the focus being on classes of behaviour[2]; so Jackendoff’s notion that behaviourists are engaging in “counting every cough” is simply absurd. Behavioural science like any other science is up to its eyes in idealizations from the start.

Nonetheless, while Jackendoff is incorrect in his assertion that behaviourists don’t use idealizations he is correct that behaviourists have sometimes eschewed using the notion of competence in their explications of language. And this lack of a theory of competence does hinder their ability to explain the behavioural data which they have discovered.

Behaviourists and Competence

Behaviourists by definition are concerned with behaviour. Hence, when Skinner wrote on language, he parsed this as the study of Verbal Behaviour. He divided language up into seven main verbal operants recommended empirically studying how various schedules of reinforcement maintained the use of these Verbal Operants. While he justified this research program in terms of studies which had been done on non-human animals; in the 70 years since Verbal Behaviour was written there has been hundreds of experimental studies on conditions responsible for maintaining the use of these Verbal Operants. Skinner’s theory is a paradigm case of an attempted explanation of human linguistic performance.

Subsequent Behaviourist Research has moved beyond Skinner’s claims about language, e.g. Galizio (1979), Sidman (1971), Hayes & Thompson (1989) and Hayes (2001). But they still focus on behaviour and the degree to which it can be predicted and controlled using conditioning. Much behavioural science has had a heavy emphasis on practical predictive control to aid in applied work. Thus, the Verbal Behaviour Approach inspired by Skinner is heavily involved in teaching functional communication to people with severe autism and or an Intellectual disability. Sidman’s work on Stimulus Equivalence sprung out of his work trying to teach people with an intellectual disability how to read. While relational frame theory is used in attempts to teach people with intellectual disabilities functional communication, as well as a tool in Acceptance Commitment Therapy. This emphasis on applied work is sometimes used as a justification for a heavy emphasis on prediction and control (Dymond & Roche pp. 220-221). From a philosophical point of view, this emphasis on prediction and control is justified by appeal to a pragmatic philosophy of the type espoused by Steven Pepper (1942).

This emphasis on pragmatic prediction and control of the organism clearly lays heavy weight on performance data; and the histories of reinforcement which shape this performance. But while the underlying competencies are not focused on, they do play a role in the explications. Skinner noted throughout his career that phylogenetic factors are important in shaping the organism:

“Just as we point to the contingencies of survival to explain an unconditioned reflex, so we point out to contingencies of reinforcement to explain a conditioned reflex.” (Skinner 1974 p. 43)

He emphasised that natural selection shaped the structure of the organism through the scythe of survival of the fittest, in analogous manner to the way operant conditioning shaped the behaviour of the organism through selection by consequence. In Skinner’s view selection by consequences rules in both phylogeny and ontogeny. And as early as the mid 60’s behaviourists the Breland’s were emphasising instinctive drift would ensure that different organisms would not be susceptible to have their behaviour shaped in the same way because of their different instinctive natures.

Analogously, Relational Frame Theorists don’t deny that any prediction and control we gain needs to be explained by underlying genetic, epigenetic, and neural structures. It is just that their primary emphasis is on emergent behavioural data which can be predicted and controlled through behavioural principles. Thus, while relational frames, are emergent phenomena discovered through behavioural training and testing, Hayes does try to explain their emergence as resulting from a combination of genetic constraints and social learning. Thus, he appeals to group selection favouring a cooperative instinct which makes the acquisition of relational frames such as coordination more likely and speculates on how other frames can be derived from a combination of coordination and equivalence (Hayes and Sanford 2014). Nonetheless, the primary emphasis in both relational frame theory and Skinnenarian behaviourism is on prediction and control of the organism using behavioural principles.

As discussed above Chomsky wasn’t against performance data per-se, on the contrary he believed that the only theory of performance of any theoretical interest was a theory which took on board competence-based insights (Chomsky 1965 p. 16). Chomsky’s claim has a degree of truth to it; but it is obviously not the whole story. As discussed above in the 60 years since Chomsky wrote Aspects behaviourists have discovered performance data which has ample theoretical interest. The performance data elicited by the behavioural tests, such as stimulus equivalence, rule following contingency insensitivity, relational frames are of great theoretical interest. But to yield a theoretically interesting theory of this performance data we will need to do so in terms of underlying competence systems.

