B.F. SKINNER AND THE GRAND INQUISITOR

Abstract. B.F. Skinner allures us with the possibilities of turning the stones of materialistic rewards into the bread of human values. He tempts us by assuring success in achieving our goals through behavioral science, if only we give up our autonomy. He offers the power of complete control over our behaviors, on condition that we relinquish responsibility for our lives to a technological elite. Is B. F. Skinner a flesh-and-blood Grand Inquisitor? This essay tries to persuade the reader that Skinner's offers are worth considering.     

Profiles of meaning and search for meaning among prisoners

Meaning in life and searching for meaning are central in how people organize their lives and deal with various challenges during them. Studies on meaning and the search for meaning among prisoners are virtually nonexistent. Based on the presence of meaning in their lives and on their search for meaning, we discovered four different profiles in a sample of 365 prisoners: High Presence High Search, High Presence Low Search, Low Presence High Search, and Low Presence Low Search. Compared to prisoners with low meaning profiles, those whose profiles were marked by higher levels of meaning displayed less distress, more positive world assumptions, and higher levels of self-worth. They also show more empathy for others. Older prisoners and prisoners who were sexually abused during childhood were more represented in the profile that was marked by extremely low levels of meaning and low levels of search for meaning.     

Traditional Beliefs Concerning Health and Illness Among Members of the Circassian Community in Israel

Objective: To understand the cultural context of illness in a homogeneous ethnic community, the Circassians. This is the first study of health perceptions and beliefs among Circassians. The Circassians arrived in Palestine from the Caucasus Mountain region more than a century ago. They constitute an endogamous group, whose members live in relative cultural isolation in two small villages in northern Israel, preserving their language and traditions. Design: Twenty-one elderly community members (men and women) were interviewed using open-ended interviews. Results: It was found that kutze (internal bodily resilience) is the central health-related concept and as such constitutes the main building block of a healthy and resilient community. Conclusions: By focusing on this specific community, the relationships between health beliefs and social organization were explored. Our findings highlight the need for the development of treatment approaches and/or health education that are deeply embedded in the cultural context, with special emphasis on the group's value infrastructure, life habits and health-related beliefs when studying various ethnic populations.     

WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE PHILOSOPHICALLY: OR,HOW TO PROGRESS IN THE ART OF LIVING

This essay presents an account of what it takes to live a philosophical way of life: practitioners must be committed to a worldview, structure their lives around it, and engage in truth-directed practices. Contra John Cooper, it does not require that one’s life be solely guided by reason. Religious or tradition-based ways of life count as truth directed as long as their practices are reasons responsive and would be truth directed if the claims made by their way of life are correct. The essay argues that these three conditions can be met by progressors as well as sages. Making progress in how one acts in the world, and improving one’s understanding and direction through being part of a community is living a philosophical way of life. The offered view acknowledges more ways to develop the art of living and enables a broader range of people to count as living philosophically.     

Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus

Epicurus was a philosopher who lived in Greece in the 3rd century B.C. Like his contemporaries, he was much concerned with the question of how to live a good life. In his view the Chief Good is to decrease pain and increase pleasure. Though Epicurus is reputed for advocating the pursuit of refined sensorial pleasures, he recognized the need for deferring gratification or enduring pain. He advised his followers to lead a modest and contemplative life in friendly communities. His advice can be characterized as ‘serene hedonism’. This paper explains that position and considers its applicability for the present day. It concludes that Epicureanism was quite accurate in describing the conditions of happiness and that he offered valuable guidelines in dealing with hardship and difficult emotional content. His ideas that happiness is the same as the absence of pain and that one should withdraw from society are less fortunate. It made him assume that happiness automatically follows if one is in the right state of mind, and that there is no need to actively seek interaction with the environment for the betterment of the circumstances of life. However, Epicurus’ advice might have been a good option for his contemporaries given the societal turmoil in his times.

Revising Republican Liberty: What is the Difference Between a Disinterested Gentle Giant and a Deterred Criminal?

