It is my purpose to point out certain similarities between the Philosophical Investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the work of B. F. Skinner. In doing this, I hope to stimulate a somewhat deeper appreciation of Skinner's views than is generally found among psychologists at the present time. I hope also to influence the critical appraisal of Skinner's work, so that it might come to bear more cogently upon the position as it has actually developed. I feel that much of the current criticism (e.g., Chomsky, 1959) misses its mark largely because it seems to take for granted that Skinner adopts philosophical perspectives which are in fact inimicable to his views. It is my opinion that Skinner's position is more compatible with the later views of Wittgenstein than with other philosophical approaches more widely accepted among psychologists.

Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957) is a comprehensive treatise that deals with most aspects of verbal behavior. However, its treatment of the learning of grammatical behavior has been challenged repeatedly. The present paper will attempt to show that the learning of grammar and syntax can be dealt with adequately within a behavior-analytic framework. There is no need to adopt mentalist (or cognitivist) positions or to add mentalist elements to behaviorist theories.

S kinner's book, Verbal Behavior, was published in 1957. Chomsky's review of it appeared in 1959. By the criterion of seminal influence in generating controversy and stimulating publication, both must be counted major successes, although the reputation and influence of the review are more widely acknowledged. (...) Skinner's Verbal Behavior is an analysis of speech in terms of its “controlling relations” which include the speaker’s current motivational state, his current stimulus circumstances, his past reinforcements, and his genetic constitution. Skinner has accepted the constraints of natural science in his basic analytical apparatus in that all of its terms are empirically definable. He intends to account only for the objective dimensions of verbal behavior and to invoke only objective, nonmentalistic and nonhypothetical entities to account for it. The notion of control, anathema to the politically oversensitive, means only “causation” in its purely functional sense, and need not alarm. It is not arguable nor criticizable that behavior is an orderly, controlled datum, sensitive to the circumstances of the behaver; this is simply a fact which has been amply confirmed.

A "sane" sceptic criticism from the great behaviourist, B. F. Skinner