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American Zoologist 2000 40(6):874-882; doi:10.1093/icb/40.6.874
© 2000 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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Consciousness and Theoretical Behaviorism1

J. E. R. Staddon2,1
1 Department of Psychology: Experimental, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708

There are three domains of experience that concern students of behavior: Domain 1. The domain of felt experience, the phenomenological domain. Domain 2. The domain of physiology, the real-time functioning of the brain. Domain 3. The domain of behavioral data, "intersubjectively verifiable" reports and judgments by experimental subjects. Consciousness has meanings in each of these domains. Domain 1 consciousness is beyond the reach of science as public knowledge. Empathy and plausible inference may tell us that our spouse, or our dog, is as conscious as we are. Science cannot. Research in Domains 2 and 3 permits us to infer similarities and differences between human and non-human psychology. Unfortunately, these will never permit us to know ‘what it is like’ to be another creature. An example from the study of motion perception illustrates the point that the fruitless attempt to answer this question can actually impede the objective study of behavioral processes we share with non-human animals.


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