Sources for Skinner's pragmatic selectionism in 1945

Skinner's pragmatic selectionism shows up strongly in his 1945 publication, "The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms," in which he introduced a probabilistic three-term contingency for verbal behavior. This probabilism was accompanied by an expanded contextualism and an increased emphasis on consequences with a clear alignment to pragmatism. In total, these changes represent Skinner's most striking shift from mechanistic and necessitarian values to pragmatic selectionism, and these changes may be indebted more to the conceptual contributions of others than Skinner acknowledged. Before 1945, Skinner made at least some positive associations with the views of Watson, Russell, and Carnap. From 1945 and afterwards, he strongly disassociated his views on verbal behavior from theirs. Before 1945, Skinner did not associate his views with those of Darwin or Peirce. After 1945, he strongly associated his views with those of Darwin and Peirce (in one published interview). No sources for his pragmatic selectionism, however, were referred to in 1945.     

Some more similarities between Peirce and Skinner

C. S. Peirce is noted for pioneering a variety of views, and the case is made here for the similarities and parallels between his views and B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. In addition to parallels previously noted, these similarities include an advancement of experimental science, a behavioral psychology, a shift from nominalism to realism, an opposition to positivism, a selectionist account for strengthening behavior, the importance of a community of selves, a recursive approach to method, and the probabilistic nature of truth. Questions are raised as to the extent to which Skinner's radical behaviorism, as distinguished from his S-R positivism, may be seen as an extension of Peirce's pragmatism.     

Skinner on cognition

One of the most controversial, if not the most controversial, aspect of behaviorism is its claims (actual and putative) concerning cognition. Part of this controversy is caused by egregious exegetical errors on the part of Skinner's critics. Critics can then easily refute behaviorism by attributing these problematic claims to Skinner. This paper attempts to faithfully describe Skinner's claims regarding cognition. Skinner advances several arguments regarding the role of cognitions in human behavior and in the science of human behavior. We suggest that there are two distinct kinds of claims in this web: 1) claims regarding the proper relation between science and cognitions and 2) claims regarding the status of cognitions as natural events. Due to the multiplicity and interdependence of many of these arguments, it is best to view Skinner's position on cognition as consisting of a web of interdependent claims.     

Radical behaviorism and psychology's public: B. F. Skinner in the popular press, 1934-1990

B. F. Skinner is perhaps 2nd only to Freud among the most publicly identifiable psychological figures of the last century. This article reviews the popular press coverage of Skinner between 1934 and 1990 to examine how radical behaviorism was interpreted, portrayed, and received by psychology's public. Reactions to Skinner were often skeptical or condemnatory. It is suggested that some members of the public had difficulty accepting his views because of the disparities between the philosophy of radical behaviorism and the phenomenology of everyday experience. Furthermore, Skinner's status as a psychological expert was inextricably linked to the public's perception of his credibility not only as a scientist but also as a human being.     

B. F. Skinner and G. H. Mead: on biological science and social science.

Skinner's contributions to psychology provide a unique bridge between psychology conceptualized as a biological science and psychology conceptualized as a social science. Skinner focused on behavior as a naturally occurring biological phenomenon of interest in its own right, functionally related to surrounding events and, in particular (like phylogenesis), subject to selection by its consequences. This essentially biological orientation was further enhanced by Skinner's emphasis on the empirical foundations provided by laboratory-based experimental analyses of behavior, often with nonhuman subjects. Skinner's theoretical writings, however, also have affinity with the traditions of constructionist social science. The verbal behavior of humans is said to be subject, like other behavior, to functional analyses in terms of its environment, in this case its social context. Verbal behavior in turn makes it possible for us to relate to private events, a process that ultimately allows for the development of consciousness, which is thus said to be a social product. Such ideas make contact with aspects of G. H. Mead's social behaviorism and, perhaps of more contemporary impact in psychology, L. Vygotsky's general genetic law of cultural development. Failure to articulate both the biological and the social science aspects of Skinner's theoretical approach to psychology does a disservice to his unique contribution to a discipline that remains fragmented between two intellectual traditions.     

Needs (Murray, 1938) and state-variables (Skinner, 1938).

Skinner's concept of drive as a state-variable and his powerful rationale for introducing it agree closely with Murray's treatment of need. Operant behaviorists' usual deprecation of motivation in favor of stimulus control arises partly from features of parameters, insufficiently explored in some regions, of Skinner box research. For human adults on rich reinforcement schedules, response selection is chiefly controlled by the regnant motive. Skinner's life-long interest in inner events and translating psychodynamic concepts into behaviorese was obscured by his metalanguage philosophy of science (behaviorism).     

