Biography of john watson behaviorism pdf

Behaviorism and Mind: John B. Watson by David Dennen first posted 26 March 2020 Introduction Kant was once called “der Allzermalmer” (the all-destroyer) because of the way he upended traditional philosophy; Nietzsche described himself as philosophizing with a hammer, making strategic strikes against philosophical and cultural idols.

A similar aura surrounds John B. Watson, who pierced, or thought he pierced, the fiction of consciousness and reoriented psychology on firm, empirical grounds. As he put it, “In one sweeping assumption after another, the Behaviorist threw out the concepts both of mind and of consciousness” (1926: 723–24).

Biography of john watson behaviorism

In Watson’s analysis, the old subjective psychology was revealed to be pseudoscience; psychology ​as a science​ could be none other than the study of what people actually, observably do​. Watson is often called the founder or father of behaviorism.

Behaviorism’s beginning is usually marked at Watson’s 1912 address (