The Behaviorist cannot find consciousness in the test-tube of his science.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that consciousness cannot be measured or observed through scientific experiments alone.
John B. Watson suggests that consciousness, a complex and subjective aspect of human experience, cannot be reduced to or studied solely through empirical scientific methods such as those used in behaviorism. This highlights the limitations of a purely scientific approach in understanding the intricacies of the mind.
In practice
In a psychology class while discussing the limitations of behaviorism.
Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.
There are... for us no instincts—we no longer need the term in psychology. Everything we have been in the habit of calling an 'instinct' today is a result largely of training—belonging to man's learned behavior.
Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.
We’ve got ninety-nine per cent the same genes as any other person. We’ve got ninety per cent the same as a chimpanzee. We’ve got thirty per cent the same as a lettuce. Does that cheer you up at all? I love about the lettuce. It makes me feel I belong.
Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.
We turn, three men bound by love, by history, by circumstance, and most certainly by the awful grace of God, and together walk a narrow lane where headstones press close all around, reminding me gently of Warren Redstone’s parting wisdom, which I understand now. The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.
[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.
Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.
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