Read this description here to see why animal testing sucks:

http://romaniya.deviantart.com/art/Beauty-against-cruelty-color-168351615?q=sort%3Atime+gallery%3Aromaniya&qo=7

UnEasyOne asked “No offense, Red Dog, but why are you still giving HP page views and commenting there?”

Good question. Because for one thing when it comes to politics and general news I haven’t found a better site. I also like the topics that woo writers like Lanza raise even though I completely disagree with their answers. I also have gotten to virtually know several people who comment there and enjoy the community.

To Mike. I disagree about Skinner. I think X above said it better than I did and I agree with X.

No, radical behaviourism is called “radical” because it contrasts with methodological behaviourism.

Behaviourism generally is the idea that only behaviour and not introspection, can be studied scientifically. In this sense all modern psychology is behaviourist. Behaviourism emerged mainly out of Thorndike’s work – that human learning follows the same patterns that stimulus-response associations do in animal learning.

Methodological behaviourism was the idea that “the mind” exists but cannot be studied scientifically. Thus psychology should focus only on observable behaviours. However it allowed what could be called “intervening variables”. So for example you can study psychological construct like “hunger” if you define it in terms of a behaviour (e.g., how much food a person eats).

Radical behaviourism is the idea that “the mind” does not exist. Thus they ignored intervening variables and took Thorndike’s work to its logical conclusion – that even complex behaviours were built up out of simple S-R links. Similarly in philosophy of mind radical behaviourists (Gilbert Ryle) argued consciousness was a category error.

Of course this all fell apart when Skinner tried to extend associative learning to explain verbal behaviour (Verbal Behaviour was the name of the book, as well) and Chomsky promptly destroyed his entire argument. Around the same time there was also a few new experiments which showed that conscious processing was used in human learning (e.g. use of hypothesis testing, role of short term memory etc.).

So no, Skinner didn’t believe mental states, which is what you’re calling “inner life” were real. In fact the methodological behaviourists were closer to studying what you call “inner life” than the radical behaviourists – the compelete opposite of what you’re saying.

anadiomene: “sarah Blaffer Hrdy writes about concealed ovulation as adaptation in polygamous (many males / many females) primate societies. In connection with promiscuity it is a part of strategy which protects the young from being killed by males – a reproductive strategy pretty common among our closest relatives.
So, concealed ovulation needs not mean monogamy at all, either. May mean just the opposite.”
>>>This issue is two-fold. First, when we consider the fact that hominids are relatively monomorphic with greatly reduced canines & have completely lost the SSC (Sectorial Canine Complex) it is very unlikely that early hominids regularly engaged in infanticide (which is already unlikely due to philopatry). Thus, right from the start your example doesn’t apply to hominids.
Secondly, if we assume minimal ovulatory signaling in the earliest hominids was primitive (all other hominoids exhibit some degree of ovulatory swelling, even if minimal), why did hominid females not prolong and intensify such signs so as to encourage sex-for-food exchanges (as Pan appears to have done)? The most logical answer is to prevent cuckoldry. Male provisioning within the context of a multimale group therefore requires selection of females with reproductive crypsis. That is, males could only succeed by provisioning mates with self-crypsis; they would otherwise be unprotected from female copulation with more dominant/aggressive males while ovulating.