I have appreciated your comments, Bill, and I have benefited immensely from being able to express my views in such a forum. My views on behaviorism were, I believe, clarified a good deal during the exchanges that we have had. However, repetition has set in and I have felt less and less reinforced by my exchanges of late... : Virtually any act can be 'explained' by an antecedent 'contingency'.
This is a major premise of behaviorism. Although it may seem simple, many people actually believe otherwise---i.e. 'I did it because I wanted to,' 'I got this idea,' etc.
: It can be so broad as to incorporate features (which you would object to I'm sure) such as various 'mentalisms' as Freudians might employ for their own interpretations of 'contingencies'.
: Now if I understand you, you would maintain that the emotion IS the behavior in that it was the result of previous contingencies. But regardless of where we think origins lie, it seems hard to deny the effect of: sadness, delight, boredom, anger, fear, desire, love, jealousy or anxiety on our decision making.
Both these points seem to assert that feelings cause behavior instead of accompany behavior. (That is the primary position of mentalism.) Behaviorism does not deny feelings. (I have stated otherwise on many occasions.) However, behaviorism insists that contingencies cause (either emit or elicit) behavior and feelings are collateral products of these contingencies. In a nutshell: we don't cry because we feel sad and we don't feel sad because we cry (as James had it); we feel sad and we cry because of environmental events that control our behavior.
: [Y]our points derive their strength precisely to the degree that you are able to demonstrate how behavior can, in fact, be manipulated even though the recipient is either unaware, or in fact is convinced that he or she has made a 'free' choice. It might be argued that as long as the person feels that he or she is operating as a free agent, that is all that is required. This might do for training horses but not for human beings, who if rationality is to have play in human decision making, require that ALL relevant information be made available for decision making.
It was Freud who demonstrated that behavior can exist without 'consciousness.' We often do things (due to reinforcing contingencies) without being aware of them (and certainly without being aware of why we do them). Such occasions have less to do with operant conditioning than accidental contingencies. On the other hand, the awareness that we do things because we know there are antecedent environmental events emitting or eliciting behavior is no reason to presume that behavior will then cease or become unpredictable (i.e., autonomous). Being aware of why we do things will not make humans more like horses, Bill, such awareness will make humans more like humans. (Such awareness may even assist socialistic cooperation.)
: It would be nice to think that reason would prevail and serve as a motivator when discussing such things as for example global warming.
I agree---it would be nice. Without changing our behavior, however, why would anyone expect new ecological practices to happen? 'Reason,' like all emotions, is contingent upon individual histories of reinforcement; there is no one 'reason.' (Here the Enlightenment reveals its autocratic perception of human experience.)
: [I]t is fair to note the difference between 'aversive' conditioning - (Stalinist coercion or Orwell's 1984) and operant conditioning as manifested by the modern (and post-modern) consumer culture of the Spectacle a la Debord or Huxley's Brave New World. These two generators of behavior - Fear and Desire are highly utilized.
How discouraging. The reference to 'consumer culture' and Huxley only demonstrate that your initial bias toward behaviorism, as expressed in post 2814, back in July, has remained essentially unchanged despite my many entreaties stating that operant conditioning is neither propaganda or chemical constraint.
While you may be confident that appeals to reason or emotions will change human behavior, your own behavior (like mine) shows that it, in fact, does not. (Our 'reasoning' with one another has accomplished nothing; your position is as it was, and so is mine.) I believe behavior (and 'points of view') can only be changed by actual contingent variables, not by 'reasons' or appeals to feelings. To assume that these contingencies are 'in our minds,' inaccessible to functional control, strikes me as one of the most hopeless of philosophies.
Behaviorism is the opposite of determinism.
Best of luck,
Barry.