Why Skinner is difficult

Skinner's views are commonly misrepresented. One reason for this difficulty is that changes in the way that Skinner formulated his views occurred in a gradual evolution over time throughout Skinner's career, and the changes and their significance were not as conspicuously marked as they might have been. Among these changes were a movement from a two-term necessity to a three-term contingency; a movement from discriminative stimulus to setting as the first term in his three-term contingency; and a movement from determinism to random variation as a foundational principle in his selectionist behaviorism. When not seen in their historical development over time, a sample reading of Skinner's views may readily result in misleading or inaccurate interpretations, particularly in respect to his later work. Seen in historical context, however, the accounts that survived after the changes Skinner made are well integrated in a selectionist theory of behavior.     

Ernst Mach and B. F. Skinner: Their similarities with two traditions for verbal behavior

Ernst Mach is most closely associated with a positivism that demanded a language of close contact with reality. Mach linked this view with the tradition of the quest for an ideal language in which meaning is a property of a word. Logical positivism and the S-R psychology of the early B. F. Skinner also participated in this ideal-language positivism. In addition, Mach showed an affinity with another tradition-a pragmatic-selectionist tradition-although that tradition and Mach's similarities with it were not as well developed. Mach showed no difficulty in jointly maintaining both of these traditions although they have been regarded as deeply incompatible. When the later Skinner adopted a pragmatic selectionism for his later views on verbal behavior, he rejected his earlier views that were aligned with S-R psychology as well as with logical positivism and its sympathizers. Nevertheless, some statements consistent with "meaning is a property of a word" remained for some time in Skinner's writing.     

A day of great illumination: B. F. Skinner's discovery of shaping

Despite the seminal studies of response differentiation by the method of successive approximation detailed in chapter 8 of The Behavior of Organisms (1938), B. F. Skinner never actually shaped an operant response by hand until a memorable incident of startling serendipity on the top floor of a flour mill in Minneapolis in 1943. That occasion appears to have been a genuine eureka experience for Skinner, causing him to appreciate as never before the significance of reinforcement mediated by biological connections with the animate social environment, as opposed to purely mechanical connections with the inanimate physical environment. This insight stimulated him to coin a new term (shaping), and also led directly to a shift in his perspective on verbal behavior from an emphasis on antecedents and molecular topographical details to an emphasis on consequences and more molar, functional properties in which the social dyad inherent to the shaping process became the definitive property of verbal behavior. Moreover, the insight seems to have emboldened Skinner to explore the greater implications of his behaviorism for human behavior writ large, an enterprise that characterized the bulk of his post-World War II scholarship.     

From mechanistic to functional behaviorism.

A shift from mechanistic behaviorism to functional behaviorism is presented against the background of two historical traditions, one with an emphasis on form, the other with an emphasis on function. Skinner's work, which made more contributions to a functional behaviorism than to a mechanistic behaviorism, exemplifies this shift. The two traditions and an account of Skinner's development of functional relations are presented in order to show Skinner's contributions to aligning modern behavior analysis with the functional tradition.     

H. G. Wells and B. F. Skinner on the superorganism

In Skinner's Walden Two, the central character Frazier refers to the superorganism and how to build it, but without elaboration. An examination of some parallels between the work of H. G. Wells and B. F. Skinner, however, casts light on that reference and other aspects of Skinner's views, such as multiple selves. Both Wells and Skinner wrote in similar ways about what the composition of such a superorganism would be and the conditions for its development. In particular, attention is directed to the ways in which their forecasts of the conditions for producing the superorganism changed over time, from determinism-based conditions to more evolutionary or selection-based conditions.     

The ultimate challenge: prove B. F. Skinner wrong

For much of his career, B. F. Skinner displayed the optimism that is often attributed to behaviorists. With time, however, he became less and less sanguine about the power of behavior science to solve the major problems facing humanity. Near the end of his life he concluded that a fair consideration of principles revealed by the scientific analysis of behavior leads to pessimism about our species. In this article I discuss the case for Skinner's pessimism and suggest that the ultimate challenge for behavior analysts today is to prove Skinner wrong.     

On the origin and preservation of cumulative record in its struggle for life as a favored term

This paper offers a case study of the origins, emergence, and evolution of the term cumulative record as the name for the means by which B. F. Skinner brought his behavior under the control of his subject matter. Our methods included on-line searches, reviews of Skinner's publications, and journal codings and counts. The results reveal that the term is not originally attributable to Skinner, but emerged earlier in ordinary language and in another discipline--education. It was not even original to Skinner in print in his own science. Still, the term was once original to him, which we address with additional analyses of his having originated and advanced it. We conclude with a discussion the constraints of our methods, suggestions for future research, and the variable appreciation of technology and terminology in science studies.     

