: I anticipated a certain measure of protest to my post about Chomsky. However, feeling that my point was somewhat lost, I will attempt to restate it. Imagine, if you will, that you (Red Deathy, a Marxist) first read Chomsky writing about Marxism and noticed frequent allusions to gas ovens, crematoria, and concentration camps. Knowing Marxism as well as do, you would (most likely) dismiss this literature as crass Cold War propaganda and move on. If you saw more writings by this individual, you would likely dismiss those, perhaps even refuse to read more...I've read plenty that way inclined, and mostly from Anarchists, I usually dismiss them as mistaken, rather than as cold war propoganda, or as generalisations based on a lack of knowledge...
: I hope that I have at least opened up the possibility that Chomsky has misrepresented behaviorism...
Certainly...
: Because most people of the Left today dismiss behaviorism (in large part because of Chomsky's writings), they are not challenged by Chomsky's views on them.
I don't agree with it, as I'vce said before, on the grounds that I think its neglect of the internal is mistaken...not because of what Chomsky said.
:Chomsky criticizes capitalism, often passionately, and because of that he has a large audience. His audience is large, I believe, because of his reticence in proposing specific policies, any specific proposal a potential threat to some sub-sect of his audience.
His reticence to give policies is a principled stance of not wanting to become a leader, I think theres some credit to him for resisting teh urge. His own actions show roughly where he lies, better than any manifesto would. thats his path though, tehre are others, and they are pretty equally valid...
: I believe that when Chomsky's article went to press, Chomsky (or his staff) supplied references---most references. Why some but not all? Didn't Chomsky have them in the first place when he wrote the speech---or were some stats recalled off the top of his head? As far as 'deliberate shoddiness' goes, his Greenspan quote was pulled out of context and twisted. I'm sorry to defend Greenspan, but it shows Chomsky's pattern of 'dramatizing' quotes---as he did so errantly with Skinner.
As at lit student I am aware of teh concept of using quotes not to denote their actual content, but to use as an illustration of your own summation of the whole text. Thus his greenspan quote could well be an illustration of his reading of what greenspan said, rather than a misrepresentation, if you disagree with his reading...
: The way people think is (ultimately) the way people act; to separate the two is to retreat into dualism (and as a Marxist, I know you don't want to do that...)
Well, this gets complex, because the whole theory of false consciousness implies people can act in a way differently from teh way they think, especially under circumstances of alienation. the aim is to end the difference, but its a difference that is there now.
: Your mistake, I believe, is the one Chomsky makes throughout his review, namely that all behavior (and some is remarkably cruel) throughout history should be attributed to those who study behavior in order to permit people to live lives free of punishment.
No, All I suggested was that such techniques of behaviouraql control are reminiscent of such activity, and such regimes, and that a scheme based upon it may be prone to repeating their mistakes...
:The fact that behaviorism finds 'malleability' in human behavior is precisely why behaviorism is anti-deterministic (and liberating), as I attempted to elaborate in post 3211.
Perhaps, but I have my doubts as to whether people are that, maleable, and as to whether we could change the values of a lot of people through this method. It seems to neglect broader cultural structures...
: Furthermore, I find it ironic (more on that later) that someone who has advocated as a basic revolutionary principle the 'control of the armed forces' (post 3090) would find the control of human behavior so objectionable.*
1:The armed forces are to be seized so as to deprive the ruling class of their use.
2:Arms may be necessary to help disarm violent groups, hopefully this is not needed...
And finally, 'internalized discipline,' according to behavioral accounts, is merely the individual's private discrimination and generalization (usually temporal) of external factors...
MOre on discipline when we reach the Panopticon...
: Again: can we change (political, economic) institutions without changing behavior?
No, but I think in teh struggle to change them, behaviour will change to match the struggle. thats a problem I have, see, bahaviour is what humans do, we behave, so it becomes somewhat too braod a term for my liking...
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: No, Skinner did not. If you wish to describe Mill's 'Panopticon,' I'll gladly give you a rough behavioristic take on it...
Right, according to Foucault we changed, after the bourgeois revolutions,, from a society dominated by bahvioural controls and spectacular pubblic executions, to a society based on prisons, observation, and dsicipline (Foucault 'Discipline and Punish'). One example was Mill's Utilitarian utopia, the panopticon.
Take a school, prion, or factory. Make it circular in shape, with cells running around the circle, with windows facing inwards. Put a light at the back of the cells, so that the occupant can always be seen from the outside. Stand a tower in the centre, with windows facing each of the windows in the outer circle.
Put prisoner, child, worker in each cell, and set them to task. They know they can be seen at all times, potentially, but they cannot see when they are being seen, they cannot know if they get cuaght or not.
Whats behaviourism got to say about this model?
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: But where is this 'deep structure'? In the organism or in the contingencies that affect its behavior? Is this 'structure' present on day one of birth---or is it learned through a verbal community?
Its a set of switches, kinda like a run on boot progamme 'Search for System disk, etc.' that looks to see what grammar structure is in operation in a language, and it will adapt to that grammar set of rules..
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: * I believe you have some ambivalence on the subject of control. In post 3267, you ask me---after I propose socialism only for those who readily choose it---'[a]nd thus we leave the other poor fools to their fate?' Who are you (or W.S.M.) to decide who's a fool and what sort of fate to have? For all the behaviorist 'control' I advocate, I (like all behaviorists)only advocate voluntary association...Well, I was being somewhat Ironic in that statment, but the point still stands that your communes smack a tad of 'I'm allright-Jackism'...you are not doing anything to help others that way...
: Note:
: 1. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), pp. 232-33.
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