Behaviorism is a psychological theory that emphasizes the following three phenomena:
- Observable behavior in society and with a certain frequency of parameters,
- The role of the environment in determining behavior, and
- What is perceived (what is learned, excluding what is innate, natural).
The most influential defender of this psychological theory is B.F. Skinner, who has written a book titled “Verbal Behavior,” in which he attempts to explain the need for and benefit of language in strictly behaviorist terms.
The linguist Noam Chomsky and writer Walker Percy, each in his own way, attacked Skinner’s attempt to explain the language in such terms. While Chomsky focuses on people’s inner ability to use language, Percy (following Charles S. Peirce) places more emphasis on the triadic nature of human semiosis. For Percy, Skinner’s dyadic explanation of language, which distinguishes only socially observable stimuli, and the responses to these stimuli, is inadequate.
As semiosis is irreducibly triadic, such reductionism is misleading.
Instead of explaining the operation of signs, he gives a phenomenological description based on the assertion that there is no other explanation than the regular relationship between stimuli and responses. But for Percy, any theory that puts the human sentence on the same scale with the sound of a pigeon pecking, denying the complexity of the unit (in this case, human language) is meaningless.