Behaviourists sometimes do try to explain behaviour in terms of underlying competencies. As we saw above Skinner’s notion of phylogenetic shaping can be used to explain the Breland’s notion of instinctive drift, which is used in a theoretical explanation of animal’s divergent behaviour under schedules of reinforcement. Likewise, Quine appealed to a phylogenetically shaped similarity space which underlay our capacity to successfully engage in induction. However, when it comes to emergent phenomena such as stimulus equivalence and relational frames there has been a reluctance by some theorists to explain the phenomenon in terms of underlying innate mechanisms. In the next section I will give an example from psychological behaviourism which aims to explain relation framing in terms of evolved underlying competencies, and I will then discuss an example of a philosophical behaviourist explaining his data in terms of underlying competencies. This will be proof in principle that some behaviourists do make a distinction between competence and performance and do use idealizations in their theoretical endeavours.

Quine and Relational Frame Theory.

In this section I will outline and discuss an attempt by Hayes and Sanford (2014) to explain our species-specific capacity to engage in relational framing in terms of group selection for a cooperative instinct. This section will demonstrate that behaviourists do appeal to competencies to explain behavioural patterns to explain novel behaviour when necessary and that furthermore they routinely engage in idealizations to explain data. I will then further develop this point by showing how it isn’t just psychological behaviourists who appeal to underlying competencies and idealizations to explain behaviour. Some philosophical behaviourists do so as well. This will be demonstrated by evaluating Quines work in this area.

In Hayes and Sanford (2014) they discuss evolution of our ability to engage in verbal behaviour. To understand this capacity, they explain it in terms of abilities humans partially share with non-verbal creatures such as (1) the ability to use vocalizations to regulate the behaviour of others (shared with many mammals), (2) Social Referencing (dogs and Chimpanzees can do this), (3) Joint attention and non-verbal forms of perspective taking (chimps and apes) (4) Non-arbitrary Relational learning (all animals). And they argue that these competencies were modified through group selection. They note that a cooperative instinct within a group will give them the ability to out compete other groups.

With a Cooperative Instinct in place, if two humans are near an apple tree and both know how to say apple when they see an apple. If the apple is out of reach for person A and person A says “apple” then if it is within reach for person B then they will get it for person A. (Ibid p. 121). They argue that it would take the capacity of perspective taking along with the capacity for cooperation to bridge the gap between this epistemological triangle. They call this the beginning of a person’s capacity to engage in a frame of coordination. People acquire the ability to know that “apple” → apple and apple →”apple”. Thus, they know that the sound refers to the object and the object is referred to by the sound. This relationship can then come under contextual control of the “is” relation: Apple is “Apple” and “Apple” is Apple.

Deriving this relation of identity between the sound and the word will be helped through reinforcement for providing the object when the word is said, and having the object provided when you say the word. Relational Frame Theorists have argued that this ability to derive this frame (which is species specific), is made possible through coopting our capacities such as joint attention, the ability to modify others behaviours through vocalizations, social referencing, and non-arbitrary relation framing with our cooperative instinct.

Once this frame of coordination was acquired humans would then have the capacity to recognize mutuality in a frame. And they argue that repeated application of mutuality would give an organism the ability to use combinatorial entailment (ibid p.123). Thus, on this conception the capacity to relationally frame is created primarily by our cooperative instinct. So in effect they explain our capacity to relational frame in terms of underlying competencies such as social referencing, joint attention, the ability to control others using vocal signals, non-arbitrary relational responding being modified in terms of a human specific cooperative instinct shaped by natural selection. In this instance the novel performance data is explained in terms of underlying competencies. They aren’t just describing behavioural patterns they are explaining their arrival in terms of underlying competencies.

