A relação entre o Behaviorismo Radical e o Pragmatismo: descrição de elementos constituintes de respostas verbais de autores

Abstract

It has been a very common practice, the establishment of relations between the Radical Behaviorism and the Pragmatism. According to some authors, the diversity and apparent incompatibility perceived in such practice seems to result from themes, texts and different moments in works of Skinner, some pragmatists and Wittgenstein (author that highly influenced contemporaneous pragmatism). The mail goal of this study was to describe the constituting elements found in the established relations between Radical Behaviorism and Pragmatism or between the Radical Behaviorism and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language. Constituting elements are the kinds of relations established (similarity, opposition, complementariness), the references to the works of Skinner, some pragmatists and Wittgenstein, the forms they are presented (transcriptions, references with the year and page number or just ^me year) and the themes or topics dealt when these references occur. For such, 44 articles were selected after identified the relations between the Radical Behaviorism and the Pragmatism or the Radical Behaviorism and Wittgenstein in them. The results pointed to a great variety of authors and institutions that scarcely published articles establishing such relations. The country and the magazine with the highest number of articles published were, respectively, the United States and the Behaviorism / Behavior and Philosophy (considered as the same magazine).The most mentioned of all works by Skinner was "Verbal Behavior", followed by "About Behaviorism" and "Science and Human Behavior". Other 83 works, of the same author, were registered, expressing the same diversity as the one relating authors and institutions. James was the most present pragmatist author in the selected articles though Dewey had the highest number of references in the same articles. The most explored themes (when the references occurred) were knowledge, scientific knowledge and language. Knowledge and scientific knowledge were broached especially in articles in which similarity relations were established, and language and self-knowledge in the articles that presented relations of opposition. The results suggest that the variety of conclusions about the above mentioned relations result from the heterogeneity of themes, texts, moments of Skinner, pragmatists authors and Wittgenstein dealt in the present study