Re-Charting Tolman's Cognitive Maps

Abstract Philosophers and psychologists acclaim Edward C. Tolman's “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men” as an early, transformative instance of representationalist explanation. The article is said to mark a move by Tolman to renounce his behaviorism and to herald a new, cognitivist psychology. I argue, opposingly, that framing the text with reference to later psychology badly distorts its meaning. The text is better understood with respect to the contexts of its age and deeper currents in the history of psychology. Tolman is not upturning behaviorism; he is re-litigating an intramural debate between behaviorists pertaining to the place of physiology in psychology.