Alive and kicking: A review of handbook of behaviorism, edited by William O'Donoghue and Richard Kitchener

Behaviorists have struggled and continue to struggle with basic questions a bout behavior, such as how to define behavior, how to talk about behavior i n relation to environment, and what constitutes an adequate explanation of behavior. Skinner made huge progress on these questions, because of his emp hasis on the generic character of stimuli and responses, his advocacy of ra te as a datum, his introduction of stimulus control, and his reliance on se lection by consequences as a mode of explanation. By no means, however, did he provide final answers. In particular, Skinner fell short because he nev er escaped from the limitations imposed by thinking in terms of contiguity and discrete events and because he never specified a useful role for theory . The 14 chapters in this book offer varying degrees of clarity on the ways in which behaviorists and behaviorally oriented philosophers dealt with ba sic questions in the past and are dealing with them in the present, post-Sk inner. They are reviewed individually, because they are uneven in quality. Overall, the book is a useful tool for gaining historical and philosophical background to behaviorism and for getting some idea of behaviorists' curre nt directions.