Private events: A problem for behavior theory?

Abstract

Conceptual problems in psychology persist because, although introspection as an analytical method was reflected, subjectivity and internality as conceptual constructs were not cancelled. In this paper the dichotomies objective.-subjective, external-internal, public­-private and manifest-implicit, are analysed from the point of view of behavior theory. In 

Skinner’s analysis of private events, these are identified as physical events, but the existence of private worlds cognizable only through language is assumed. As a conceptual alterna­tive, and on the basis of the theoretical ideas on language development offered by Vygots­ky, Wallon, and Kantor, four fundamental problems are analysed: a) the social nature of every form of linguistic reactivity; b) the way that which the Psychological functionality of non apparent and implicit events is shaped through linguistic reactivity; c) the genetic evolution of linguistic descriptions that comprise references to “subjectivity “, “interna­lity”, and “privacy”, and d)the relationship and dependency established between language as a system of referentiations and language as an “objectivized” system of stimuli. It is con­cluded that every linguistic process of reference to ‘private”, “internal” or “subjective” events, constitute the private event of reference, and that there is no psychological func­tionality of the physical events produced by the proper biological reactivity as Long as Mere are no linguistic levels that may refer as public relationships the ways in which such biological reactivity is conceptualized as participating in the individual practices relevant to a social group.