Looking outside

Were it not for the prestige afforded 'introspection', the ideas that feeling is observed as private
and that thinking is necessarily mental, may have been confirmed as folly and gently faded out.
Thoughts and feelings would have been counted and quantified like walking and talking or any
other behavior which people are able to see and to hear.
The outer-inner /public-private / arguments might have been settled and Skinner's behaviorism
would have lost 'radicality' and spread, many years ago.

Controversies over physiological vs environmental causes might not have arisen. As it is, Pavlov's
work can be said to indicate that things we see and hear - or discuss - affect us as individuals plus
the brain cells, hormones and chemistry. Which in Skinner's words is "an appeal to events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms, and measured in different dimensions." Pavlov's data justify explanation on a molecular level of observation.

As a process, Pavlovian conditioning is relatively slow, because time must elapse until salivation
is nil, before the next stimulus presentation.  Still, the result is immediate and precisely what you
expect from a reflex.  So perception, visual and auditory, could have been recognized as a reflex reaction.  Like: " 'I see.' said the blind man as he bumped into the lamp post."  Although this is
a case where "seeing" is due to contact between person and object, so the causal relation is clear.

Mystery arises with distance between cause and effect.
Of course the dogs - not the gland - understand tones - but how?
Well, answers involve photons and decibels, measurable light and sound in the air.
The human organism doesn't sense physical impact with either material but all the same, it exists.

And there is the bridge between external causes and internal effects, which permit the behaviorist
to unite Sciences with Humanities. People differ less than one might think.
Human beings share good commonalities with scientists and other citizens.

Deciding whether or not to approach water, seeing and hearing things from afar, is doing what
comes as naturally to man as to other animals; you cannot help seeing and hearing things from
a distance.
It is also human nature to close the eyes, move out of earshot, turn the head away, and look in
another direction.
And those are 'operants', often called 'voluntary' and still commonly explained as due to free will.
Admittedly, I have been very slow in writing all this, but today I insist:
radical behaviorists lack basic data about good reasons for locomotion.
Were they to replicate what I tried to do, they would realize moving away from potential harm, is
a perfectly normal reflex response conducive to the survival of an individual organism.
And that one must be gentle with mentally healthy experimental subjects - otherwise, they will be
be tense and fearful - beyond the scientist's control - rather than relaxed and confident.