Things also happen of which we are not centrally conscious at all--things, for example, to which we are paying no attention. They yet have their effect. Can likes and dislikes perform their functions, then, without our knowing anything about it? I am for the moment quite willing to admit it--in the case of Dr. Watson. For all I know to the contrary, he may never be conscious. He would not be the first epistemologist who has made such a claim. But he does not claim just this. The behaviorist finds no consciousness “in his laboratories,” none “in his subjects.” He implies that _I_ am never conscious, and there I know he is wrong. Now since consciousness exists, in me at least (the reader must speak for himself), it probably has a function. So far as I am concerned, it is the one important--the only important--thing in life. Why, then, try to leave it out of the explanation of Albert’s acquired dislike for rats? It might have been well enough to leave it out of the description of Albert’s behavior. If behaviorism were merely what its name implies, the detailed study of the way people other than the observer behave, it might be useful and certainly would not be ridiculous. But it seeks to be psychology and philosophy as well. It assumes, as we soon shall see, to instruct us in ethics and to overthrow religion. It fancies that it has deprived us of will. Your consciousness and mine are of course two different phenomena, severed by the gulf which yawns between _meum_ and _tuum_. I do not know that you are aware in the same way that I know that I myself am aware. I merely assume that you are. You look much like me. You behave much as I do. Therefore, as an act of courtesy, I grant that you are probably sentient and know what you are about--for the simple reason that I feel sure that I am sentient and know what I am about. But all I am positively and subjectively certain of, as to you, is what I observe you to do. This observation may be extended, with your permission, to your insides. I may insert tubes which tap your glands. I may induce you to swallow rubber balloons, which I then fill with hot water (an experiment mentioned by Dr. Watson), and note the resultant reactions upon your muscles, smooth and striped. Still, all I know about you is what strikes my senses, which in the last analysis resolves itself into motions, large or small, of your body and members. The behaviorist’s contention that an individual is merely the sum of his acts fits you well enough from my point of view. Were I not conscious myself, I would never even dream that you are conscious. If I did not reason, I would not be wise enough to suppose that you do. Did I not feel emotion, pleasure, and pain, I would be the last person to accuse you of feeling them.