Lazzeri, F., & Zilio, D. (2023) Commitments with reductive and emergent relations in behavior. Behavior and Philosophy, 51, 102-124
[Abstract]The philosophical debate on reduction and emergence commonly springs from the division of domains (and subdomains) correlated with the sciences, such as biological domains (e.g., genetics and physiology) and psychological domains (e.g., learning, perception, emotions). These domains are interconnected, with some depending on or composed of elements from others. The debate revolves around whether certain domains are reducible or irreducible to those on which they depend or are composed. In this work, following an examination of common interpretations of the notions of reduction and emergence, we aim to identify and compare radical behaviorism and molar behaviorism as regards the reducibility or irreducibility between the following pairs of domains: (i) behavioral – physiological; (ii) psychological – behavioral; (iii) teleological – contingencies of natural or operant selection; and (iv) cultural – behavioral. This article contributes, among other things, to explaining several core similarities and differences between radical behaviorism (as worked out by B. F. Skinner) and molar behaviorism (as worked out by W. M. Baum and H. Rachlin); as well as some conceptual aspects pertaining to the identity of behavior analysis and its interfaces with related research areas both in natural and social sciences.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section Reduction and Emergence
Subsection Reduction
* Reduction of a domain (or subdomain) X, with respect to another, Y, by type-identities: this takes place when the types of things (processes, properties, or entities) subscribed under X are identical with types of things of Y. Notice that this does not mean a simple correlation between X and Y, but rather a matter of mapping identities of kinds of items from X with kinds of items from Y. That is, the types discriminated in X are equivalent to certain types in Y. Notice also that in this form of reduction it is not denied that the phenomena of X exist. Rather, it is claimed that they exist, but that they are nothing more and nothing less than Y phenomena. Place’s (1956) and Smart’s (1959) identity theory of certain types of psychological phenomena with types of physiological phenomena, later generalized to the psychological domain as a whole by Armstrong (1968) and Lewis (1966), is illustrative in this regard. In its generalized form, the theory asserts that psychological types (e.g., desires in humans) are identical with physiological types (activation of such and such areas of the human central nervous system). This is understood to be analogous to asserting that salt is the same as NaCl, or that heat is kinetic molecular energy ...