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eliminative behaviourism

eliminative behaviourism noun: british standard spelling of eliminative behaviorism (“theory that mental states do not exist and therefore, statements of the mind are statements of physical behavior”).

Noun

eliminative behaviourism (uncountable)

  1. British standard spelling of eliminative behaviorism (“theory that mental states do not exist and therefore, statements of the mind are statements of physical behavior”)
    • Suffice it to say that no account satisfying the strictures of eliminative behaviourism has ever approached the level of success of folk psychology in offering plausible explanations of human behavior, and that after a great deal of propaganda and sterile methodological debate, this movement has...1988, Matin Atkinson, edited by Michael McTear, Understanding Cognitive Science, Chichester: Ellis Horwood Limited, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 49
    • After the initial introspectionist period the controlling philosophy of psychology was precisely eliminative behaviourism— the total rejection of the ‘mentalism’ of commonsense psychology.1989, Colin McGinn, Mental Content, Oxford: Basil Blackwood, →ISBN, page 125

Forms of eliminative behaviourism

alternative formeliminative behaviorism

Origin of eliminative behaviourism

From eliminative + behaviorism.

Questions about eliminative behaviourism

What does eliminative behaviourism mean?
Eliminative behaviourism means british standard spelling of eliminative behaviorism (“theory that mental states do not exist and therefore, statements of the mind are statements of physical behavior”).
What part of speech is eliminative behaviourism?
Eliminative behaviourism is a noun.

Words near eliminative behaviourism in the dictionary

  1. eliminationist
  2. eliminationists
  3. eliminations
  4. eliminative
  5. eliminative behaviorism
  6. eliminative behaviourism
  7. eliminative materialism
  8. eliminativism
  9. eliminativist
  10. eliminativistic
  11. eliminativists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eliminative behaviourism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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