The Journal of Mind and Behavior

Volume 18, Number 1, Winter

Psychiatry and Capitalism
Richard U’Ren, Oregon Health Sciences University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 1–12, ISSN 0271–0137

This paper seeks to show the relationship between psychiatry and capitalism and how psychiatry (and medical care) is being commodified to bring it into the capitalist circuit of accumulation. Capitalism extols the virtues of individualism, work, and consumption and offers a rationalization for unlimited acquisition that blunts ethical challenge, themes that have a parallel in psychiatric thought and practice. In its incessant search for profit, capitalism is always seeking to enlarge its markets by, for example, commodifying various activities of daily life. Psychiatry creates and enlarges its market by expanding its diagnostic system: an increasing number of difficult or troubling experiences are labeled psychiatric, thus creating an ever-larger pool of potential customers, or patients, for psychiatric services. The relationship between capitalism and psychiatry has been obscured, in part, because psychiatry is a profession with different ideals than business. With the arrival of corporate capitalism in the health care arena, however, the boundaries between professionalism and business are eroding in favor of the latter. Psychiatrists and other physicians are now discovering that their professional activities are vulnerable to the same relentless logic of profitability that any activity in a capitalist society is vulnerable to.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Richard U’Ren, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, OPO₂, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon 97201.

What Multiple Realizability Does Not Show
Robert M. Francescotti, San Diego State University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 13–28, ISSN 0271–0137

It is widely held that psychological theories cannot be reduced to those of the natural sciences. Perhaps the most common reason for rejecting psycho-physical reduction is the belief that mental properties are multiply realizable – i.e., that events of different physical types might realize the same mental property. While the multiple realizability argument has had its share of criticism, its major flaw has been overlooked. I aim to show the real reason why the argument fails, and why multiple realizability is compatible with even the strongest varieties of reduction.

Requests for reprints should be sent to R.M. Francescotti, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, 92182–8142.

Spirituality, Belief, and Action
Hayne W. Reese, West Virginia University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 29–52, ISSN 0271–0137

This article presents an analysis of “spirituality.” Ryle said that a belief is not known to be truly held unless one bases crucial action on it; but the qualifications “truly” and “crucial” can be stripped away. Spirituality then becomes consistency of actual action with a belief; or in behavior analytic terms, spirituality is “rule-governed” behavior. Beliefs can function not only as “discriminative stimuli” but also as “reinforcing stimuli.” A belief need not correspond to the world as experienced in order to have these functions. Spirituality, thus far in the analysis, is only rule-governed behavior, regardless of the source of the rule and regardless of the content of the rule except that the rule must specify actually performable behavior so that consistency of the action with the belief can be assessed. The separation of action from belief is a form of alienation in a Marxian sense (which Skinner endorsed); to paraphrase Kant, beliefs without actions are empty and actions without beliefs are blind. That is, a belief that is not acted upon is literally useless, and action that is not based on a belief is literally irrational. Alienation is resolved when action is based on “right” motives, which are motives based on a set of principles. Analogously, spirituality is a special kind of rule-governed behavior because the rules (beliefs) that govern this behavior (actions) are part of a coherent system that defines “rightness.” An earlier, shorter, and different version of this article was presented in Why Are We?: Behavior Analytic Responses to the Question of Spirituality [W.C.T. Ju, Chair], symposium conducted at the meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1994.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Hayne W. Reese, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6040, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506–6040.

Consciousness and Self-Awareness – Part I: Consciousness₁, Consciousness₂, and Consciousness₃
Thomas Natsoulas, University of California, Davis
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 53–74, ISSN 0271–0137

Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies under the word consciousness. Part I inquires into how, if at all, self-awareness enters consciousness₁: a cognitive relation between people in which they have joint and mutual cognizance; consciousness₂: a psychological process of conceiving of oneself in certain sorts of respects on a firsthand evidentiary basis; and consciousness₃: being occurrently aware of anything at all, including nonexistent particulars. An instance of consciousness₁ may or may not have a reflexive object, but it will perforce include both inner awareness and awareness of oneself as an object of the other’s awareness. Consciousness₂ requires self-awareness in the forms of (a) witnessing or having witnessed potential evidence about oneself, (b) inner awareness of this witnessing when it occurred, (c) inner awareness and self-awareness as involved in (if necessary) remembering having witnessed that evidence, (d) occurrent awareness of features of one’s character or personality, and (e) bringing self-witnessed evidence to bear in judging of the latter. In contrast, consciousness₃, which in a particular instance may be an occurrent self-awareness, need not involve any self-awareness at all.

