Preface
- What does it mean to be a behavior analyst?
- Why do practitioners need to understand conceptual issues?
- What this book will do
- What this book will not do
- Becoming bilingual
- So, what is all this fuss about?
1. An Unavoidable (but Reasonable) Assumption
- Free or Determined
- Inside versus outside
- Talking about freedom
- Are we really free to choose?
- Or is our behavior determined?
- Competing assumptions
- A few more issues
- Yes, your assumption is itself determined
- Consequences for Practitioners
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
2. It’s Just Verbal Behavior
- Some Questions About Verbal Behavior
- Do you agree…?
- But first, what is behavior anyway?
- What about verbal behavior?
- Verbal behavior is learned
- How do we learn our verbal repertoire?
- Organization of Verbal Behavior
- The concept of response classes
- Verbal response classes
- Reconsidering conventional concepts
- Given That Verbal Behavior is Learned…
- Just verbal behavior?
- What is a convictions?
- Is something missing?
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
3. Nevermind
- Cause and Effect
- The seduction of inner causation
- Historical, not mechanical, causation
- Is Making Up Your Mind Like Making Up Your Bed?
- What is mentalism?
- The mind-body problem
- Do mental explanations explain?
- Inventing inside “causes”
- Still At The Beginning
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
4. What is Really Inside?
- Distinguishing Between Real Versus Fictional
- Public versus private
- Learning to respond to private events
- Is thinking behavior?
- What about emotions and feelings?
- And traits, attitudes, moods, and all that other stuff?
- What To Do About Mentalism
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
5. Seeing Yourself
- Learning To Talk About Ourselves
- Our verbal community
- Who do you think you are?
- Perception, Awareness, attention, and consciousness
- The Behavior of Sensing
- The role of reinforcement history
- Seeing that you are seeing
- Managing Our Behavior
- Self-control
- Self-reinforcement
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
6. The Misdirection of Everyday Dialect
- Knowledge and Understanding
- Purpose, Intention, and Goals
- As a cause for behavior in terms of future events
- As a self-report of our private experience
- As a description of the function of a behavior
- Problem Solving
- Rules, Advice, and Instructions
- Reasoning
- More than verbal behavior?
- Propositions and premises
- Logicality and rules
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
7. Behavioral Responsibility
- Creativity
- What is creativity?
- Novel instead of creative?
- Learned behavior
- Credit Where Credit is Due?
- Are We Then Blameless?
- It Comes Down to Responsibility
- Conscience
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
8. Ethics, Rights, and Values – Without the Heat
- Ethics and Ethical Communities
- Rights
- What are rights?
- And where do they come from?
- Values
- What are values?
- Are values beyond science?
- Taking the Heat Our of Arguments About Rights and Values
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
9. A Social Life
- Culture
- Culture-free contingencies
- And the influence of culture
- Natural Selection
- Where Might This Lead?
- A role for behavioral science
- Cultural engineering
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
10. Radical Behaviorism
- Radical Behaviorism
- Historical context
- The philosophy of the science of behavior analysis
- Radical versus methodological behaviorism
- Radical behaviorism and research methods
- A matter of opinion?
- Selling radical behaviorism
- Chapter Summary
- Text Study Guide
- Box Study Guide
- Discussion Topics and Exercises
- Suggested Readings
- Supplementary Website Readings
Glossary
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index
