I offer an analysis of operationism in psychology, which is rooted in an historical study of the investigative practices of two of its early proponents (S. S. Stevens and E. C. Tolman). According to this analysis, early psychological operationists emphasized the importance of experimental operations and called for scientists to specify what kinds of operations were to count as empirical indicators for the referents of their concepts. While such specifications were referred to as “definitions,” I show that such definitions (...) were not taken to constitute a priori knowledge or be analytically true. Rather, they served the pragmatic function of enabling scientists to do research on a purported phenomenon. I argue that historical and philosophical discussions of problems with operationism have conflated it, both conceptually and historically, with positivism, and I raise the question of what are the “real” issues behind the debate about operationism. (shrink)

Operationism may tentatively be defined as that scientific method which defines its concepts in terms of observable or communicable operations, however carried out. With few exceptions, it has been put forward as representing positivism in contemporary sociology. Sellars refers to it as a new and virulent form of positivism—logical positivism. In philosophy, logical positivism is the culmination of the sensationalism of Berkeley and Hume, the positivism of Mach and Avenarius and Comte, and the logistic of Russell and Wittgenstein. In (...) sociology, the philosophic assumptions of this school have been stated in a naive form, in addition to presenting Kantian idealism contradicted by an assumption of philosophic realism. (shrink)

This paper investigates the kind of empiricism combined with an operationalist perspective that, in the first decades of our Century, gave rise to a turning point in theoretical physics and in probability theory. While quantum mechanics was taking shape, the classical (Laplacian) interpretation of probability gave way to two divergent perspectives: frequentism and subjectivism. Frequentism gained wide acceptance among theoretical physicists. Subjectivism, on the other hand, was never held to be a serious candidate for application to physical theories, despite the (...) fact that its philosophical back-ground strongly resembles that underlying quantum mechanics, at least according to the Copenhagen interpretation. The reasons for this are explored. (shrink)

In the context of psychiatric diagnosis, operationists claim that mental disorders are nothing more than the satisfying of objective diagnostic criteria, whereas realists claim that mental disorders are latent entities that are detected by applying those criteria. The implications of this distinction are substantial in actual clinical situations, such as in the co-occurrence of disorders that may interfere with one another's detection, or when patients falsify their symptoms. Realist and operationist conceptions of diagnosis may lead to different clinical decisions in (...) these situations, affecting treatment efficacy and ultimate patient outcomes. (shrink)

Stevens has presented a “lusty embryonic” Science of Science, as having arisen out of “operationism as a revolution against absolute and undefinable concepts in physics, behaviorism as a revolution against dualistic mentalism in psychology, and Logical Positivism as a revolution against rational metaphysics in philosophy.”.

Several important terms in biology have recently been criticized for not being "operational." In this paper the course of operationism in physics, psychology and genetics is sketched to show what effect this particular view on the meaning of scientific terms had on these disciplines. Then the biological species concept and the concept of homology are examined to see in what respects they are or are not "operational." One of the primary conclusions of this investigation is that few terms in (...) science are completely operational or completely nonoperational. Some scientific terms, especially theoretical terms, are a good deal less operational than others; but, far from being regrettable, this situation is essential if theoretical terms are to fulfill their systematizing function and if scientific theories are to be capable of growth. (shrink)

Combines a critical analysis of the theories of Bridgman and his followers with an outline of the problems facing an operationalist theory of knowledge. The primary criticism is that operationalists have been reluctant to spell out the philosophical implications of their theory, and hence have wavered between too strict and too liberal an interpretation of its consequences.--R. H.

Despite influencing the social sciences since the 1930s, S. S. Stevens' "operationist" philosophy of science has yet to be adequately understood. I reconstruct Stevens' operationism from his early work and assess the influence of various views (logical positivism, behaviorism and the "operational viewpoint" of P. W. Bridgman, among others) on Stevens. Stevens' operationism emerges, on my reconstruction, as a naturalistic methodological directive aimed at agreement, founded in turn on the belief that agreement is constitutive of science, the scientific (...) community, and objectivity. Further, I show that operationism is historically and philosophically independent of the views mentioned above. (shrink)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Lorenzen developed his operative logic and mathematics, a form of constructive mathematics. Nowadays this is mostly seen as the precursor to the more well-known dialogical logic and one could assumed that the same philosophical motivations were present in both works. However we want to show that this is not always the case. In particular, we claim, that Lorenzen’s well-known rejection of the actual infinite as stated in Lorenzen (1957) was not a major motivation (...) for operative logic and mathematics. In this article, we claim that this is in fact not the case. Rather, we argue for a shift that happened in Lorenzen’s treatment of the infinite from the early to the late 1950s. His early motivation for the development of operativism is concerned with a critique of the Cantorian notion of set and related questions about the notion of countability and uncountability; only later, his motivation switches to focusing on the concept of infinity and the debate about actual and potential infinity. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions about operational definition often hark back to Stanley Smith Stevens’ classic papers on psychological operationism (1935ab). Still, he was far from the only psychologist to call for conceptual hygiene. Some of Stevens’ direct colleagues at Harvard---most notably B. F. Skinner and E. G. Boring---were also actively applying Bridgman’s conceptual strictures to the study of mind and behavior. In this paper, I shed new light on the history of operationism by reconstructing the Harvard debates about operational definition (...) in the years before Stevens published his seminal articles. Building on a large set of archival evidence from the Harvard University Archives, I argue that we can get a more complete understanding of Stevens’ contributions if we better grasp the operationisms of his former teachers and direct colleagues at Harvard’s Department of Philosophy and Psychology. (shrink)

The major contributions of operationism have been negative, largely because operationists failed to distinguish logical theories of reference from empirical accounts of language. Behaviorism never finished an adequate formulation of verbal reports and therefore could not convincingly embrace subjective terms. But verbal responses to private stimuli can arise as social products through the contingencies of reinforcement arranged by verbal communities.

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophies of truth Operationism and truth Version‐dependence Differences among scientifically oriented philosophers Monism, pluralism, plurealism Realism versus irrealism A theory of everything The status of ethics Emotive theories; Ayer and Stevenson Moore's ethical intuitionism Dewey and ethical naturalism Symbol, reference, and ritual.