Quantitative order in B. F. Skinner's early research program, 1928-1931

The purpose of this article is to provide a coherent story of Skinner's graduate-school (1928-1931) research projects, adding to Skinner's own accounts a different emphasis and a number of interesting details. The story is guided by the proposal that a search for quantitative order was the "unifying force" amid the variety of apparatus changes and shifts of research topic in Skinner's early development as a researcher. Archival laboratory-research records from several apparatuses which Skinner constructed between 1928 and 1931 (1) indicate that his research program was more complicated than he has implied; (2) show that he worked on three interdependent lines of investigation simultaneously; (3) suggest that change or abandonment of an apparatus or a project was markedly affected by his success (and failure) in his primary objective, which was to find quantitative orderliness in measured behavior. Frequent apparatus change in the period of 1928 to 1930 ceased when he obtained quantitative orderliness in the panel-press and lever-box preparations. In the examination of archival records, questions about the enterprise of biographical understanding are considered.     

Is a new version of philosophical pragmatism necessary? A reply to Barnes-Holmes

Barnes-Holmes (2000) discussed certain issues regarding philosophy, pragmatism, and behavior analysis, and offered a "behavioral pragmatism" based on or derived from behavior-analytic perspectives. In a comparison of certain philosophical views, Quine's concept of observation sentences was employed for representing pragmatism, but this concept is not sufficiently representative of the literature of philosophical pragmatism to warrant the broad conclusions drawn by Barnes-Holmes. Further, although the extensive and diverse literature of philosophical pragmatism has been shown by a number of writers to have various themes and perspectives in common with Skinner's radical behaviorism, it is unnecessary to extract a limited, generic version of pragmatism because (a) the latter cannot match the range and depth of the various extant versions and (b) the problems raised by Barnes-Holmes in justification for the new version yield readily to the current versions in philosophy. A set of philosophical views may provide additional verbal support for a given system of science, and the science of behavior analysis may eventually contribute to philosophical discourse. The latter, however, will not be achieved by proposing new versions of old philosophy, but rather by approaching established philosophical issues in new ways.     

The enduring intellectual legacy of B. F. Skinner: A citation count from 1966-1989

It is frequently claimed that the influence of behaviorism in general and of B. F. Skinner in particular, is declining. Data obtained from the Social Sciences Citation Index for the years 1966-1989 document that in the last twenty-four years the number of citations to the works of Skinner has been reasonably steady. There is no evidence of a decline in the absolute number of such citations, suggesting that claims of the demise of behaviorism may be, once again, premature.     

B. F. SKINNER'S RADICAL BEHAVIORISM Historical Misconstructions and Grounds for Feminist Reconstructions

Feminist critiques of traditional psychological approaches have generated feminist revisions, most notably in psychoanalytic and develop mental theory. Although behaviorism has attracted strong objections from feminist critics, claims of its antithetical positioning vis-à-vis feminist theory construction have generally remained unchallenged. A preliminary step in formulating grounds for a synthesis is to clarify multiple meanings of behaviorism. Specifically, the fusion of Watson's methodological behaviorism and Skinner's radical behaviorism in the literature must be disentangled in order to address the latter's potential as a conceptual framework for constructing feminist theory. Key conceptual features of radical behaviorism that suggest its potential as a vehicle for building a feminist epistemology include: radical behaviorism's contextualistic world view, its interpretation of agency, its treatment of private experience and self knowledge, and its understanding of the pivotal functions of the verbal community.     

B. F. Skinner's technology of behavior in American life: from consumer culture to counterculture

From the 1940s through the 1970s, articles in popular magazines and newspapers presented B. F. Skinner in a wide array of guises, from educational revolutionary and utopian to totalitarian and fascist. Understanding these diverse, and often contradictory, portrayals requires a consideration of the social and political discourses in which they were embedded. In this paper, I suggest that reports of Skinner's work were influenced by a number of cultural categories, from the better living campaign of the 1950s, to the counterculture crusade of the late 1960s. Through this examination, a multifaceted rendering of Skinner's public image that takes into account the nature of his work, the context in which it was produced, and the culture in which it was received is revealed. I propose that the received view of Skinner as maligned behaviorist actually obscures the complexity of his relationship with psychology's public throughout this period.