This paper assesses the most well thought out contemporary conception of republican liberty put forward by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. I demonstrate that it is incoherent: at least insofar as it seeks to pick out a form of unfreedom not captured by the negative conception of liberty. This incoherence arises because Pettit and Skinner cannot both hold that republican unfreedom is defined by one agent’s mere capacity to interfere arbitrarily with another agent and, at the same time, claim that republican freedom can be promoted by deterrence mechanisms. My contribution to contemporary republican theory is to suggest that a coherent republican conception can be achieved, however, through an important revision. This is to replace Pettit and Skinner’s antonym of republican liberty—the power to interfere arbitrarily—with a higher order power—the power to determine arbitrarily rules with respect to interference. This revised conception does pick out a genuinely distinct extension of unfreedom from the negative liberty conception. I believe it also reflects an important intuitive sense in which we may understand ourselves to be unfree, that is, to live under the rule of another.     

Is Living Longer Living Better?

abstract Some day, perhaps soon, we may have genetic enhancements enabling us to conquer aging. Should we do so, if we can? I believe the topic is both interesting and important, and that it behoves us to think about it. Doing so may yield important insights about what we do care about, what we should care about, and how we should seek to live our lives, both individually and collectively. My central question is this: Is living longer, living better? My paper does not offer a sustained argument for a single, considered, thesis. Rather, it offers a number of snippets of often‐unconnected thoughts relevant to the issues my question raises. The paper contains seven sections. Part one is introductory. Part two comments on some current longevity research. Part three indicates the attitudes towards death and science with which I approach these questions. Parts four and five, respectively, discuss some worries about immortality raised by Leon Kass and Bernard Williams. Part six points to some practical, social, and moral concerns that might arise if society's members lived super long lives. Part seven concludes by suggesting that we should favour living well over living longer, and ongoing reproduction over immortality; correspondingly, I suggest that we should think long and hard before proceeding with certain lines of longevity research.     

SKINNER AS MISSIONARY AND PROPHET: A REVIEW OF BURRHUS F. SKINNER: SHAPER OF BEHAVIOUR

Do we need another book about B. F. Skinner? According to Frederick Toates, the answer is “yes” because “there is still much to be said” (p. vii) about Skinner. In his recent biography, Burrhus F. Skinner: Shaper of Behaviour (2009), Toates attempts to integrate Skinner into the mainstream of psychology by showing areas of commonality between Skinner''s radical behaviorism and subdisciplines within psychology such as cognitive, social, and biological psychology. Admirably, although in some instances understandably naively, Toates attempts to demonstrate the power of positive reinforcement to explain myriad complex behaviors, including a fairly lengthy interpretation of religious behavior. In addition, Toates credits Skinner for being ahead of his time on both social and environmental issues. Toates falters, however, in his insistence that behavior analysis still needs and can benefit from cognitive concepts. He nevertheless provides an otherwise objective and sympathetic view of Skinner the person and the behavioral science he helped to create in a book that should be informative for both behavior analysts and those outside the field.     

Socratic Questioning in Alien Landscapes?

This commentary considers the role of Socratic questioning in Alien Landscapes? I discuss the three roles that Glover sees Socratic questioning playing in psychiatry: 1. Questioning to clarify problems, 2. Questioning to treat symptoms, 3. Questioning to reconstruct lives. Although I am broadly sympathetic to the idea that philosophical conversations can help us conceptualise, and deal with, mental distress, I raise two concerns. First, is there any way of providing courses of transformative Socratic questioning cheaply (e.g. through manualisation)? Second, how close is the connection between helping individuals to develop systems of belief and value that fit epistemic norms and helping them to live flourishing lives?     

