Toward a Spinozistic modification of skinner's theory of man

B. F. Skinner argues in Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York 1971) that only his theory of man is compatible with a ‘scientific’ approach to human behavior. I argue that Skinner's entirely open‐ended view of man is inadequate for his own purposes in that it leaves no room for the claim that certain value judgments are universally valid, something I argue Skinner is committed to despite an explicit avowal in one place of cultural relativism. I then go on to show that a modification of Skinner's theory of man which builds on Spinoza's notion of conatus would provide one with a theory‐based rationale for universally valid judgments without involving one in a ‘non‐scientific’ approach to human behavior. Specifically, I argue that such a Spinozistic modification would provide one with a theory‐based guarantee that man will not evolve in such a way that a truly scientific observer would deem a totalitarian state good.     

Ships That Pass In The Night.

A major source of tension between Staddon's The new behaviorism and Baum's Review is that the former was written for a general audience but the latter evaluates it as a technical work. Be that as it may, the central issue—Skinner's conception of the role of theory in behavior analysis—is inadequately portrayed in both the book and the review. The two primary sources of difficulty arise from failures to honor Skinner's distinction between experimental analysis and interpretation and to appreciate Skinner's views on events that are not observable at the behavioral scale of measurement.     

TAKING PRAGMATISM SERIOUSLY: A REVIEW OF WILLIAM BAUM'S UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIORISM: BEHAVIOR,CULTURE, AND EVOLUTION (SECOND EDITION)

This important book has two main purposes. The first is to present, in a non‐technical way, accessible to intelligent laypeople, a scientific, behavioral approach to all aspects of human activity including choice, rule‐governed behavior, self control, religious belief, linguistic interaction, ethics, and culture. Its scope equals that of Skinner's nontechnical writings, but Baum's approach is more molar and more pragmatic than Skinner's. The book's second purpose is to embed behavioral science firmly in the context of Darwinian evolution. Baum is generally successful, we believe, in both of these ambitious purposes.     

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: PAST,PRESENT, AND FUTURE. A REVIEW OF HARRY HEFT'S ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEXT

Relations between behavior analysis and ecological psychology have been strained for years, notwithstanding the occasional comment on their affinities. Harry Heft's (2001) Ecological Psychology in Context provides an occasion for reviewing anew those relations and affinities. It describes the genesis of ecological psychology in James's radical empiricism; addresses Holt's neorealism and Gestalt psychology; and synthesizes Gibson's ecological psychology and Barker's ecobehavioral science as a means for understanding everyday human behavior. Although behavior analysis is excluded from this account, Heft's book warrants a review nonetheless: It describes ecological psychology in ways that are congruent and complementary with behavior analysis (e.g., nonmediational theorizing; the provinces of natural history and natural science). After introducing modern ecological psychology, I comment on (a) Heft's admirable, albeit selective, historiography; (b) his ecological psychology—past and present—as it relates to Skinner's science and system (e.g., affordances, molar behavior); (c) his misunderstandings of Skinner's behaviorism (e.g., reductionistic, mechanistic, molecular); and (d) the theoretical status of Heft's cognitive terms and talk (i.e., in ontology, epistemology, syntax). I conclude by considering the alliance and integration of ecological psychology and behavior analysis, and their implications for unifying and transforming psychology as a life science, albeit more for the future than at present.     

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.     

I. Epistemological relativism in its latest form

Gerald Doppelt's recent ‘Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism: An Interpretation and Defense’ (Inquiry, Vol. 21 [1978], pp. 33–86) offers a reconstruction of Thomas Kuhn's views concerning theory choice in science in which Kuhn's ‘incommensurability thesis’, and his epistemological relativism, are defended. It is argued that Doppelt's reconstruction fails to provide an adequate defense, and that both Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, and his epistemological relativism, as reconstructed by Doppelt, remain philosophically unacceptable.     

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.     

