The Metaphysical Behaviorist

...can put up with it as we put up with abattoirs...

...His question- pretenses...

...IS THERE A CANADIAN LITERATURE ? By DOUGLAS BUSH p ROPOUNDING tion has been for years and discussing a favorite this pastime great among ques- canized, area, with and cultural a small oases population at long scattered intervals, over has a large not Canadian literati...

...He thinks he knows the meaning of "objectively the wife and kiddies, may not a humble scientist be verifiable...

...The critic reads on, incredulous...

...The groundwork is laid with a long fairy- riphery, as a starting-place...

...He on instinct, however (the battleground of the ages) has shown us how very early learning begins, and how he finds the objective scientist mixing his experimental very much can be learned, and thus he has snatched data with much theorizing and "anecdotal psychol- us from the arms of the pessimistic eugenists and ogy," and finishing with a list of instinct-types purely turned us toward the doctrines of the more hopeful speculative and quite conventional...

...Watson Watson is its prophet...

...BehaviorWithout going too far beyond our facts, it seems posabroad attracts opponents at home, and they have not always been so negligible as Keyserling seems to think...

...He is an advertising fessor, in any well-equipped laboratory, at any time...

...euthenists, who place the burden on education, where it belongs...

...Before he finishes the opening chapter he will one of our foremost literary biologists has taken for come across this: his book-plate (now that he can afford one) a copy of the ordinary anatomical chart used in the classroom, sible to say that the stimulus is always provided by the with the motto subscript m ' ' 'I'll lug the guts i n ' - environment, external to the body, or by the movements Hamlet...

...There remains only and modernly to be an objective scientist, though his the peccadillo of offering goods for sale under false logic was wrong from the first page...

...With the chapter the mythical infant each one of us thinks he was...

...That seems to be the opin- In this opening chapter we find that Watson, true ion of most European philosophers and scientists, to his promise in the preface, has given us an entirely though seldom so baldly put--even Keyserling tempers new type of scientific text-book...

...man...

...Naturally a man who makes so strong an impression science...

...son promised to do, but did not do...

...Be- read on, there will soon arise in his mind the nasty sides, Watson did not invent the nasty words, and he suspicion that Watson's opening sermon was only a isn't the only one who uses them: I understand that spoof...

...Critics who thus accuse Watson, however, give themselves away...

...Urban life in Canada has been thoroughly Ameritimes--that stable, homogeneous, deeply rooted tradition which is the nursery of literature...

...He learns in chapsense: a great many of our worries would be over...

...and if we had instruments fine about the angels on the point of a needle, which is enough, and if they showed such movements during generally supposed in the modern world to have been alleged thinking, we should be able to prove that there the high spot of Scholastic dialectics...

...Italics mine.] The second charge commonly hurled against Watson and his system is to the effect that he has reduced psychology to a physical, objective science, entirely removed from the field of metaphysical speculation...

...If he will calm himself, however, and forgiven an occasional professional dereliction...

...Watson," they only what can be demonstrated objectively, by any prosay, "writes for the box-office...

...All the other sciences have freed themselves, and psychology is now about to be freed...

...Without going into irrelevant problems of "post hoc" and "propter hoc," I may say that my article was followed by the almost complete repeal of prohibition from sea to sea...

...I I COMMONWEAL THE November 6, I929 THE METAPHYSICAL BEHAVIORIST By FRANK WHALEN - ] [ - ~ , VERY representative American today," says ogy from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (his only 12, Count Keyserling in a recent article, "is a avowed text-book) only the first few pages of the first headline, "has kept psychology from becoming a behaviorist at heart, whether he knows and chapter...

...book started with a logical definition and division of Behaviorism is the American system--and Doctor the subject--a straight intellectual appeal...

...He led us to expect demonstrations, but gave us dogma instead--philosopher, a theorizer...

...He uses nasty words, like 'guts.' " But who Away with speculation, down with dialectics, no more can blame him, in an age when physical scientists are metaphysics ! becoming more physical every day and biology is a The casual critic, having read thus far, is emotionbest seller, if once in a while he thinks of the shekels ally excited, as Watson intended--but in the opposite and proceeds to go native just a wee bit...

...Watson makes fun of the Schoolmen, imperceptible movement of the larynx still goes on, but surely his hypothetical scion of the Pharaohs and says Watson, and that's what we are doing when we his sub-vocalizing child are far inferior to the one think we are thinking...

...Further, while wealth is increasing the producdon o f Babbitts is increasing too, and the mass of people are still absorbed mainly in the business of making a livelihood, so that we have a combination of comfortable materialism and pioneer drabness...

