Rachlin: Teleological Behaviorism

Much depends on what you understand by “dispreferred.” We have already encountered teleological behaviorism in the context of the requirement that behaviorist explanations and interpretations should be capable to delimiting the range of consequences that can realistically be causally employed in accounting for behavior. This chapter examines more closely the epistemological status of teleological behaviorism and its contribution to the explanation of consumer choice. In formulating teleological behaviorism as a philosophy of behavioral science, Rachlin follows Aristotle in distinguishing efficient from final causes. Efficient causes precede their effects and consist in the set of internal nervous discharges giving rise to particular movements; they would include internal physiological and cognitive precedents of activity. The analysis of efficient causes yields a mechanism that answer the question “How does this or that movement occur?” Final causes are consequences of behavior. Final causes may inclusively fit into one another as the causal web extends outward from the individual who behaves: “eating an appetizer fits into eating a meal, which fits into a good diet, which fits into a healthy life, which in turn fits into a generally good life. The wider the category, the more embracing, the ‘more final’ the cause.” (Rachlin, 1994, p. 21).