Not really a relic. Reinforcement learning is one of the best model for learned behavior we have. In the 1950s however cognitive science didn’t exist, and behavioralists thought they could explain much more with their model than they could, so they oversold the idea, by a lot.
Cognitive science was able to explain stuff like biases, pattern recognition, language, etc. which behavioral science thought they could explain, but couldn’t. In the 1950s it was really the only game in town (except for psychometrics which failed in a way much more complete—albeit less spectacular—way then behaviorism), so understandably scientists (and philosophers) went a little overboard with it (kind of like evolutionary biology did in the 1920s).
I think a more fair viewpoint is to claim that behaviorism’s heyday in the 1950s has passed, but it still provides an excellent theoretical framework for some of human behavior, and along with cognitive science, is able to explain most of what we know about human behavior.
Not really a relic. Reinforcement learning is one of the best model for learned behavior we have. In the 1950s however cognitive science didn’t exist, and behavioralists thought they could explain much more with their model than they could, so they oversold the idea, by a lot.
Cognitive science was able to explain stuff like biases, pattern recognition, language, etc. which behavioral science thought they could explain, but couldn’t. In the 1950s it was really the only game in town (except for psychometrics which failed in a way much more complete—albeit less spectacular—way then behaviorism), so understandably scientists (and philosophers) went a little overboard with it (kind of like evolutionary biology did in the 1920s).
I think a more fair viewpoint is to claim that behaviorism’s heyday in the 1950s has passed, but it still provides an excellent theoretical framework for some of human behavior, and along with cognitive science, is able to explain most of what we know about human behavior.