Behaviorism was a movement in psychology and philosophy that
emphasized the outward behavioral aspects of thought and
dismissed the inward experiential, and sometimes the inner
procedural, aspects as well; a movement harking back to the
methodological proposals of John B. Watson, who coined the name.
Watson’s 1912 manifesto proposed abandoning Introspectionist
attempts to make consciousness a subject of experimental
investigation to focus instead on behavioral manifestations of
intelligence. B. F. Skinner later hardened behaviorist
strictures to exclude inner physiological processes along with
inward experiences as items of legitimate psychological concern.
Consequently, the successful “cognitive revolution” of the
nineteen sixties styled itself a revolt against behaviorism even
though the computational processes cognitivism hypothesized
would be public and objective — not the sort of private
subjective processes Watson banned. Consequently (and
ironically), would-be-scientific champions of consciousness now