ABSTRACT
Skinner provides a good evolutionary account of the difference in accuracy between public events, like a touch, and private ones, like a tummy ache. On the other hand, he describes “private” events as responses, but responses to what? The specter of a homunculus hovers over his account. Briefly, in an early account of verbal behavior, he allowed for the possibility of latent or covert events, of a state defined by a repertoire, which looks like a more defensible position, no different from the approach of theoretical behaviorism to private events.
