This is a presentation on philosophy of science I use for my courses at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

These materials were developed for the second day of a undergraduate learning class. Many times during the semester a student will try to argue statements from the book (Catania, 1997) or class. Some of the time, these arguments are not about the data or statements but rather they are about differences in basic assumptions. I wanted a short-hand way of pointing this out (e.g., “yellin’ across islands”) so we can get back on track quickly – without having to spend a lot of class time telling them they could be right, just not in the context of the basic assumptions for the class. This is my attempt to accomplish that. Much of the material and slides are, as Eric put it, "blatantly stolen" from other people, including: Steve Hayes, Kelly Wilson, & Eric Fox. Your suggestions, comments, and criticisms are welcomed.

This is a PowerPoint file I used when teaching my Skinner's Behaviorism graduate course here at Western Michigan University. I used it at the end of the class when students' heads were swimming with words like ontology, epistemology, contextualism, truth criteria, theory, philosophy, etc. and wondering what the hell the purpose and relevance of it all was. :) It was sort of my attempt to summarize the role and importance of theory and philosophy in behavior analysis. I should note that this was presented at the end of the course, and summarizes key issues we had been discussing and reading about all semester. It is probably less effective as a first-time introduction to these topics. Much of the content of the slideshow is based on Steve Hayes's work, and some of the examples are blatantly stolen from lectures he gave in an applied research methods course I took with him at the University of Nevada. I'm a damn academic bandit. A pedagogical pilferer. A scholarly shoplifter. A pedantic plunderer. A person who needs to get more sleep before posting weird things to this website.