ABSTRACT
Behaviourism was an implausible philosophical dogma that developed in the wake of logical positivism in the 1930s and afforded psychology some self-confidence as a ‘proper’ science. By casting inner life ‘off limits’, it was burying its head in the sand and trying to close down an important implication of ontological realism. If behaviourism is not a sustained alternative to subjectivism in its different forms, that does not mean that cognitivism can successfully objectivise subjectivity and convincingly secure permanent laws related to inner life. The most self-assured rejection of subjectivism by radical behaviourists could never be a matter of erasure but only of re-framing or explanation. Empiricists, since the introduction of behaviourism in psychology, tend to over-state their ambitions in relation to external reality and understate the possibility of legitimate inner exploration, or they might, at times, express anxious embarrassment about its scientific legitimacy.
