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Functional Contextualism as the Philosophical Root of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Functional Contextualism has been popularized recently because it is the philosophy of science on the root of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. However, few texts have described FC in detail, leading to multiple misunderstandings. Accordingly, this article aims to present FC and respond to some of the misunderstandings typically seen on this topic. FC is presented as an extension and evolution of Skinner’s radical behaviorism when seen as a contextual and pragmatic philosophy of the science of behavior. In so doing, we briefly describe the evolution of behaviorism and distinguish radical behaviorism from other types of behaviorism. We emphasize Skinner’s contextual and pragmatic thinking but also indicate that his philosophical standpoint evolved over time, which was associated with some inconsistencies in his position. This led to the coexistence of mechanistic and contextual views of behavior analysis. Precisely, FC originated as an attempt to describe the contextual and pragmatic Skinnerian thinking based on the world hypotheses suggested by Stephen Pepper. We describe the four scientifically valid world hypotheses and present contextualism in detail. FC is a form of contextualism whose pre-analytic objectives are to predict and influence psychological events with precision, scope, and depth. Lastly, we discuss some of the misunderstandings regarding FC that are typically seen in texts, conferences, trainings, and social media
