I was wondering if we have any Radical Behaviorists on this forum, and/or people who adopt the position of Eliminative Materialism.
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Radical Behaviorism is a kind of philosophy-of-mind and a particular theory of neuroscience. At base, the unifying motto of Radical Behaviorism is : "The brain mediates behavior."
In neuroscience, the methodology of RB will say that all we can ever really measure of the outward behavior of an animal or a person. But these mere fact is taken further, however. A radical behaviorist will go on to the claim that words like "belief" and "think" or "feel" are cultural lies that do not refer to anything real. The brain is not something that is seen to "think" or to "plan" or even to engage in "reasoning". Instead the brain is nothing but an organ that associates certain stimuli with certain rewards and punishments.
Phrases like "stimulus was paired with a primary reinforcer" translates to : the animal was rewarded with a treat whenever it did action X. The phrase "aversive stimulus was presented in conjunction with the prime", means "we shocked the mouse's feet with electricity whenever it went the wrong way in the maze".
Radical behaviorists are often very frustrating to communicate with. Whenever you give an examples which appears to fly contradictory to their theory, they proceed to explain it away with the clever use of "secondary reinforcers". The basic recurring theme is that brains merely connected rewards and punishments to certain actions, and that there is "no one home" in terms of a sentient person/actor in the brain or mind. Any references to a person planning, believing, feeling , reasoning are immediately dismissed as "wive's tales" that do not reflect how these things are actually happening at the level of physics. The brain mediates behavior, but there is "no one upstairs" (as it were).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/