'A reinforcement is defined as an event which increases the rate of a response which it follows.'
Holland & Skinner, The Analysis of Behavior, 1961, § 37-11.
_______________: : Anyone who has ever visited Twin Oaks or Los Horcones may wonder where the 'gas ovens smoking in the distance' are kept. Anyone who has participated in such an intentional socialist commune may wonder where Chomsky got the idea that 'Skinner is advocating concentration camps and totalitarian rule.'
: The lead in and full quote of that last sentence reads; "Though Skinner's recommendations might be read this way, [as totalitarian] nevertheless it would be improper to conclude that Skinner is advocating concentration camps and totalitarian rule (though he also offers no objection). (my emphasis)
I'm sorry, Bill, but I think that your zeal in defending Chomsky has lead you to employ the same sort of distortions that Chomsky used in his irresponsible portrayal of behaviorism.*
First the article begins with a quick sketch of 19th century 'racist anthropology' under the guise of 'scientific pretensions'(1), setting the stage for his many broad allusions to Nazi ideology. After telling his readers what behaviorism is (more on that later), Chomsky proceeds to refute its principles (as he has characterized them). His first allusion is not subtle: Chomsky states (refuting what he considered the generality of the term reinforcement) that '[a]s long as Hitler was being "reinforced" by events and by those around him, his behavior was good.'(2)** He then loads his dice with his example in which two men kill their wives (an irrelevant demonstration of linguistic card-stacking) (3) and his misquote about 'police, priests, owners,' etc. (4) before attacking directly:
These and similar observations, to which we turn directly, may be what led some readers to suspect that Skinner is advocating a form of totalitarian control.(5)
This is most ingenuous. What 'led some readers to suspect' this, that, and the other about Skinner was Chomsky's high-profile review in the mainstream media.
Chomsky then proceeds to confuse positive reinforcement (a 'reward' in Chomsky's use) with negative reinforcement (the former a stimuli presented, the latter a stimuli removed; both*** events a consequence of behavior, not an elicitor of behavior) in a long paragraph before stating:
In fact, there is nothing in Skinner's approach that is incompatible with a police state in which rigid laws are enforced by people who are themselves subject to them and the threat of dire punishment hangs over all.(6)
This is confusing punishment with positive (and negative) reinforcement.****
Then Chomsky goes in for the kill:
Extending these thoughts, consider a well-run concentration camp with inmates spying on one another and the gas ovens smoking in the distance, and perhaps an occasional verbal hint as a reminder of the meaning of this reinforcer [note punishment being used as 'reinforcer']. It would appear to be an almost perfect world. Skinner claims that a totalitarian state is morally wrong because of its deferred aversive consequences (p. 174 [of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Knopf, 1971]). But in this delightful culture we have just designed, there should be no aversive consequences, immediate or deferred. Unwanted behavior will be eliminated from the start by the threat of the crematoria and the all-seeing spies [confusion between the behaviorological term 'extinction,' i.e. absence of reinforcement (which 'extinguishes' responses), and punishment, i.e. presentation of aversive stimuli (which only delays response)]. Thus all behavior would be automatically 'good,' as required. There would be no punishment. Everyone would be reinforced---differentially, of course, in accordance with ability to obey the rules. With Skinner's scheme, there is no objection to this social order. Rather, it seems close to ideal. Perhaps we could improve it still further by noting that 'the release from threat becomes more reinforcing the greater the threat' (as in mountain climbing; p. 111 [of Beyond Freedom and Dignity: Skinner exemplifies some potential abuses of behaviorological principles when the designers are not also affected by the principles; of course, schedules of reinforcement, and their manipulation, have existed long before behaviorism discovered them, as the destructive habits of gambling will attest]. We can, then, enhance the total reinforcement and improve the culture by devising a still more intense threat, say, by introducing occasional screams, or by flashing pictures of hideous torture as we describe the crematoria to our fellow citizens. The culture might survive, perhaps for a thousand years.(7)
Whew! A long paragraph before his caveat 'nevertheless it would be improper to conclude that Skinner is advocating concentration camps and totalitarian rule.'(8) How long was that paragraph? Well, Chomsky got in 'crematoria' (twice), 'gas ovens,' 'totalitarian,' 'hideous torture,' and 'thousand year [Reich]' before mentioning how 'improper' such conclusions would be! Then he goes on to mention the 'thousand-year Reich' (9) and 'Nazi' (10) before ending the section. I'm sorry, but Chomsky's intentions are clear. His review is a low attack, a smear, a propaganda 'demolition job.'