Pavlov And Skinner: Two Lives In Science (An Introduction To B. F. Skinner's "Some Responses To The Stimulus 'Pavlov' ")

The sesquicentennial of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's birth in September 1999 is being celebrated in Russia by a special issue of the Russian Journal of Physiology (the former I. M. Sechenov Physiological Journal, founded by Pavlov in 1917). The following article and the address by Skinner that it introduces are scheduled to appear in Russian translation in that special issue. Skinner's “Some Responses to the Stimulus ‘Pavlov’” was his presidential address to the Pavlovian Society of North America in 1966. The following article provides the context for Skinner's address by describing some ways in which Pavlov's research influenced Skinner's contributions.     

CULTURE AND HISTORY: ESSENTIAL PARTNERS IN THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Abstract. In this essay I respond to John Caiazza's claim for the primacy of what he calls techno‐secularism for understanding twentieth‐century history. Using the examples of the Taiping Rebellion in nineteenth‐century China and Zionism in twentieth‐century Europe, I argue that the range of Caiazza's schema is confined solely to the Protestant West with little applicability to other national histories. I argue further for the lack of clarity and therefore the uselessness of the dichotomy of the secular and the religious for understanding human history. I claim instead that, while the category of technology and the institutions of religion are important determiners in human history, they need to be subsumed, without special status, within a broader set of interrelated factors called “culture.” I appeal for the academic study of science and religion to give primacy for the near future to the history of science and religion over both theology and science.     

MAN OF SCIENCE,MAN OF FAITH: PIERRE DUHEM'S “PHYSIQUE DE CROYANT”

The essay “Physique de croyant” is an important statement of Pierre Duhem's position on the relation between his science and his religion. Duhem trod a difficult path, some might say an impossible one, in Republican France because he was both a physicist and a devout Catholic. In this essay, using “Physique de croyant” as a touchstone, I explore the way in which he tried to reconcile his conflicting allegiances. There are several strands in Duhem's strategy that need to be teased out. First, Duhem sought to defend his science against the charge that it was materialist and atheist. He did this with his claim, usually called the autonomy thesis, that physics and metaphysics are fundamentally different enterprises—that physics, properly conducted, has no metaphysical implications and requires no metaphysical support. This did not deny metaphysics its rightful territory. Second, Duhem used his segregationist position to defend the Roman Catholic Church against the assaults of the positivist scientism then in favor with the Republicans. Third, he also sought to protect his science against fellow Catholics who wanted to use it for polemical purposes. I develop and evaluate these lines of defense.     

REALISM WITHOUT TRUTH: A REVIEW OF GIERE'S SCIENCE WITHOUT LAWS AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVISM

An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is that of science as action—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially‐coordinated communities. Scientists are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme, the science‐as‐social‐process view can be taken to imply that science is no different from any other human activity, and therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding science that finds a middle ground between these extremes. He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical context, and that scientific models are constructions designed and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however, scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position, perspectival realism, shares important common ground with Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should be brought to bear on the process of science. The two approaches offer different but complementary perspectives on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a comprehensive understanding of science.     

Data In Search Of A Principle: A Review Of Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Count Of Human Language And Cognition.

Responding to derived relations among stimuli and events is the subject of an accelerating research program that represents one of the major behavior analytic approaches to complex behavior. Relational Frame Theory: A Post‐Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition (Hayes, Barnes‐Holmes, & Roche, 2001) offers a conceptual framework for this work and explores its implications for verbal behavior and a variety of other domains of complex human behavior. The authors dismiss Skinner's interpretation of verbal behavior as unproductive and conceptually flawed and suggest a new definition and a new paradigm for the investigation of verbal phenomena. I found the empirical phenomena important but the conceptual discussion incomplete. A new principle of behavior is promised, but critical features of this principle are not offered. In the absence of an explicit principle, the theory itself is difficult to evaluate. Counterexamples suggest a role for mediating behavior, perhaps covert, thus raising the question whether a new principle is needed at all. The performance of subjects in relational frame experiments may be a mosaic of elementary behavioral units, some of which are verbal. If so, verbal behavior underlies relational behavior; it is not defined by it. I defend Skinner's definition of verbal behavior and argue that an account of relational behavior must be integrated with Skinner's analysis; it will not replace it.     

