[Week 8] CONFIRMATION

1. What is My Thesis?
Behaviorism can't explain the whole processing in the human mind.


2. What Types of Source Am I Using to Defend My Thesis?
I will use the actual case which reflects the limitation of behaviorism in psychology such as the Skinner's reinforcement - box. Also, I will suggest the error of positivism to make readers understand my intention more completely.


3. Are My Arguments Mostly Based on Evidence, Logic or Emotion?
My arguments are based on evidence. Many early psychologists realized that behaviorism is limited to explain the human's mind, so they researched this topic in the past. So, there are rich available to use.

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My Confirmation
There are many evidences which prove that behaviorism can't the whole mechanism of the human mind solely because early psychologists realized so. From now on, I will suggest many real examples in psychology and the limitation of positivism to support my idea.
First, behaviorism only focuses on 'what human does'. For example, behaviorists set certain situation to make some response from the subjects and record what the subjects did. Skinner's reinforcement - box is the most representative case of this. Skinner only recorded the change of monkey's behavior, giving different stimuli and he stated that the change of behavior is caused by reinforcement. However, in psychology, it is important to reveal how reinforcement caused the change of behavior and influenced the human mind. Behaviorism can't explain this process. It only can find the change of behavior.
Second, behaviorism depends on only empirical finding. Like this, positivism which focuses on visible evidence and scientific method of research like behaviorism depends on empirical experience. Although positivism revealed many phenomenon around us objectively, The world is filled with things we can't experience such as the universe, the God and the quantum mechanics. So, positivism was replaced by round sight to overcome this problem. Sociologists began to consider religion which cannot be explained by science as important element to explain the society and human. As, behaviorism is categorized in positivism, it is possible to say that psychologists should replace behaviorism by cognitive-biological approach which focuses on not only visible behavior and physiological process, but also the abstract, cognitive information processing to research abstract and invisible things in our mind such as consciousness.
Third, behaviorism basically ignores basic diversity of the human mind. Originally, psychologists pay attention to find the universal pattern of the human mind because all people have different mind each other. However, as there are universal pattern in the human mind obviously, the academical field about the human mind can exist. However, behaviorism displays the humans mind in diagram form too much. For example, Chomsky's the theory of language acquisition which is representative example of behaviorism generalized every person's process of learning language. In fact, people learn language in various way. Also, behaviorism ignores human's case-by-case characteristic. In the same condition and stimuli, human's behavior and psychological mechanism can be different because of individual's characteristic and cognitive process. On the other hand, behaviorists try to apply same patterns about the human's mind to all people.