The Behaviorist cannot find consciousness in the test-tube of his science.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that consciousness cannot be measured or observed through scientific experiments alone.
John B. Watson suggests that consciousness, a complex and subjective aspect of human experience, cannot be reduced to or studied solely through empirical scientific methods such as those used in behaviorism. This highlights the limitations of a purely scientific approach in understanding the intricacies of the mind.
In practice
In a psychology class while discussing the limitations of behaviorism.
Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.
There are... for us no instincts—we no longer need the term in psychology. Everything we have been in the habit of calling an 'instinct' today is a result largely of training—belonging to man's learned behavior.
Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!" "Can't we do anything about it?" "No!" "Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly.
I think that our comfort is in our history.
There are situations in which hope and fear run together, in which they mutually destroy one another and lose themselves in dull indifference.
The lapse of ages changes all things - time - language - the earth - the bounds of the sea - the stars of the sky, and everything 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.
People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human.
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
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