ABSTRACT
In his autobiography B.F.kinner describes an encounter in graduate school with Alfred North Whitehead. ‘He told me that a young psychologist should keep an eye on philosophy, and, remembering Bertrand Russell, I told him that it was quite the other way around—we needed a psychological epistemology…’ (1979, p. 29). Skinner clearly psychologizes philosophy, and he is not a philosopher of science in the traditional sense. He does not address traditional problems such as the nature of scientific laws and the problem of induction. He has never attempted to construct a formal philosophy of science, and he does not employ traditional philosophical methodology. Yet Skinner is concerned deeply over philosophy, stating that ‘behaviorism is not the science of human behavior; it is the philosophy of that science…’(1974, p. 3). An assessment of his philosophy of science and psychology is therefore of central importance in evaluating his radical behaviorism.