...The proximity of the United States of course has had a potent effect upon Canadian writers as well as November 6, I929 i | t , J i l l , , u...

...And this : It lies well within the bounds of probability that if we were able to obtain a new-born baby belonging to the dynasty of the Pharaohs and were to bring him up along with other lads in Boston, he would develop into the same kind of college youth that we find among the other Harvard students...

...Mediaeval tradition," he warns us in a think of their guide...

...that he has made all human conduct a series of mechanical responses to mechanical stimuli, throwing freedom of the will--in fact, all consciousness--into the discard...

...Perhaps that is why his system is so popular begging definitions of science and psychology (care- "in partibus infidelium...

...He assumes that the promises thus defithan one major league ball-player has deserted the nitely made to the student will be kept throughout the sacred principles of the national game for the sake of book...

...very successfully...

...He has done good and the instincts...

...we could call it merely a typographical error, like the man who found the needle in his noodle soup, strike out the word "psychology" and substitute "physiology" ter two that "certain important psychological undertakings probably can never be brought under control," and his suspicion deepens...

...If we had some then, the common criticisms of behaviorism may be ham," the old vaudeville jokesters used to say, "we'd dismissed, since they are criticisms of things that Wathave ham and eggs--if we had some eggs...

...tale concerning the indiscreet and indiscriminate vocal- We can well afford to stay with him on the safe izing of infants, and how it is gradually repressed by ground of physiology, but when he turns to metaparents and teachers until it subsides to a mutter, a physics, most of us will prefer men trained in the mere moving of the lips, and then silence...

...However, there have been two main parties in the dispute whose views, consisting of variations on "Yes" and "No," are somewhat difficult to reconcile...

...He is told that one of the in its stead...

...Academic persons and some others have been aware that a reputation in Canada does not constitute an entry into world literature, while fervent patriots of more heart than head have diligently acclaimed one another as important figures...

...If assures us, is welcome to students, who are sick of all Americans are to be labeled behaviorists, and if "laboratory studies almost devoid of human interest Doctor Watson is to be our guide, it behooves us to and a series of text-books with which only a philosopher find out what the label signifies, and what Americans can cope...

...He started out manfully dogma mixed with mythology...

...Such a critical attitude is developing in Canada, and it is our chief need, both in the arts and in public affairs...

...ism is the natural science approach to psychology, and but it appears to me that their criticism for the most the student, from now on, will be expected to believe part has been carping and unfair...

...This, he United States stood for in the twentieth century...

...acknowledges it or not...

...In general, he has brought us back to Aristotle and Bacon, to the outside world, the peSo the truth is out" Watson is really a speculative As a last resort, the reader turns to the discussion of human thinking---"sub-vocal talking," as Watson calls it...

...And so through three chapters of Why criticize him, then, for what he has not done, straight physiology to the treatment of the emotions and his system for what it is not...

...Canada is not one country but half a dozen...

...The old style texthis statement by noting an inconsiderable opposition...

...If more direction...

...For the present, is no such thing as consciousness...

...they have read, of his Psychol- 12 THE COMMONWEAL . . . . . . . important psychological methods is the "verbal report fully worded to include only exact science and mechanmethod" which looks so dangerously like pure intro- istic psychology) might have been expected to pull him spection that Watson himself is dubious, and takes through, as they have many another, but dat ole debble four pages to explain the difference to himself, not metaphysics got him in the end...

...Indeed I once took a modest possessed--except in parts of Quebec and the marlpart in it myself, inditing, in the innocence of youth, a "plea for original sin" which traced Canada's literary backwardness to the dominance of a dull and parochial morality...

...If such were the case it would be a blessing, in a This latter, by the way, is cited as objective proof of the statement that "reaction possibilities on the average probably remain the same from aeon to aeon...

...The critic reads of Watson's famous work in genetic psychology by bringing us back to the experiments---objective enough~to show that only actual infant and showing us what that infant does, three types of emotional response (fear, rage and where we were inclined to be satisfied with recalling love) are possible for the infant...

...If behaviorism is no worse than that, we of man's own muscles and the secretions of his glands...

...In many respects, therefore, we are in the same position as the United States a generation ago, before a cultivated and critical opposition arose to appraise the quality of American civilization...

...I do not doubt," says Keyser- substitutes for it the method of emotional warming ling, "that one day John B. Watson will be considered up: pious exhortation and denunciation of all his predas one of the foremost representatives of what the ecessors, rather in the Methodist tone...

...But the latter field...