p.94 Psychology seeks, rather, the objectively statable laws and processes governing
behavior. Organisms, human and subhuman, come up against environmental stimulus situations and to these stimulus
situations they, after longer or shorter intervals of time, behave. The laws and processes determining this their behavior
are stable in objective terms. [JLJ - sounds like computer chess might benefit from what psychology knows about the mind]
p.97 The purpose of science, of psychology as well as of physics, is not to describe
and relive experience but merely to explain it, - to help in predicting and controlling it, - or
to use Professor Pepper's term, to give map accounts of it.
p.97 Brunswick's doctrine is that in any perception the organism "intends" certain objective environmental
characters... immediate perception makes a stab at arriving at these characters... perception "intends" or "expects" these
characters. Further, these perceptual intentions and expectations succeed in "attaining" or "achieving" the real
values of the characters sometimes with more and sometimes with less success.
p.109 hypotheses; or intentions, expectations and attainments as to relations.
p.110 A hypothesis, behavioristically, in other words, is to be defined as
nothing more nor less than a condition in the organism which, while it lasts, produces just
such a systematic selectivity in behavior. Further, it appears that such a hypothesis or selectivity
is equivalent to an intention or assertion of a specific relation as obtaining in the environment.
p.110 In men, also, a hypothesis is fundamentally, I believe, no more than a similar
behavior readiness. It is a condition or set which produces consistent selectivity of behavior
relative to some type of environmental relation.
p.111 Warner Brown and Miss Whittell found cases in which the human subject arrived at the correct
solution without, however, himself being able consciously to formulate the nature of his hypothesis. The individual
chose the correct door every time... without, however, being able to say what it was that defined his choice. He was not conscious
of his hypothesis and yet this hypothesis successfully governed his behavior. We must conclude, therefore, that to be conscious
- to be introspectively formulable - is not essential to even human hypotheses. The fundamental essence of any hypothesis
is not, it would seem, whether it be conscious or not but the fact that it is a condition in the organism
which sets the latter, whether human or subhuman, for a certain systematic selectivity of behavior.
In the case of a man this condition may not get over into actual behavior but its significance and meaning is that, if it
did get over into behavior, it is such and such behavior which it would determine.
p.112 there is a second more important feature involved in hypotheses as conscious, - the
fact, already noted, that they can be mentally tested out... consciousness allows for a playing off of one intention,
one behavior readiness, against another. It is thus that the possibility of arriving at modified and improved sets
of these intentions or behavior readinesses is achieved. The conscious organism checks his hypothesis against his
memories or against his perceptions. And, if necessary, he changes his hypothesis accordingly... This sort
of procedure, which seems to be limited to us men and to perhaps some of the higher animals, is certainly most remarkable.
And it needs a lot more in the way of a successful analysis and study than any psychologist has yet succeeded in giving it.
p.113 A behaviorism seeks to write the form of the function f1 which connects the dependent
variable - the behavior B - to the independent variables - stimulus, heredity, training, and physiological disequilibriums,
S, H, T, and P.
