Afinidades e estranhamentos epistemológicos entre as filosofias de C. S. Peirce e de B.F. Skinner

• Ano de defesa: 2021
• Autor(a) principal: Aguirre, Jorge Luis Quintero
• Orientador(a): Aguirre, Jorge Luis Quintero
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Estudos Pós-Graduados em Psicologia Experimental: Análise do Comportamento
• Departamento: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e da Saúde
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Peirce, Charles Sanders [1839-1914] - Crítica e interpretação; Skinner, Burrhus Frederic [1904-1990] - Crítica e interpretação; Avaliação do comportamento; Pragmatismo
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Peirce, Charles Sanders [1839-1914] - Criticism and interpretation; Skinner, Burrhus Frederic [1904-1990] - Criticism and interpretation; Behavioral assessment; Pragmatism
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA::PSICOLOGIA EXPERIMENTAL
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.pucsp.br/jspui/handle/handle/24069

Some theoretical papers in the field of the philosophy of behavior analysis make the case that superficial afinities were being found between radical behaviorism and other philosophies due to lack of an integrated understanding of the sistems being compared. At the same time, some philosophers in behavior analysis were afirming the existence of relevant similarities between the philosophies of Peirce and Skinner that hadn’t been duly explored. The objective of this work was to produce a comprehension of Peirce’s epistemology integrated in its philosophical system, to facilitate a comparison between its concepts and those of radical behaviorismo. The material used to study Skinner’s philosophy were some papers between the period of 1980 to 1990 that were considered to be mainly about his theoretical and philosophical inclinations. We believe this restriction does not limit greatly the value of this work, given that our interest was not to analise the whole of Skinner’s thought. The material used to study Peirce’s philosophy was the book “Chance Love and Logic”, mainly because it was the only book by Peirce owned by Skinner, according to Skinner’s autobiography “The Shaping of a Behaviorist”. That work covers about thirty years of Peirce’s production, which allows us to consider it representative of his system. We defined five categories of analysis that guided the reading of the material: knowledge, conceptions of truth, psychology and behavior, logic and science. The results obtained pointed to great diferences between the authors. Firstly, They present diferent kinds of selectionism, Skinner presented selection by consequences, and Peirce presents a selectionism that is associacionistic. In Peirce’s selectionism there is no influence of consequences in the definition of classes of events produced by selection, and so we have a fundamental divergence between Peirce and Skinner. Another difference shows itself concerning the conceptions of truth and reality. To Peirce, science has the incumbence of reaching true opinion, an opinion that corresponds with reality and is recognized for being an effective rule of action. To Skinner science must lead to effective action, but is not concerned with truth or reality. The ocurrence of such diferences across the five categories seems to be related to the interest each author has in the aplication of scientific knowledge to the resolution of social issues, which was more presente in Skinner. These findings revealed a difference from what other authors in literature were saying. This however only points to the importance of further studies that takes into account more aspects of each system to corroborate the findings here presented