OK, OK, OK, I'll go read Skinner. Actually I've been having trouble locating the two books I'd be interested in - "Contingencies of reinforcement" or "Beyond Freedom and Dignity". I understand "Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers" was to have been reprinted this year, but not yet apparently.
Incidentally, I wonder how Skinner would interpret the persuasive power of reason in forming opinion or world view. Presumably his writings will act as a "contingency" but surely an influence exists merely through its internal logic in spite of my supposed "aversive reinforcing" history.
And speaking of reason, that reminds me - You wrote quoting Skinner:
": The autonomous is the uncaused, and the uncaused is the miraculous, and the miraculous is God.'
I agree with the second two parts, but have some reservations about the autonomous being uncaused. One definition of autonomy is the self-governing state run by rule of law, or resorting to "reason" and the rules of logic to determine consequences. (But this may drift into Kant and I'm totally unprepared for That!)
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Your posts are so filled with interesting perspectives that I can't help responding.
For example:
>: I think you have conflated invisible (yet verifiable) entities with unobservable :(and unverifiable) entities.** Magnetic fields and sub-atomic particles can :be confirmed by direct data taking; it's 'inner states' and especially 'human nature' :that cannot.
Would a "black hole" qualify? The internal nature is speculative, but through speculation, scientific experimental observations result in such discoveries as gravity lenses which reveal information about such "unobservable" entities.
From the outside, it appears evident that the spinning wheels drive the car. An engine is involved however. (I know - bad analogy)
>:What is 'human nature'? Again, Skinner:
:
: What a person is really like could mean what he would have been like if we could :have seen him before his behavior was subjected to the action of the :environment. We should then have known his 'human nature.' But genetic :endowment is nothing until it has been exposed to the environment, and the :exposure immediately changes it.(3)
:
I presume this is not to say that "exposure" "changes" "genetic endowment" but that the environment has an overwhelming influence on how any "genetic endowment" finds expression.
: However, I know a better definition of 'human nature':
:
: Genetically determined behavior is what does not have to be learned.(4)
:
Yes, I can certainly agree with this.
: Simply put, everything that a human must learn (from day one of birth, and on) is :in the province of the (social and physical) environment---even the descriptions :of internal events that must be first taught to individuals before and they can :express them. This is true of all 'inner states':
:
: We can teach a child to name an object, for example, by presenting or pointing to the object, pronouncing its name, and reinforcing a similar response by the child, but we cannot do that with a bodily state. We cannot present or point to a pain, for example. Instead, we infer the presence of the pain from some public accompaniment. We may see the child take a hard fall, for example, and say, 'That must have hurt,' or we see a child wince and ask, 'Does something hurt?' We can respond only to the blow or the wince, but the child also feels a private stimulus and may say 'hurt' when it occurs again without a private accompaniment. Since public and private events seldom coincide exactly, words for feelings have never been taught as successfully as words for objects. Perhaps that is why philosophers and psychologists so seldom agree when talking about feelings and states of mind, and why there is no acceptable science of feeling.(5)
:
: Consciousness---your 'middleman'---is a social product.
: _
Yes......(((but why am I still dissatisfied?)))
Perhaps it's because while I can grant all of the above, that still begs the question of just why it is that we respond to particular "reinforcers" in just the particular way that we do. But then perhaps you might say this is irrelevant to the study of human behavior because such questions are "unanswerable". Oh well...
bill