Quine Idealization

As discussed above the competence-performance distinction is aligned with the notion of idealizations where you can abstract out from aspects of a phenomenon and deal with more tractable subject matters. Thus, the scientist can be dealing with frictionless plans, or humans not subject to memory limitations or distractions etc. The charge made by Jackendoff, and others was that behaviourists don’t use idealizations and hence they have no resources to make the competence-performance distinction. We have seen that this is simply not true when it comes to behavioural science which from the start is up to its eyes in idealizing assumptions. This is true of not just of behaviourists in the scientific sphere but also of prominent behaviourists working on philosophical problems.

Quine’s conception of language is famously terse. While he talks of a child acquiring and being shaped by a language of his peers. He typically focuses on things such as observation sentences. There is little in his conception of language about other uses of language such as interrogatives. Quine justifies this because he is interested in language only in so far as it pertains to epistemology and ontology. Hence, he engages in an simplifying idealization when dealing with science. Thus in ‘The Roots of Reference’ Quine speaks of the fact that requesting makes up a large part of our linguistic usage, but he doesn’t account for it because it has little relevance in his attempts to explain how we acquire our scientific theory of the world (Quine 1973 p. 46). And later in the same book he notes that he doesn’t want a factual account of how children acquire English, rather he is concerned with telling a plausible story of how we go from infancy to developing a regimented language of science (ibid p. 92). Quine made the same point again in his Mind and Verbal Dispositions:

“One and the same little sentence may be uttered for various purposes: to warn, remind, to obtain possession, to gain confirmation, to gain admiration, or to give pleasure by pointing something out… somehow we must further divide; we must find some significant central strand to extract from the tangle…Truth will do nicely…a man understands a sentence in so far as he knows its truth conditions…this kind of understanding stops short of humour, irony, innuendo, and other literary values, but it goes a long way. In particular it is all we can ask of an understanding of science. (Quine 2008 pp. 448-249).

Again, we can see that Quine is abstracting away from various uses of language because they aren’t useful to him in sketching his story of how we go from stimulus to science. Quine, like his behavioural science colleagues, is engaging in idealizations at every step of his philosophical project. Furthermore, Quine is appealing to underlying competencies to explain how it is that humans go from stimulus to science (Quine 1980 p. 6, Quine 1989 p. 348, Quine 1998 p. 4). He appeals to innate similarity quality space to explain our ability to be able to differentially reinforced, an innate perceptual similarity space to explain our convergence on stimulus meaning, as well as appealing to body mindedness to explain children’s ability to understand object-permanence.

Conclusion

In this paper I have demonstrated that behaviourists of both philosophical and scientific bent do indeed make use of both idealizations and of a distinction between competence and performance in their work. Despite the criticisms of Chomsky and his followers; behaviourism’s focus on performance doesn’t necessitate them ignoring competence or shunning the use of idealizations. It is probable that the followers of Chomsky will be un-moved they will note that there has been no behavioural work which can account for the grammatical regularities which are discovered in linguistics. And this I would agree with. Behaviourism even modern behaviourism still hasn’t demonstrated that it has the conceptual resources to handle the syntax of natural language. Nonetheless, we are increasingly discovering more and more interesting performance regularities through behavioural research. These data do need to be explained in terms of underlying competencies. But the discovery of these interesting facts about our behaviour (including Verbal Behaviour), indicate that pace Chomsky we can discover interesting facts about performance prior to having a worked-out theory of competence. In fact, behavioural research has lead us towards achieving a greater understanding of the competencies underlying them not vice-versa. With the sciences of biolinguistics and behavioural science still in their infancies there is still a lot of data to acquire and experimental work to be done. But any attempts to understand either side will involve a greater attention to the what the practitioner of each discipline is doing and not relying on caricatures.

References

Barnes-Holmes, D. 2000. “Behavioural Pragmatism: No Place for Reality and Truth”, The Behaviour Analyst 23 pp. 191-202.

Barnes-Holmes, D. 2005. “Behavioural Pragmatism is A-Ontological, Not Anti-Realist: A Reply to Tonneau”, Behaviour and Philosophy 33 pp. 67-79.

Baum, W. 2002. “From Molecular to Molar: A Paradigm Shift in Behaviour Analysis”. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour. 78 (1) pp. 95-116.

Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. MA: MIT Press.

Christensen, M, H, & Chater, N. “The Now-or-Never Bottleneck: A fundamental Constraint on language”. Behavioural and Brain sciences 39 (2016).

