Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm  1. Clarification question: Meaningless to whom?
2. 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. |
1. Meaningless to them (b.), or to those who endorse behaviouristic theories. I know that you're thinking about a specific context, but this would be another (positivistic) approach. Behaviouristic approaches work with meaning, rather than with popularly true or false statements. It can be true in a mythical context, but meaningless anyway unless proved in praxis
per se (in terms of conditioned associations).
2. Isn't this what I meant, as well? According to behaviourists, for a statement to have meaning it must be observed, or be either verified or falsified by empirical means. So, in this respect,
to behaviourists, the statement "dragons exists" is neither true nor false, but meaningless. But
to psychoanalysts this statement's meaningfulness or meaninglessness resides not in its being observable empirically, but introspectively via the works of the sub/conscious.
Must there be an objective approach to subjectivity as the ultimate answer to meaning? Don't they (B. and P., structuralists and functionalists, and so on) approach meaning from different positions and complete each other, rather than being mutually excluding? Have behaviourists managed to explain
memory as a scientific construct?
(Am I, by any chance, wandering away from the topic of this thread?
)