Ivan Pavlov’s conditioned reflexes and Ivane Beritashvili’s doctrine of image-driven behavior: Materialism, myth, and politics

Ivane Beritashvili has been regarded as an "anti-Pavlovian" for nearly a century. One respect in which Beritashvili is said to be anti-Pavlovian is in granting an explanatory role to subjective mental states in his doctrine of image-driven behavior. In this article, I aim to problematize the anti-Pavlovian assessment and argue that Beritashvili did not deviate from Pavlovian scientific norms, minor points of theoretical and methodological differences between them notwithstanding. Furthermore, several respects in which Beritashvili is claimed to be anti-Pavlovian are ways in which he resembles Pavlov. Turning my attention to Beritashvili's critics in the Soviet Union, those responsible for his censure, I argue that it is the critique of Beritashvili that runs counter to the norms Pavlov embraced. I contest the claim that his alleged deviations from Pavlovian orthodoxy justify classification as anti-Pavlovian in a sense that is either historically accurate or philosophically interesting, and submit that the grounds on which Beritashvili is derided as anti-Pavlovian would also justify labeling Pavlov himself as anti-Pavlovian. Informed by the case of Beritashvili and others who were politically persecuted for their scientific work in the Soviet Union, I conclude with reflections on science, politics, and the intrusion of the latter in the former.