Causality and Contingency: Some Conceptual Considerations

The logical features of causality (necessary connection, succession, and contiguity) are examined in regard to respondent and operant behaviors. It is emphasized that operant behavior as emitted behavior breaks with any criterion of precedent causality. It is examined how Skinner tried to approach causality as functional relation, without overcoming a pure phenomenological analysis. The category of contingency is submitted to a conceptual analysis, and its application to superstition, respondent and operant conditioning is critically reviewed. A reinterpretation of contingency as conditionality is proposed, and the analysis of the organization of behavior is advocated in terms of interdependent functional and occurrence contingencies.