This blog post has two parts. The first part, titled The Behaviorist Programme, argues that traditional psychological models invoking unobservable mental states—such as intentions, feelings, or motives—are inherently speculative and cannot be conclusively verified. Instead, it advocates for a behaviorist approach that defines emotions and other mental phenomena solely in terms of observable behaviors. By operationalizing terms like “anger” into measurable actions (e.g., yelling, clenching fists, or aggressive gestures), behaviorism eschews untestable internal attributions in favor of empirical data. Although everyday language uses mentalistic labels for convenience, this part contends that a scientifically rigorous study of behavior should rely strictly on what can be seen and measured, thereby eliminating the ambiguity created by multiple plausible psychological explanations.
The second part, titled Stoic Behaviorism, extends this empirical perspective into the realm of ethical theory by arguing that moral judgments should also be grounded in observable conduct rather than speculative internal states. It highlights the difficulty of attributing moral actions to hidden motives because actions deemed “right” might equally be explained by a rational desire to act morally or by unchecked emotions. However, when actions are morally deficient, the associated behaviors—such as a harsh tone or rash departure—can clearly be ascribed to destructive passions. This leads to an ethical stance reminiscent of Stoic thought, which views passions as inherently problematic. In short, the blog post concludes that while normative ethics ideally promotes rational conduct, a strict behaviorist methodology confirms that only behaviors linked to moral error can unambiguously be interpreted as being driven by emotion.
For my previous defense of behaviorism, see here. I already had much the same Stoic views even before I had developed any clearly behaviorist views, as seen here.
The Behaviorist Programme
Psychological models that posit underlying mental motives and hidden mental structures cannot, strictly speaking, be of any deep speculative interest, for the simple reason that they hinge on postulated entities which remain unobservable. Whenever we ascribe a particular thought, motive, or intention to a person’s action, we rely on untestable claims about internal states that we cannot directly perceive. In fact, for any given behavioral episode, multiple divergent but equally plausible mental backstories can be constructed. One could say a person shares food because of generosity, or because of guilt, or because they desire social approval, or because their upbringing ingrained in them an ingrained habit of sharing—there is no decisive observational test that conclusively rules out all but one possibility. Yet, despite this theoretical underdetermination, it remains convenient and common in everyday discourse to use words that carry mentalistic implications, for instance labeling someone as “polite” or “thoughtful” or describing them as acting out of “honesty” or “affection,” because such terms serve as succinct ways of capturing broad patterns in observed behavior and help us communicate about the world in a quick and understandable manner.
Behaviorism steps in as a promising solution by insisting that any reference to mental entities, such as anger or desire, be made solely through observable behavioral criteria, thereby circumventing the murky waters of speculation about unobservable inner states. Under behaviorism, “anger” would be replaced by some operationalized notion of “angry behaviors,” which might include yelling, stamping feet, glaring, or other detectable manifestations. The point of such an operationalization is to ground our psychological concepts in empirically verifiable data, so that statements about mind do not extend beyond what is concretely witnessed. Nor is it required that every detail of this operationalization be spelled out in a formal manner: as long as speakers share a broad agreement on which overt behaviors count as angry, fearful, joyful, and so forth, ordinary language (anchored in shared experiences) can suffice to track these reliably observable clusters of activity without drifting into speculative attributions.
