SKINNER - FROM ESSENTIALIST TO SELECTIONIST MEANING

Skinner has been criticized for advancing essentialist interpretations of meaning in which meaning is treated as the property of a word or a grammatical form. Such a practice is consistent with a ''words and th ings'' view that sought to advance an ideal language as well as with S -R views that presented meaning as the property of a word form. These views imply an essentialist theory of meaning that would be consistent with Skinner's early S-R behaviorism. However, Skinner's more develop ed account of meaning is based on his later selectionist behaviorism, and this account of meaning is aligned in many respects with the views of Darwin, Peirce, F. C. S. Schiller, Dewey, and Wittgenstein. After adopting a selectionist theory of meaning, it was inconsistent for Ski nner to maintain essentialist practices although Skinner did so in res ponse to influences that had little to do with his selectionist theory . Skinner's particular contribution to this pragmatic-selectionist tra dition of meaning is the integration of meaning within his three-term contingency for operant behavior. In this account, meaning lies in the probabilistic functional relations of verbal behavior rather than in its form.