It has been argued that behaviorism was basically
a methodological movement
in psychology which laid
down restrictions on the data on which a science
could
be properly based. In the case of its founder, J. B.
Watson,
this central doctrine was supported by an
inductivist view of scientific
method flanked by the
metaphysical doctrine of materialism and by the asso-
ciationism of a peripheralist, or
S-R, type as a psycho-
logical theory. Few
of the later behaviorists shared all
these assumptions. In commenting,
therefore, on the
main features of their theories special attention
will
be paid to their adherence to or departure from these
other
tenets of Watson which have come to be loosely
associated with behaviorism.
