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Full Idea
There are three different views concerning behaviourism - the 'radical' view, which aims at eliminativism, the 'analytical' view, which is a reductionist enterprise, and the 'methodological' view, somewhere between the two.
Clarification
'Eliminativism' says consciousness doesn't exist; 'Reductionism' says it ultimately boils down to physical events.
Gist of Idea
Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological
Source
Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4)
Book Ref
Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.96
A Reaction
The first appears to be ontological, the second about relationships between areas of our language, and the third epistemological. You could attempt language reduction because we can only know behaviour, because that's all there is.
| 7434 | Behaviourism is false, but mind is definable as the cause of behaviour [Armstrong] |
| 3369 | Logical behaviourism translates mental language to behavioural [Kim] |
| 3428 | Behaviourism reduces mind to behaviour via bridging principles [Kim] |
| 4991 | Behaviourism seems a good theory for intentional states, but bad for phenomenal ones [Kirk,R] |
| 4994 | Behaviourism offers a good alternative to simplistic unitary accounts of mental relationships [Kirk,R] |
| 3165 | Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey] |
| 3180 | Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey] |