The Behavioral and the Mystical: Reflections on Behaviorism and Eastern Thought

Abstract

As in the case of other scientific conceptual schemas, features of radical behaviorism can be compared to descriptions of the world that have evolved within Eastern philosophic traditions. Applications of the analysis of verbal behavior can further the move within contemporary scientific writing towards calling attention to the structuring and limiting effects of language, effects long recognized in the East as sources of dualism and mentalism. Use of the three-term contingency automatically integrates organism and environment. Radical behavioral analyses can help demystify the mystical.