Below is a brief illustration of how various emotions might be re-described in purely behavioral terms, each one as an infinite set of behaviors:
| Anger = | {clenched fists, |
| raised voice, | |
| furrowed brow, | |
| stomping feet, | |
| tense posture, | |
| piercing glare, | |
| shaking fists, | |
| abrupt gestures, | |
| aggressive stance, …} | |
| Sadness = | {slumped shoulders, |
| downturned mouth, | |
| tearful eyes, | |
| quavering voice, | |
| frequent sighs, | |
| slowed movements, | |
| head hung low, | |
| subdued posture, | |
| quiet weeping, …} | |
| Fear = | {startled jumps, |
| wide eyes, | |
| trembling hands, | |
| rapid breathing, | |
| quickened pulse, | |
| rigid posture, | |
| fleeing motion, | |
| hesitant speech, | |
| alarm on face, …} | |
| Joy = | {smiling, |
| laughter, | |
| bright eyes, | |
| energetic movements, | |
| vibrant tone, | |
| relaxed shoulders, | |
| open gestures, | |
| enthusiastic exclamations, | |
| cheerful gait, …} | |
| Disgust = | {wrinkled nose, |
| recoiling motion, | |
| frowning expression, | |
| turning away, | |
| raised upper lip, | |
| muttered exclamations, | |
| furrowed brow, | |
| hand over mouth, | |
| shaking head, …} | |
| Surprise = | {raised eyebrows, |
| open mouth, | |
| gasp, | |
| startled jump, | |
| wide-eyed stare, | |
| sharpened inhalation, | |
| hands flung upward, | |
| rapid blinking, | |
| slight freeze, …} | |
| Boredom = | {yawning, |
| slouching, | |
| blank stare, | |
| restless shifting, | |
| propping head on hand, | |
| long pauses, | |
| heavy sighs, | |
| tapping fingers, | |
| lackluster response, …} |
In replacing ambiguous and often loaded terms like “anger” or “sadness” with a set of plainly observable behaviors, one removes many potential sources of confusion about unverified internal states and instead anchors discussions in a more objectively accessible realm. This approach offers clearer guidelines for scientific inquiry: if we want to study how “anger” relates to the social environment, we identify the presence or absence of certain measurable behaviors, rather than assume or guess about hidden impulses. Some might object that these behaviors are really caused by anger rather than being anger itself. However, behaviorism only needs to hold that, for scientific purposes, the set of externally visible behaviors linked to “anger” is coextensive with what common sense calls “anger.” As long as “behaviors caused by anger” and “visibly angry behaviors” coincide in any legitimate empirical context, the linguistic shift does not do violence to everyday speech. Where psychological modeling outside strict science is concerned, one may always propose that some hidden anger is behind any behavior whatsoever, but that is not of scientific interest since unobservable attributions, by definition, cannot be adjudicated using empirical means.
It is important to note, however, that although the speculative attribution of motives to behavior holds no promise for conclusive scientific results, it remains a matter of significant practical and interpersonal interest. People routinely judge the actions of others as charitable or malicious, empathetic or indifferent, and for that reason it is a human right to adopt whatever methodology of motive-attribution one sees fit, be it based on personal intuition, cultural norms, or more elaborate philosophical frameworks. Yet from the strict vantage point of scientific rigor, these attributions can never be deemed definitive; they are always disputable to the point that no stable or universal knowledge can be drawn from them. Every proposed motive-based explanation of behavior can be countered by a myriad of plausible alternatives, leaving us with no decisive reason to prefer one interpretation above another. As a result, while such analyses are indispensable in everyday moral and social life, they do not yield anything of undeniable significance for objective study, underscoring why behaviorism aims to cleave as closely as possible to publicly verifiable, observable patterns rather than the vague and interminable realm of unobservable mental states.
Stoic Behaviorism
Philosophical ethics aspires to lay out principles of right and wrong that hold for all rational agents, ideally on a firm theoretical foundation. Yet this pursuit encounters a fundamental obstacle the moment one tries to justify ethical principles by invoking psychological or motivational models, since such models prove endlessly disputable. If an ethical theory claims that people should act from genuine altruism rather than from self-interest, it already presupposes that altruism is a real phenomenon, which a staunch psychological egoist might hotly contest, insisting that all seemingly altruistic acts are in truth self-serving. Any ethical principle that depends on one or the other explanation—altruism or egoism—would be thrown into question when the underlying psychological account is challenged. And because there is no definitive scientific method to resolve all psychological disputes, ethical theses predicated on them remain precarious. In response, a more promising approach for establishing the universal validity of ethical claims is to rely only on what can be most directly observed, namely, concrete behaviors. A behaviorist standpoint offers a comparatively unassailable foundation: ethical theorems can be formulated by reference to publicly verifiable actions alone, sidestepping the slippery domain of contested mental states. Thus, insofar as one pursues a universally valid ethics, it becomes desirable to develop theories with minimal reliance on debatable psychology and a maximally behavioristic description of what counts as right or wrong.
