Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution, 3rd Edition

Book Preface

In this revision, I aimed primarily to bring the book up to date, because advances have occurred in both behavior analysis and evolutionary biology. Accordingly, chapters 4, 12, and 13 are substantially rewritten. Other chapters received additional material that I deem helpful. Chapter 1 now has a section on the “standard narrative”—“I thought (or felt) X, and so I did Y”—and a section on Folk Psychology. Chapter 2 now has a rebuttal to the criticism of pragmatism that it cannot account for the “unreasonable success” of science. I added a summary table to chapter 3 that compares the views of methodological behaviorism, Skinner, Ryle, and Rachlin’s molar behaviorism. Chapter 4 now tilts more toward my own views of reinforcement, punishment, classical conditioning, and induction, bringing all together in a single framework with the concept of phylogenetically important events. I added an example of behavioral evolution more relevant to everyday life—work‐life balance. Chapter 12, on values, now includes Max Hocutt’s treatment of values and relates values more closely to human evolution. Chapter 13 is updated to include epigenetics, group selection, and cultural group selection as forces in cultural evolution. All chapters include many small corrections, additions, and improvements in terminology. In addition to “terms introduced” following each chapter, I have added a glossary of all terms introduced in the book.