Behaviorism required psychologists to treat humans as visible objects, not inner selves

Evidence

The phrase that captured the new scientific perspective was the “Other-One.” Human behavior would yield to scientific research only if psychologists learned to view humans as others. This “viewpoint of observation” was an absolute requirement for an “objective science of human behavior” that ceased to confuse inner experience with external action. Central to this new viewpoint was his notion of the human being as organism. The human being is recast as an “it,” an “other,” a “they” of organisms: an “organism among organisms,” distinguishable from a lettuce, a moose, or an inchworm only in degree of complexity. A scientific psychology would restrict its interests to the social and therefore visible behaviors of this “organism as an organism.” It would be “the study of the life of the Other-One—but of his life in so far as it is of social significance rather than as it is of significance for himself.… We are studying the Other-One in preference to Our-Selves.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1151

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Other-One’ — Meyer’s foundational concept recasting the human being as a purely observable organism whose inner experience is methodologically excluded.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier framing of behavioral surplus and ‘rendition’ of human experience — the Other-One is the epistemic precondition for treating behavior as data. — connects to: Radical behaviorism defines behavior only as what another organism observes — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1161; Instrumentarianism’s observational viewpoint originates in radical behaviorism’s view of humans as controlled organisms — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1143; Behaviorism’s founding goal was prediction and control of behavior, not understanding — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1148 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘organism among organisms’ reduction parallels how trees/infrastructure get treated as interchangeable instruments in ‘Grafting & Growth’ — the objectification that permits instrumentalizing a living thing.

Broader Connections

• Emotional behaviors do not express inner states; they are the states #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 904
• Early behaviorists saw knowledge requiring the forfeit of freedom #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1159