Christensen, M, H, & Chater, N. 2023. The Language Game. Random House. Penguin.

Collins, J. 2007. “Linguistic Competence Without Knowledge of Language”. Philosophy Compass 2 (6) pp. 880-895)

Dymond, S, & Roche, B, (2013) Advances in Relational Frame Theory. Context Press. New Harbinger Publications.

Galizio, M. (1979). “Contingency-shaped and rule-governed behaviour: Instructional control of human loss avoidance.” Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour. 31, pp. 53-70.

Ginsburg, S., & Jablonka, E,. 2019. The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul. MIT Press. Cambridge MA.

Hayes, L, J, & Thompson, S. 1989. “Stimulus Equivalence and Rule-Following”. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour. 52 (3) pp. 275-291.

Hayes, S, & Barnes-Holmes, D, & Roche, B. 2001. Relational Frame Theory: A post Skinnearian Account of Language and Cognition. Springer Science & Business Media.

Hayes, S. 2014. “Cooperation Came First: Evolution and Human Cognition.” Journal of the Experimental Analys of Behaviour 101 pp. 112-129.

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Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundations of Language. Great Clarendon Street. Oxford University Press.

Kemp, G. 2017. “Quine, Publicity and Pre-Established Harmony”, Protosociology 34 pp. 59-72.

Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. The University of Chicago Press.

Palmer, D. 2023. “Towards a Behavioural Interpretation of English Grammar.” Perspectives on Behaviour Science. 46 (3) pp. 521-538.

Pepper, S, C. 1942. World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. University of California Press.

Quine, W. 1953. From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press. Cambridge MA.

Quine, W. 1974. The Roots of Reference. La Salle. Open Court Press.

Quine, W. 1995. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge. Mass. Harvard University Press.

Quine, W. 1996. “Progress on Two Fronts”, The Journal of Philosophy. 93/4 pp. 159-163

Quine, W. 2008. “The Flowering of Thought in Language” pp. 478-484 in Follesdal & Quine (EDS) Quine: Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist.

Rescorla, R. 1969. “Pavlovian Conditioned Inhibition.” Psychological Bulletin 72 (2) pp. 77

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[2] There is a debate within behavioural science on whether scientists are studying of classes or individuals see Baum ‘From Molecular to Molar: A Paradigm Shift in Behaviour Analysis’ (2002).

A short blog-post re-written by ChatGpt in the style of Richard Dawkins

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The Setting

The act of referring to objects, so effortlessly performed in everyday discourse, belies the complex web of philosophical inquiry it has spurred since the dawn of analytic philosophy. In the annals of this intellectual tradition, a recurring motif emerges: the relentless quest to mend the perceived fractures in the relationship between words and the world they represent. As the century unfolded, a dichotomy crystallized within the realm of linguistic philosophy. On one side stood the cognitivists, disciples of Chomsky, who espoused the view of language as an internal computational apparatus for thought. According to Chomsky’s doctrine, language itself did not possess inherent reference but served as a conduit for expressing thoughts about the external realm. On the opposing front were the behaviourists, led by Skinner, who conceptualized language as verbal behavior moulded by environmental contingencies. Skinner’s contention that the traditional notion of reference was dispensable gave rise to the notion of the “tact,” a verbal operant subject to control by non-verbal stimuli and shaped by the three-term contingency.

Despite their discordant philosophies, both camps found common ground in their dismissal of the reference relation as dissected by analytic philosophers. This scepticism toward linguistic philosophy’s pursuits of clarity and repair continues. But work over the last half a century has laid the groundwork for some convergence between analytic philosophy and behavioural science. In this exploration, we delve into the fertile terrain where analytic philosophy and behavioural science intersect, focusing on the burgeoning field of Relational Frame Theory (RFT). Through an examination of the perspectives of Quine and relational frame theorists, we embark on a journey to unravel the intricacies of observation sentences—how they are acquired, developed, and intertwined with our perception of the world. Join us as we navigate the intricate labyrinth of language and cognition, seeking to illuminate the elusive nature of referentiality and its implications for our understanding of the human mind.

