Mentalism

Mentalism and Behaviorism: Merging?

The Reflexive-Intentional Model of the Subject (RIMS) connects the subject’s bipolar probabilistic behavior with its mental domain. We demonstrate that the Matching Law is a formal consequence of this tie. RIMS allows us also to deduce theoretically the main patterns of animal behavior in the experiments with two alternatives where the Matching Law reveals itself. This finding inclines us to pu...

Mentalism versus Dualism : Replies to Commentaries

The target paper’s main point is that mentalism and, to this extent, mentalistic (e.g., cognitive) psychology can only be materialistic and, hence, cannot be dualistic. The commentaries to the paper are insightful and stimulating. A few call for corrections, the rest for further clarification. Most criticize the mind-brain identity theory. This criticism is beside the point, as I did not intend...

Mentalism, mechanisms, and medical analogues: reply to Wakefield (1998).

J. C. Wakefield's (1998) critique of W. C. Follette and A. C. Houts's (1996) article is addressed by raising questions about (a) mentalism as a framework for studying psychopathology, (b) the nature of inferred mechanisms and the process of making such inferences, and (c) the accuracy of claiming that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Associati...

IIExpectancyll: Sieight-of-Hand Mentalism, Not Mechanism or Process

Jeffrey Fagen (1993, this issue) has misunderstood our main point about reinforcement as a central principle of behavior change (Gewirtz & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1992, p. 1414) and the issue of description versus explanation in the use of the objective reinforcement term or of a subjective term such as contingency expectancy. He argued that reinforcement cannot explain some findings of his and his co...

Dazzled by the Mystery of Mentalism: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mental Athletes