The Molloy-Birnbrauer Exchange: How Many Factors do a Psychology Make?

Abstract

Molloy and Birnbrauer have recently exchanged views in this journal over how how many factors are necessary to provide an adequate account of human behaviour and behaviour change. Their differences apparently reflect alternative conceptualizations of the roles played by physiology and cognition in the analysis of behaviour. The present paper provides some background to these issues, showing that the current cognitive behavioural approach to physiology and cognition is but a reworking of some aspects of traditional mentalism. Following this, several alternatives to this traditional conceptualization are offered by way of (a) an analysis of how functional and structural contextual conditions affect behaviour and (b) distinctions between issues of behavioural process and content-related behavioural substance. For psychology to be a cumulative and progressive enterprise, a natural science approach to issues of physiology and cognition must be maintained, no matter how many factors may be tajcen as germane to human behaviour and behaviour change