Behavior therapy has sustained to build up and develop since those early days, and this paper both reflects as well as encourages this growth. A most prominent progress has been the center of attention on cognitive mechanisms as well as interventions.
It is widely agreed and well established that behavior therapists are responsible for what they do in. For example, they are held accountable for the choice of treatment, for monitoring the progress of the client, for not violating the rights of the client, and so on. It is widely conceded that the therapist's values enter into the process of therapy both with regard to the goals chosen and to the means or techniques employed. But if this is so, then the therapist must be able to justify these value judgments (O'Connor, 1992).
ETHICAL RELATIVISM, SUBJECTIVISM, AND SKEPTICISM
Three ethical views, widely held by behavior therapists, concern the logical and epistemic standing of moral concepts and moral reasoning: ethical subjectivism, ethical skepticism, and ethical relativism.
Meta-Ethical Subjectivism
Many behavior therapists and psychologists, including many individuals at odds with behaviorism, appear to believe in meta-ethical subjectivism. This view has been expressed in several ways, as the thesis that values are just feelings, personal biases, and personal preferences; values are selected or chosen; value judgments are acts of commitment, analogous to religious conversion involving faith; value judgments are arbitrary, not objective; and so forth. Although these various views are expressed in different terms, they express a common underlying point of view: meta-ethical subjectivism (Merinder, 2000).
There are two forms of meta-ethical subjectivism. First, ethical statements are true or false and are reports of one's feelings (emotions) or beliefs. Second, ethical statements are neither true nor false and are not really propositions at all; they are the very expression of one's emotions, feelings, or attitudes-emotivism.......
