ABSTRACT
Philosophical behaviorism takes behavior as constitutive of mentality: Having a mind just is a matter of exhibiting, or having a propensity or capacity to exhibit, appropriate patterns of behavior. Behaviorism is a response to these seemingly unacceptable consequences of the Cartesian conception of the mind. It rejects the traditional picture of how peoples' mental expressions acquire their meanings by referring to private inner episodes, and attempts to ground their meanings in publicly accessible and verifiable facts and conditions about people. According to the behaviorist approach, the meanings of mental expressions, such as "pain" and "thought", are to be explained by reference to facts about observable behavior—how people who have pain or thoughts act and behave. Logical behaviorism is a thesis about the meanings of psychological expressions. Some psychologists and philosophers have insisted on the observability of psychological data is to ensure the objective or intersubjective testability of psychological theories.
