Quote:
Originally Posted by bianca  they strive to identify meaningful from meaningless statements through verification in praxis. For example, 'dragons exist' (to go back to our previous thread) is not so much false (or true for that matter, depending on context) as it is meaningless. |
Clarification question: Meaningless to whom?
I don't think (but I don't really know, as behaviourism isn't my speciality) that behaviourists think a statement like "Dragons exist," is meaningless to those who utter it. Instead, they'd argue that the meaning cannot be observed; it is not empirical. The conclusion is that the utterance's meaning should not be allowed to enter into a hypothesis about, say, superstition. Instead, the statement has to be reframed as verbal behaviour (Skinner's term): What kind of stimulus triggers a statement such as, "Dragons exist."
A behaviourist's account (simplified) might look like this:
Person A utters, "Dragons exist."
Person B and Person C laugh at Person A.
Person A has a negative reaction to being laughed at.
An association between the utterance "Dragons exist" and the experience "being laughed" at is established. Person A will avoid uttering this again (negative re-inforcement).
The meaning of the utterance is not important. Behaviourism
ignores meaning (as data). This is radically different from Psychoanalysis, where "meaning" is very important. But the difference isn't one of "meaningfulness", I feel; it's one of relevance.
And it's not the word "dragon" that causes the difference. The meaning of the statement "apples exist" would be as irrelevant to behaviourists (even though they might explain the difference between the two utterances in terms of responsive behaviour).
[It occurs to me that I'm not sure about the difference between "meaningless" and "irrelevant". Does a statement have to be meaningful to be irrelevant? I think so; how else would you judge its relevance?]
There are so many attitudes towards meaning:
Psychoanalysis' symbolism.
Structuralism's relational grid.
Max Weber's "ideal types".
...
Behaviourism defies them all, by ignoring meaning as un-empirical.
The one thing I can tell from that is that "meaning" is problematic in science, where intuition can be used to construct the subject matter.
How popular is behaviourism in linguistics? I suppose you could describe phonemes in purely behaviourist terms (which may be the source of confusion about earlier statements of mine). But Syntax? Semantics? Hm...