Supportive Social Contexts and Intentions for Civic and Political Participation: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

We investigated how general social support from family, friends and acquaintances, and community predicted intentions for civic (e.g. volunteering) and political (e.g. petitioning) participation via the constructs specified in the theory of planned behaviour. Participants were young adults living in the former East Germany, a post‐communist region, who were surveyed by telephone in 2010 (N_civic = 695, N_political = 694). Civic participation was perceived more favourably than political participation. Supportive family predicted intentions for civic participation; supportive community services predicted both types of intentions; and supportive friends and acquaintances had no significant effects. The mediating variables were subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, but not attitudes. All effects were controlled for sociodemographic variables, richness of the social network, and past experience of civic and political participation. Findings underscore the role of supportive community in fostering both civic and political participation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Religious Activity Distinguish the Mortality Experiences of Older Taiwanese? An Analysis Using Eighteen Years of Follow-Up Data

This paper extends investigation of religiosity and longevity to Taiwan using a 1989 survey: N = 3849, aged 60+, with 18 years of follow-up. Religious activity is measured as worship and performance of rituals. A Gompertz regression, adjusted and non-adjusted for covariates and mediating factors, shows the hazard of dying is lower for the religiously active versus the non-active. Transformed into life table functions, a 60-year-old religiously active Taiwanese female lives more than 1 year longer than her non-religious counterpart, ceteris paribus. Mainland Chinese migrants are examined carefully because of unique religious and health characteristics. They live longer, but the religiosity gap is similar.

     

Methods of materiality: participant observation and qualitative research in psychology

This article challenges the hegemonic status of “language” as the primary substance of qualitative research in psychology, whether through interviews or recordings of naturally occurring talk. It thereby questions the overt focus on analyzing linguistic “meaning.” Instead, it is suggested that researchers should start paying attention to the material world (consisting of both human bodies and material objects) and what it means for how people live their lives. It is argued that this can be done by incorporating the concept of material presence to capture embodied and material layers of existence, and the method of participant observation is suggested as a viable approach to achieve this end. An empirical example of how authority is produced in a parent-teacher conference, not only through language but also through material objects and embodied being, is then presented. The article concludes by suggesting practical guidelines for incorporating attention to materiality in qualitative research.     

B.F. Skinner:

Skinner's non-intuitive discovery in the 1930s that response probability can be a function of not only temporal contiguity but also past consequences sparked fifty years of reaction ranging from high praise to scathing criticism and misunderstanding. Failures to distinguish between the work of Skinner and Pavlov and Watson account for some of the misunderstandings. Other criticisms stem from basic value differences. Whereas Skinner's scientific interest is in behavior per se, other psychologist are curious about inner processes. While Skinners' truth criterion is pragmatic, other psychologists hold correspondence theories of truth. Whereas Skinner is convinced that hypothetical constructs hinder scientific discovery, other psychologists are equally certain that they are essential. Skinner's eschewal of hypothetical constructs, however, has not prevented him form addressing complex behavior, as is widely believed. To the contrary, Skinner has formulated enough unexplored theories on the origin and maintenance of verbal behavior, concept development, problem solving, and creativity to keep theoreticians and empiricists occupied for decades.     

Jacques Loeb, B. F. Skinner, and the legacy of prediction and control

The biologist Jacques Loeb is an important figure in the history of behavior analysis. Between 1890 and 1915, Loeb championed an approach to experimental biology that would later exert substantial influence on the work of B. F. Skinner and behavior analysis. This paper examines some of these sources of influence, with a particular emphasis on Loeb's firm commitment to prediction and control as fundamental goals of an experimental life science, and how these goals were extended and broadened by Skinner. Both Loeb and Skinner adopted a pragmatic approach to science that put practical control of their subject matter above formal theory testing, both based their research programs on analyses of reproducible units involving the intact organism, and both strongly endorsed technological applications of basic laboratory science. For Loeb, but especially for Skinner, control came to mean something more than mere experimental or technological control for its own sake; it became synonomous with scientific understanding. This view follows from (a) the successful working model of science Loeb and Skinner inherited from Ernst Mach, in which science is viewed as human social activity, and effective practical action is taken as the basis of scientific knowledge, and (b) Skinner's analysis of scientific activity, situated in the world of direct experience and related to practices arranged by scientific verbal communities. From this perspective, prediction and control are human acts that arise from and are maintained by social circumstances in which such acts meet with effective consequences.     

