Mechanism, behaviourism and beyond

After outlining some relevant philosophical background, this chapter introduces a number of theories to which Pepper’s worldview of ‘mechanism’ is applicable. Theorists covered include: Ivan Pavlov, who discovered the phenomenon to become known as classical conditioning; John Watson, who championed (and arguably founded) behaviourism; Mary Cover Jones, the ‘mother of behaviour therapy’; and Burrhus F. Skinner, who introduced the concept of operant conditioning. Behaviourism became subject to change, with neo-behaviourists such as E. C. Tolman and Albert Bandura coming to see the need to introduce a cognitive element into learning theories. Information processing theories, while also mechanistic, further marginalized behaviourist approaches to learning and development, though behaviourism’s central principles remain sound and continue to have applications today.