Abstract

GARCIA-VEGA, Luis  and  GARCIA-VEGA REDONDO, Laura. Behavior and consciousness: Historical origin of the adversary alternatives in the beginnings. Univ. Psychol. [online]. 2005, vol.4, n.3, pp.385-391. ISSN 1657-9267.

The word behavior has a reduccionist origin and meaning, the later has been commonly assumed since the mecanicist interpretation of organic movement in Descartes, La Mettrie, Séchenov and Pávlov until nowadays. Watson continues with this tendency making it the starting point of his psychology and, in fact, due to the category he studies, he will call his school behaviorism. In 1924 Vygostky refuses to take this reduccionist and mecanicist model from reactology and reflexology and claims for psychology the need of taking conscience into account, understanding conscience not as the movement of a machine that reacts to a stimular situation, but as the dialectic activity of material human brain, that has reached its highest degree of development.

Keywords : Behaviorism; Mecanicist Materialism; Behavior; Soviet Psychology; Dialectic Psychology; conscience.

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