The Evolution of language

In their groundbreaking work, Hayes and Sanford (2014) delve into the evolutionary origins of our verbal behavior, painting a vivid picture of how our linguistic abilities evolved over time. They dissect our communication skills, drawing parallels between humans and other non-verbal creatures, highlighting shared traits such as vocalizations to influence behavior and social referencing. Arguing from the vantage point of group selection, Hayes and Sanford suggest that our cooperative instincts played a pivotal role in shaping our linguistic capacities. They illustrate this through a compelling scenario: two individuals near an apple tree, both equipped with the word “apple.” When one person vocalizes the word and the fruit is out of reach, the other steps in to retrieve it, fostering cooperation and mutual understanding. This cooperative dynamic, they contend, marks the genesis of our ability to engage in a frame of coordination, where words seamlessly align with their referents. Through reinforcement and shared experiences, individuals develop a nuanced understanding of the relationship between sounds and objects, paving the way for combinatorial entailment and the intricate web of relational frames. In essence, Hayes and Sanford propose that our cooperative instincts underpin our capacity to frame and derive meaning from language, ushering in a new era of understanding in the evolutionary origins of human communication.

Individual or Shared Behavioural Streams

In the intricate narrative spun by Sanford and Hayes (2014), the spotlight falls on the profound interplay between human cognition and cooperative instincts, casting a revealing light on the evolution of verbal behavior. Central to their thesis is the notion of coordination between words and objects, a feat achieved through social derivation and contextual control over the “is” relation. Illustrating their argument with the allegory of two individuals wielding the word “apple” as a Mand, Sanford and Hayes beckon us into a world where language becomes a conduit for shared experiences and mutual understanding. Yet, lurking beneath the surface lies a critique of individualistic interpretations, epitomized by Barnes-Holmes (2000), who dissected such instances of triangulation within the confines of individual behavioural streams. In this intricate dance of cognition and cooperation, the tale takes a twist as the narrative shifts to the realm of joint attention. Here, the shared object of experience emerges as the linchpin, transcending individual streams and fostering a communal understanding. While behavioural pragmatists grapple with the ontological underpinnings, their reluctance to delve into intersubjective agreement leaves a void in their narrative, one that can only be filled by acknowledging the symbiotic relationship between individual streams and communal experiences. Thus, as the story unfolds, Sanford and Hayes beckon us to embark on a journey through the labyrinth of human cognition, where language and cooperation intertwine to shape our collective understanding of the world.

Cometh the Hour Cometh the Man

Enter Quine, the philosophical voyager navigating the treacherous waters of linguistic ambiguity and cognitive convergence. Armed with intellect and inquiry, Quine set out to unravel the enigma of shared understanding amidst the cacophony of sensory receptors. In Quine’s labyrinth of inquiry, the conundrum of observation sentences loomed large, casting shadows of doubt upon the very fabric of linguistic communion. While his behavioural contemporaries grappled with the intricacies of Mand and Tact, Quine delved into the depths of epistemological and semantic inquiry, seeking to unveil the secrets of meaning and consensus. Yet, amidst the philosophical fog, parallels emerged between Quine’s quest and the behavioural pragmatists’ plight. Both faced the daunting task of reconciling individual streams of experience with the communal tapestry of cognition, each seeking solace in the embrace of naturalistic explanation. Quine’s solution, an appeal to perceptual harmony and empathetic resonance, stood as a beacon of enlightenment amidst the turbulent seas of inquiry. Through the lens of empathy, Quine discerned the threads of joint attention and social referencing, weaving a tapestry of understanding that transcended individual perspectives. And yet, the tension persisted between Quine’s ontological aspirations and the pragmatists’ yearning for epistemological clarity. As Barnes-Holmes et al. posited the notion of separate behavioural streams, Quine’s empathy-driven paradigm stood as a testament to the interconnectedness of human cognition. In the end, Quine’s journey served as a testament to the intricate dance of intellect and instinct, weaving a narrative of inquiry and insight that continues to resonate across the landscape of philosophical discourse.

Barnes-Holmes, Subjective Idealism and Behaviourism

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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.

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