Within a behaviorist framework, attributing a motive or emotion to someone’s action means verifying that the act belongs to the set of observable behaviors that we define as indicative of that motive or emotion. If we see a cluster of behaviors commonly classified as “angry,” we might say that person was “moved by anger.” But a crucial complication arises as soon as we move beyond mere description and seek to promulgate a normative theory—that is, a theory that not only describes why people do what they do, but prescribes what they ought to do. Any truly prescriptive theory requires that it be possible for an agent to follow it by desiring to follow it: if there is no theoretical space for an action that is performed simply because the agent believes it to be the right thing to do, then the notion of “right”, as used by the theory, has no normative import. In other words, for ethics (or any other theory) to function prescriptively, it must allow that a person can be motivated precisely by the wish to obey its dictates. Consequently, when we examine an action that corresponds to, say, a cluster of behaviors typically labeled “angry,” but which also happens to align perfectly with what the moral rule prescribes, we face an attribution problem: did the anger cause the action, or did the agent do it for the reason that they deemed it the morally correct course? Because the theory must leave room for the possibility that someone is moved by a desire to do right, the attribution of an emotion to a morally correct behavior remains inconclusive.
The implications are stark. If the only way we can scientifically claim that an emotion—defined behavioristically—has genuinely caused an action is when we observe behaviors that can be unambiguously clustered together under an emotional label, then we must confront the possibility that in morally laudable cases, the actor might simply have been motivated by the desire to do good. Thus, strictly speaking, the role of emotion as a cause cannot be conclusively pinned down if the resulting action meets moral approval: the door remains open that the action was done for the “right reasons,” rendering the emotional explanation unverified. By contrast, when the act is clearly blameworthy, and we observe a cluster of behaviors that read as “angry,” “envious,” “greedy,” or otherwise morally reproachable, there is no countervailing explanation of moral goodness to cast doubt on the emotional cause. Therefore, from this narrowly scientific vantage, emotions end up verifiably causing only the bad actions. The significance of this result is remarkable: it means that, insofar as one restricts oneself to a rigorous behaviorist methodology for establishing causal claims about emotions, emotions emerge as unequivocally tied to moral error. They become, in effect, blemishes on the tapestry of human action. This resonates strongly with ancient Stoic doctrines that characterized “the passions” as the seat of error and moral failing, suggesting that only through the suppression or rectification of these passions can moral excellence be achieved.
The application of this view becomes apparent whenever we examine a morally judged action that is simultaneously described in emotional terms. Suppose someone delivers a correct or helpful statement but does so in a heated, loud, and abrasive tone of voice. From a Stoic-behaviorist standpoint, we cannot conclusively attribute that tone to anger unless we also judge the tone itself to be ethically problematic—an unkind or reprehensible manner of speaking. If the tone was morally unobjectionable, then there remains the distinct possibility that the speaker used precisely the right register for the situation out of a rational desire to act well, not from anger. Hence, moral condemnation is a necessary condition for the attribution of an emotional cause: only after we judge the tone to be wrong or excessive, do we confirm it as “angry.” A parallel example could involve a person who physically storms out of a room in frustration: we only assert that the cause was indeed frustration, rather than the desire to do the right thing, if we find the action to be ill-chosen or disproportionate in the specific ethical context. In each instance, the behavioral classification (“angry tone,” “frustrated departure”) is assured only by our moral disapproval; otherwise, the possibility remains that the person’s motive was simply to do whatever was correct under the circumstances, leaving no conclusive evidence of a passion-driven misstep.
Reflecting on this outcome, we can see that the relentless pursuit of scientific rigor in analyzing motives and emotions leads us to an ethical position deeply akin to the Stoic one, in which passions, if rigorously construed, seem always to manifest themselves in morally deficient ways. Precisely because the behaviorist approach refuses to countenance hidden, debatable psychological explanations, it must treat apparent emotions as emotional only insofar as they are accompanied by blameworthy behavior. Should a person’s behavior prove laudable, the possibility remains that no passion was truly at work, thus keeping the scientific record open. In finding that the only unambiguous domain in which we may speak of emotions as causes is the realm of bad actions, we end up concluding, just as the Stoics did, that the passions are forms of disturbance. This, then, is the heart of Stoic Behaviorism: an ethics that secures its normative authority by positing that we can be motivated by moral rationality alone, yet simultaneously insists that any recognized role for passions in the causation of actions belongs squarely in the category of moral failing.
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