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Straw-man building. Time prohibits the correction of Chomsky's many erroneous descriptions and definitions of behaviorism employed to build his arguments. I will, nonetheless, sketch a few in addition to my corrections of terminology concerning 'positive reinforcement,' 'negative reinforcement,' and 'punishment.' (Chomsky's 'no less than 77 individual page citations from Skinner's material' does not guarantee accuracy any more than one will; a false premise will often produce logical consistency within its premise...)
As previously mentioned, Chomsky dismisses Skinner's laboratory work from his 'speculations' (11) when in fact the former predicated the latter. Chomsky states that '[s]urely no scientist would follow Skinner in insisting on the a priori necessity that scientific investigation will lead to a particular conclusion, specified in advance.'(12) Who is he kidding? A priori hypothesis is the basis of scientific research. Even Chomsky admitted as much when he stated that his linguistic theories were not supported by data when he attacked Skinner for inconclusive evidence in the Language review of Verbal Behavior.(13) To infer, as he does, that Skinner lacked data would be to ignore the 921 different detailed experiments published in Schedules of Reinforcement, to name but one occasion that Skinner offered specific laboratory findings. It wasn't Skinner who lacked an empirical foundation for his views, it is Chomsky's straw man that hides the foundation of behaviorism's conclusions from the reader's eyes...
Again and again, Chomsky states that 'we can convert error to tautology by relying on the vagueness of the Skinnerian terminology.'(14) This works well in Chomsky's review because Chomsky gets to define what the terminology meant, as well as leave 90% out of it. Again: operant conditioning is not Pavlovian respondent conditioning but, rather, 'voluntary' responses emitted in certain situations; again, reinforcement is probability of response, not 'reward'; again, positive reinforcement is the introduction of stimuli, negative reinforcement is the removal of stimuli, and punishment is aversive stimuli which is not the opposite of reinforcement but merely a delay of response. Using this as a simple (and incomplete) key to behaviorism's terminology (and principles), one can readily see that Chomsky's applications of behaviorism (as defined by himself) do not make sense...
What Chomsky's review did accomplish, however, was to associate Skinner with 'gas ovens,' 'Nazis,' and 'crematoria.' Could you now read Beyond Freedom and Dignity without those concomitants? Would you even bother? I can tell how effective Chomsky’s attack job was, Bill, because I have posted thousands of words about behaviorism to you---apparently without any effect whatsoever...*****
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Chomsky statistics. You spent the time to verify most of them, but I wasn't refuting them, only pointing out that they were not cited.
: Well, to challenge the scholarship of Chomsky does seem extreme! All one has to do is go to one of the Chomsky sites, for example...
It was Chomsky's broad suggestion that Skinner advocated 'concentration camps' that was 'extreme.' Because of this, I am not readily disposed to believe Chomsky in the future (reinforcement principle)---especially when citations are absent...
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: We could also quote Chomsky quoting Skinner:
: "Similarly, we can perceive the power of Skinner's behavioral technology by considering the useful observations and advice he offers: "Punishable behavior can be minimized by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur" (p.64); if a person "is strongly reinforced when he sees other people enjoying themselves….he will design an environment in which children are happy (p. 150); if overpopulation, nuclear war, pollution, and depletion of resources are a problem, ''we may then change practices to induce people to have fewer children, spend less on nuclear weapons, stop polluting the environment, and consume resources at a lower rate, respectively" (p.152)" (p.175 Chomsky Reader)
: In other words, as Chomsky notes, nothing profound.
A way to reduce pollution, war, punishment, depletion of resources is not profound? (Note how Chomsky quotes only partial sentences...)
Where Chomsky (in his New Left Review article) offers only 'human decisions' to change the world for the better, behaviorism has offered a specific science, a specific technology...
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Again: There have been times when it has sounded like I claim behaviorism is the answer. What I mean to say is that I think it is one answer. There are, no doubt, many others. However, to impugn the current order of things without actually proposing anything is, in my opinion, simply playing pop star. Chomsky, I believe, fits this characterization. Most of what most people know about behaviorism today is due directly to Chomsky's erroneous and antagonistic descriptions of it. I feel that is a shame, for the premise of a 'scientific' socialism has been a truly noble dream of reformers and humanists for almost two hundred years. What if we had access to such a science and overlooked it---simply because yet another populist assured us that humanity can change its institutions without having to change its behavior?
