Review of The war between mentalism and behaviorism: On the accessibility of mental processes by William R. Uttal.

Reese, H. W. (2001). Review of The war between mentalism and behaviorism: On the accessibility of mental processes by William R. Uttal. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 76, 115-130.

Uttal's goals in writing this book are (a) to demonstrate that the war between mentalism and behaviorism is unwinnable because both sides are fundamentally flawed and (b) to describe a new version of behaviorism that resolves the conflict. The book is generally well written and contains many interesting and important points, but the goals are not attained because of weaknesses in some of the crucial analyses. For example, key terms such as mind and behavior are not defined; the scientific admissibility of inference is denied for philosophical reasons that are not relevant to inference as actually used; the accessibility of mind is both explicitly denied and implicitly assumed; two kinds of reductionism – between and within domains – are acknowledged but the distinction is not consistently maintained; and the proposed new behaviorism ignores rather than solves the old problems.

Key words: mentalism, mind, behaviorism, reductionism