Comments on the Sacred,the Search for Significance,and Means/End Relationships

This is a comment on Pargament's article Of Means and Ends: Religion and the Search for Significance. It is based on a long collaboration with Pargament. Agreement is expressed with the central thesis, namely that psychology has long struggled with whether it shall be concerned with facts or values. The psychology of religion clearly reflects this debate. The difference between science and religion needs to be understood for the psychology of religion to fully develop. Pargament's interest in studying ways in which people appropriate religion is affirmed. The search for significance as an overarching value is seen to be the central focus of life to which religion addresses itself. It is clear that both the use of religion by persons and the study of that use are grounded in value judgments. Means and ends do not exist apart from one another.     

BETWEEN THE OLD METAPHYSICS AND THE NEW EMPIRICISM: COLLINGWOOD'S DEFENCE OF THE AUTONOMY OF PHILOSOPHY

Collingwood has failed to make a significant impact in the history of twentieth century philosophy either because he has been dismissed as a dusty old idealist committed to the very metaphysics the analytical school was trying to leave behind, or because his later work has been interpreted as advocating the dissolution of philosophy into history. I argue that Collingwood's key philosophical works are a sustained attempt to defend the view that philosophy is an autonomous discipline with a distinctive domain of inquiry and that Collingwood's attempt to defend the autonomy of philosophy is intimately connected to his defence of intensional notions against the kind of meaning scepticism which came to prevail from the 1920s. I defend the philosophical claim that there is a third way between the idealist metaphysics with which Collingwood is often associated and the neo‐empiricist agenda which characterised analytic philosophy in mid‐century by defending the hermeneutic thesis that Collingwood's work is a sustained attempt to articulate a conception of philosophy as an epistemologically first science. Since there is a via media between the old metaphysics and the new empiricism there is no need to choose between a certain kind of armchair metaphysics and a scientifically informed ontology.     

The Influence of Bloomfield's Linguistics on Skinner

Bloomfield''s “Linguistics as a Science” (1930/1970), Language (1933/1961), and “Language or Ideas?” (1936a/1970), and Skinner''s Verbal Behavior (1957) and Science and Human Behavior (1953) were analyzed in regard to their respective perspectives on science and scientific method, the verbal episode, meaning, and subject matter. Similarities between the two authors were found. In particular both asserted that (a) the study of language must be carried out through the methods of science; (b) the main function of language is to produce practical effects on the world through the mediation of a listener; and (c) a physicalist conception of meaning. Their differences concern the subject matter of their disciplines and their use of different models for the analysis of behavior. Bloomfield''s linguistics and Skinner''s functional analysis of verbal behavior are complementary approaches to language.     

Relational Desires and Empirical Evidence against Psychological Egoism

Abstract: Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person's intentional actions are ultimately self‐interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some people's intentional actions are ultimately other‐regarding in some sense. C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists have argued that there are experiments that provide support for a theory called the ‘empathy‐altruism hypothesis’, which entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations of the data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson's conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson's purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson's claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism.     

ETHICS AND OBSERVATION: DEWEY,THOREAU, AND HARMAN

Abstract: In 1929, John Dewey said that “the problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of human life.” Using this as its theme, this article begins with an examination of Gilbert Harman's reasons for denying the existence of moral facts. It then presents an alternative account of the relationship between science and ethics, making use of the writings of Dewey and Henry David Thoreau. For both Dewey and Thoreau, the dichotomy between a scientific approach to the world and an ethical approach to the world is a false one. The article explores the reasons for believing that the dichotomy is a false one, agreeing with Thoreau that there “is no exclusively moral law—there is no exclusively physical law.”     

The Functional Independence of Skinner's Verbal Operants: Conceptual and Applied Implications

Much has been said about B. F. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior. This commentary specifically focuses on the functional independence of B. F. Skinner's verbal operants. While researchers have long been interested in this topic, the research literature on this topic has produced mixed results; it has shown that the verbal operants may be both functionally independent and functionally interdependent. This commentary considers the conceptual and applied implications of these mixed findings. The distinction between constructs and events is highlighted, with specific attention to how this distinction relates to the consideration of the verbal operants in behavior analysis. The value of further research on the functional independence of the verbal operants is considered, as well as the type of research studies that might be useful toward developing interventions for individuals with language delays. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.