Should We Be Talking About Ethics or About Morals?

This article seeks to revisit the distinction between the words ethics and morals. First, we understand the word ethics to be focused on the way we seek to live our own life, and hence to connote a relativistic and essentially subjective perspective, whereas we understand the word morals to be focused on the way we should live our lives together, especially through sensitivity to viewpoints other than our own. Second, we perceive a usefulness in such a differentiation when the ethical values of those in a dilemmatic situation are conflicted in order to prioritize moral decision making in contemporary society. We argue that in our current era, characterized by a multiplicity of faiths and by pronounced value pluralism, a philosophical basis for moral decision making needs to be clearly attuned with intersubjectivity and interconnectivity among people. It should be able to determine principles of conduct toward others, no matter how one’s own ethical values, conceptions of the good, or life choices might differ from those of others. To do this, we relocate ethical decision making away from an essentially monological reflection on our own values and purposes into a social space wherein we have an inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue.     

Learning to Juggle—the experience of Muslim and Sikh children coping with different value systems

J. Mezzirow (cited in Whitaker, 1995, p. 1) describes learning as a process of adjusting and acclimatising to the world. He sees it as ‘the means by which people come to perceive, interpret, criticise and transform the worlds in which they live’. For the Muslim and Sikh children in this case study the worlds they live in are very different, often presenting conflicting values and ideas. When talking about their lives there is an acute sense of this—the children's learning and development involves a realisation that they must develop their skill of juggling, and they must develop it quickly.

The values which these children juggle with come from three distinct areas of their lives; the home, the community and the school. To a lesser degree the wider world also breaks in, becoming more influential as the children get older. Initially I should like to introduce you to the school and to how our information was collected. I make no apology for quoting the children and staff at length throughout as their comments can convey far more clearly both the issues they raised and the points I wish to make in this article.     

I. Kant after Virtue 1

Maclntyre's refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics aims to restore both intelligibility and rationality to moral discourse. In After Virtue he concentrates on showing how intelligible action requires that lives be led within institutional and cultural traditions. But he does not offer a developed account of practical reason which could provide grounds for seeking some rather than other intelligible continuations of lives and traditions. Despite Maclntyre's criticisms of Kant's ethics, a Kantian account of practical reasoning may complement his account of intelligibility. An appropriate interpretation of Kantian ethics is outlined, which escapes Maclntyre's criticisms, allows both for the universal character of basic moral principles and for the historical variability of intelligible action, and which makes moral worth or virtue the centre of the moral life. The refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics may be achieved by a Kantian completion.     

Trauma-Worlds and the Wisdom of Marion Woodman

Growing up traumatized means that survival systems are activated in both our minds and bodies. As a result, our lives become rooted in a different biological and psychological reality. I've called this parallel reality a “trauma-world.” At its core are fearfulness, disconnection, and shame. If a trauma-world is formed during childhood, it becomes our normality, whereupon we are unconscious of its impact on our lives. However, without consciousness, healing is impossible.

?Marion Woodman articulated the dynamics of trauma in a visceral and potent way, helping to bring trauma-worlds into consciousness. As importantly, together with dance educator Mary Hamilton and voice coach Ann Skinner, Woodman developed BodySoul Rhythms®, an embodied, creative, and integrative approach that can make a powerful contribution to healing.     

‘Just Because I Can't Remember …’ Religiousness in Older People with Dementia

SUMMARY

This paper reports part of a pilot study that used spiritual reminiscence techniques to explore issues of religiosity, church attendance and meaning in life of a group of older people with dementia. The study used small groups, individual interviews and participant observation to examine the experience of dementia and the search for meaning used by people with dementia. There were 22 participants from three aged care facilities involved in the project. The majority of participants had been long-term church attendees and could describe how their religion and relationship with God had impacted on their lives. They had few fears for the future and derived considerable meaning in life from their relationships with family. Participants were able to describe early memories and also remember things happening recently in their aged care facility. This would seem to be the opposite of community expectations (and sometimes staff expectations) of older people with dementia.