Requests for reprints should he sent to Thomas Natsoulas, Ph.D., Psychology Department, University of California, Davis, California 95616–8686. Email: tnatsoulas@ucdavis.edu

Consciousness and Self-Awareness – Part II: Consciousness₄, Consciousness₅, and Consciousness₆
Thomas Natsoulas, University of California, Davis
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 75–94, ISSN 0271–0137

Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether and how self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies in its entry for the word consciousness. In this second part, I inquire into how self-awareness enters (a) consciousness₄, or the immediate (“inner”) awareness that we have of our mental-occurrence instances, (b) consciousness₅, or the constitution of the totality of mental-occurrence instances which is the person’s conscious being, and (c) consciousness₆, or the highly adaptive general mode of the mind’s functioning that we instantiate for most of the time that we are awake. Consciousness₄ is a kind of occurrent self-awareness because, in being conscious₄, it is part of oneself that one has occurrent awareness of; although one need not also, at those times, be aware of oneself as such. Consciousness₅ consists of those of one’s mental-occurrence instances that one is now conscious₄ as one’s own or one can remember being conscious₄ of and appropriating to oneself. Whether consciousness₆ must involve self-awareness is difficult to answer because the common concept of consciousness₆ does not imply an answer, and we have no clear view of what consciousness₆ uniquely consists in; that is, no account of consciousness₆ as yet successfully distinguishes it from all of the mind’s other general operating modes.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas Natsoulas, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California 95616–8686. Email: tnatsoulas @ucdavis.edu

Book Reviews

Theories of Theories of Mind
Book Authors: Peter Carruthers and Peter K. Smith. Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 1996
Reviewed by Joseph F. Rychlak, Loyola University of Chicago
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 95–98, ISSN 0271–0137

[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] A young child serving as a participant in a “theory of mind” experiment is first told the following scenario: “Sally places a marble in a basket and then leaves to take a walk. While she is away, Ann removes the marble from the basket and places it in a nearby box.” Puppet dolls, marble, box, and basket are used to act this all out for the participating child. The child is then asked: “Where did Sally put the marble in the beginning? Where is the marble now? Where will Sally look for the marble when she comes back from her walk?” Empirical research apparently establishes (see p. 2) that not until the fourth year of life do children acquire the ability to grasp a false belief – namely, that Sally will look into the basket on her return because this is where she placed the marble before she left. When asked, younger children say that she will look for the marble in the box presumably because that is where it is now located. The question which arises is: How do we explain the development of this false-belief phenomenon?

Requests for reprints should be sent to Joseph F. Rychlak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626.

B.F. Skinner and Behaviorism in American Culture
Book Authors: Laurence D. Smith and William R. Woodward (Eds.). Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1996
Reviewed by Robert Epstein, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and San Diego State University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1997, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 99–102, ISSN 0271–0137

[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] B.F. Skinner and Behaviorism in American Culture is one of a small but growing library of volumes that focus on the life and contributions of the eminent behavioral psychologist. During Skinner’s lifetime, these volumes included B.F. Skinner: The Man and His Ideas (Evans, 1968), Festschrift for B.F. Skinner (Dews, 1970), The Skinner Primer: Behind Freedom and Dignity (Carpenter, 1974), What Is B.F. Skinner Really Saying? (Nye, 1979), Skinner’s Philosophy (Sagal, 1981), Skinner for the Classroom (Epstein, 1982), a special issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Catania and Harnad, 1984, 1988), and B.F. Skinner: Consensus and Controversy (Modgil and Modgil, 1987). In 1977 John A. Weigel published a brief biography of Skinner, and Skinner himself published a three-volume autobiography between 1976 and 1983.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert Epstein, Ph.D., 933 Woodlake Drive, Cardiff by the Sea, California 92007. Email: repstein@juno.com.