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: The use by Skinner of the words "reinforce" and it's variants which seem designed to
eliminate all the other words which may have to do with "inner states'' such as emotions, intentions, will, or those offered by Red Deathy - imagination and desire. As Chomsky notes: "in fact, a Skinnerian translation is always available for any description of behavior - we can always say that an act is performed because it is "reinforcing" or "reinforced' or because the contingencies of reinforcement shaped behavior in this way, and on and on. There is a handy explanation for any eventuality…." (p. 175 C..R.)
Notice how schedules of reinforcement (fixed ratios, interval ratios, variable ratios, variable intervals, tandem schedules, multiple schedules, mixed, chained & concurrent schedules) doesn't enter into Chomsky's simplified definition of reinforcement theory. These varied contingencies in the temporal aspects of response (only) are more than a 'handy explanation,' they are as intricate as the study of genes. While we are on the subject, why are not 'inner states' such as 'will,' 'desire,' and 'imagination' not also 'handy explanations'? Behaviorism seeks to explain such phenomena as 'will,' 'desire,' and 'imagination' whereas mentalistic explanations simply content themselves with tautological explanations (we desire something because we have desires). Wittgenstein once observed: 'If one sees the behavior of a living thing, one sees its soul.'(15) Behaviorism seeks only to know the component aspects and predicates of our human 'soul,' not to dismiss it or destroy it (as mentalistic proponents such as Chomsky insist), but to enable humans to cease controlling one another in aversive and unfair ways. Behaviorism's project is nothing less than a world without punishment...
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* See Chomsky's 'Psychology and Ideology,' The Chomsky Reader (Pantheon, 1987), pp. 157-82.** Re: 'As long as Hitler was being "reinforced" by events and those around him, his behavior was good.' Reinforcement, contrary to Chomsky's erroneous definition, is not 'reward,' but probability of response. According to a behaviorological account, this statement would read: 'As long as Hitler was being "reinforced" by events and those around him, his behavior would continue.' Can this be disputed? Can we, as Chomsky would have us, attribute all reinforcement (throughout history) to behaviorism's discoveries of these natural laws?
*** Both positive and negative reinforcement may act together, and the ‘ratio’ of each (simultaneously) provides an explanation for the variability of response in an organism confronted with ostensively uniform stimuli. See Keller & Schoenfeld's Principles of Psychology (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950), pp. 186-91.
**** Again, for the tip of the iceberg, see Skinner: Walden Two (Macmillan, 1948), pp. 260-61; 'Freedom and the Control of Men' [1955-56] Cumulative Record (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1972), p. 8; Science and Human Behavior (Macmillan, 1953), pp. 182-93; and The Analysis of Behavior (with James G. Holland) (McGraw-Hill, 1961), pp. 254-75.
***** Bill:
The problems surrounding the question of designing a culture. While the control of the culture should presumably be by members of the culture (perhaps arrived at by
consensus), Chomsky quotes Skinner again (out of context?): "….the control of the
population as a whole must be delegated to specialists - to police, priests, owners,
teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified
contingencies". (p.176 C.R.)
It's that same tenacious misquote I've addressed it twice before (post 2770 and 3239)! For the third time: this quote is where Skinner denounces current state government (because it has necessitated mediation---'delegated specialists'---in determining social values); for that reason, he recommends small-scale communitarian societies instead. Please see Beyond Freedom and Dignity, pp. 154-55. For Skinner's definitive statements on communitarianism, see 'Human Behavior and Democracy,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 3-15 (also published as 'Between Freedom and Despotism' in Psychology Today, September 1977, pp. 80-91) as well as the entirety of Walden Two.
Notes:
1. Chomsky, 'Psychology and Ideology,' The Chomsky Reader (Pantheon, 1987), p. 157.
2. Ibid., p. 173.
3. Ibid., p. 175.
4. Ibid., p. 176.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid, p. 177.
7. Ibid., p. 178.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 179.
11. Ibid., p. 158.
12. Ibid., p. 161.
13. Chomsky, 'Review of Verbal Behavior,' Language, 35: 1, 1959, pp. 55 and 30.
14. Chomsky, 'Psychology and Ideology,' The Chomsky Reader (Pantheon, 1987), p. 174.
15. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1958), § 357.
None.
