Why private events are not a retreat to mentalism

Private events are stimuli and behavior that are subject to privileged introspective observation at least with typical current experimental technology. These include behavior such as thinking, feeling, remembering and perceiving, and stimuli in the form of bodily sensations that are not traceable to relatively immediate antecedents in the external environment. Critics both outside and within behavior analysis view private events with skepticism, specifically as a retreat to mentalistic explanation. It is argued that this stems from a failure to recognize the different, respective causal categorical frameworks mental and private events are theorized within. Mental (or neurocognitive) events are hypothetical mediating processes between stimuli input and behavioral output as part of a proximate causal account within a mechanistic framework. Private events are part of an ultimate causal account of learning within a contextual, historical framework. The description of private events is directly derived from the concepts describing experimental control of observable behavior. Claims to their actual general existence is supported by the limited role afforded to introspection as a mode of observation in radical behaviorism. Introspection is unfit to reliably measure single instances of private events, but is very much fit to confirm the existence of private events as a general phenomenon. Rejecting the latter proposition constitutes an obscure skepticism that is unsuitable as a philosophy of behavioral science.