Hi TOK List,

Back in October I submitted the attached manuscript, Intersubjective Mental Behaviorism to the journal Behavior and Philosophy. I had shared it on the list previously. I learned today it was strongly rejected. Attached are the reviews, which I share to give folks a flavor of how many scholars react to the vision.

Here are some interesting quotes:

Reviewer #1
I dislike this manuscript intensely and I excoriate it page by page below. … If he meant to write for a preteen audience he submitted to the wrong journal.

Review #2

The only thing that one can be sure of in the end is that the much ballyhooed ToK scheme depicts science as a hierarchy of organizational levels, like numerous other similar schemas—e.g., that of EO Wilson, or, to mention the first one, that of Augusta Comte. In short, the piece is neither penetrating nor original. So, I do not recommend publication.

Reviewer #3

The absence of all this (background review) from the manuscript suggests a lack of awareness on the author’s part about a very extensive, rich research field that bears directly on his ideas but makes them pale in scope, rigor, technical detail, and erudition. The vastness of this field makes this manuscript look superficial and naive.

To the doctoral students on this list, I share this to let you know the review game can be pretty brutal.

To the general list, I think this provides a good prompt for thinking about justification systems and the academy.

Welcome thoughts and feedback if anyone has them.

Best,

Gregg

From: José E. Burgos [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 4:49 PM
To: Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Editorial Decision on Ms B&P-10-17-2017

Dear Dr. Henriques,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled "Intersubjective Mental Behaviorism: Using the Tree of Knowledge System to Develop a Holistic philosophy" to Behavior and Philosophy. I now have three reviews of your manuscript. I apologize for the unusually long review process. A reviewer failed to come through late in the process, forcing me to seek a new reviewer. My sincerest and deepest apologies for this. As you will see, the three reviews were negative and recommend rejection. After carefully reading the manuscript myself, I must agree with them. The overall criticism is that your general ToK proposal is not novel (see Reviewer 3's very compelling point that you make no reference whatsoever to the very extensive but directly relevant specialized literature on complexity theory, rendering your manuscript deeply uninformed and out of touch with that field). Your more specific proposal of ISMB is behavioristic in a sui generis sense that does not correspond to that in which Skinnerian behaviorism is behavioristic. Moreover, ISMB relies on using the term "behavior" as synonymous with "functioning," as a foundation for your proposal. Such a semantic foundation, however, seems rather weak.

I am sorry that the news are not better, and I hope that this outcome does not prevent you from submitting future work to our journal.

Sincerely,

José E. Burgos

Editor