sciences; it should, like physics, study the actions of material entities, i.e., study observable behavior.
This program has led, on the part of behaviorists, to an orgy of "experiments" and "measurements," with only this
difference from the physical sciences: that behaviorists have been notoriously unclear as to what their experiments
are to accomplish, what they are measuring, why they are measuring it, or what they expect to know when their
measurements are completed. The practical success of their program has been nil. (This does not mean that every
experiment performed by an advocate of behaviorism necessarily has been valueless; but that its value, if any, bears
no intrinsic relation to the behaviorist thesis, i.e., the experiment did not require or depend on the experimenter's
commitment to behaviorism. Behaviorists were scarcely the first to recognize that psychology requires, among
other things, the study of behavior under experimentally controlled conditions.)
It is true that psychology has failed as yet to establish itself as a science; it is also true that classical
introspectionists, such as Wundt, Titchener, and members of the so-called Würzburg school, were guilty of grave
errors in their concept of the nature, scope, and methods of psychology. But the behaviorist program represents, not
a solution or a step forward, but the abdication of psychology as such.
While posturing as the expression of scientific objectivity, behaviorism, in fact, represents a collapse to
methodological subjectivism. To be objective is to be concerned with facts, excluding one's wishes, hopes, or fears
from cognitive consideration; objectivity rests on the principle that that which is, is, that facts are not created or
altered by the wishes or beliefs of the perceiver. If, therefore, a scientist decides to study a given aspect of reality,
objectivity requires that he adjust his methods of investigation to the nature of the field being studied; ends
determine means; he does not, arbitrarily, because it suits his convenience, select certain methods of investigation
and then decree that only those facts are relevant which are amenable to his methods.
No one, including the behaviorist, can escape the knowledge (a) that he is conscious and (b) that this is a fact about
himself of the greatest importance, a fact which is indispensable to any meaningful