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 hope that I have at least opened up the possibility that Chomsky has misrepresented behaviorism...
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. 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. I have faulted him for that because specific proposals (such as the one initiated by Los Horcones) are largely what we need, not another Debs-like opposition celebrity to tell us what we already know about capitalism...
: It may help to explain your main complaints about Chomsky's NLR article, to read the
very first footnote, which states that the article is the edited (by whom, Chomsky or the
Editors?) transcripts of a public speech by Chomsky. this , if the references (which would not have been needed for the original delivery of the speech) would have had to be chased up and added in afterwards, plus deadline considerations. This would be true, especially if Chomsky's own note would have simply pointed to author, date and organ (all that he would have needed to assemble the speech). to look for deliberate shoddiness there is wrong.
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.
: AFAIK Chomsky's main complaint about Behaviourism, is the way in which it treats people as malleable objects, rather than as outright subjects, and it is this that at least gives it its totalitarian potential (lets not forget also that totalitarian regimes are based internalized discipline (Foucualdian sense) or desire. Hence under feudalism you were expected to make public behavioural obeisances to the rulers, nor publicly act or speak against them, no matter how you really felt. Hence the differences between Catholicism and protestantism, one based on public behaviour, the other on internalized beliefs and values. Likewise stalinism was about doing the right thing, rather than believing the right thing. Its a function of dictatorship, of the brutal sort, that it is more concerned with the way you behave than the way you think. perhaps this leads Chomsky to an erroneous misconception of Behaviourism, or maybe not, I can't say.
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...)
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. 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. 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.* (Skinner always maintained that science---like agriculture---is neutral, and he never denied that behavioristic principles can be used, and have been used prior to their scientific study, aversively---just the way food is currently used to control people; would we wish to outlaw food?) And finally, 'internalized discipline,' according to behavioral accounts, is merely the individual's private discrimination and generalization (usually temporal) of external factors...
Again: can we change (political, economic) institutions without changing behavior?
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: BTW- did Skinner have anything to say about Mill's Panopticon, I'd be interested to hear his view on that, or an extrapolated potential view of it...
No, Skinner did not. If you wish to describe Mill's 'Panopticon,' I'll gladly give you a rough behavioristic take on it...
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: Chomsky would never imply that all meaning of language is based upon a universal genetic coding, rather that the Universal Generative Grammar provides the structural (Deep structure) basis for all utterances (its in tiny things like the positioning of 'both' in a sentence where it can be revealed, etc.).
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?
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: BTW Can behaviourists believe in Irony? If internalized intentionality and thoughts are excluded from study, how can irony be understood, out of curiosity...
Skinner certainly believed in irony (and thoughts). To sum a behavioral principle, an individual responds to many variables, often simultaneously. Sometimes conflicting environmental variables produce incompatible behaviors (algebraic summation), sometimes tandem behaviors (multiple causation), while various 'ratios' of positive and negative reinforcement explain the lack of sterotypy in responses. Irony is a form of multiple causation, an instance where a speaker addresses both positive and negative audiences simultaneously and successfully. To wit:
A single response may have different effects upon different audiences. A distinguished scholar used to acknowledge complimentary copies of books by writing immediately to the author: I shall lose no time in reading the book you have so kindly sent me. With respect to the audience of which the author was a member, this was synonymous with I am anxious to read your book or I am going to read your book as soon as possible. With respect to another audience, of which the scholar himself was a member, it was synonymous with I shan't waste my time on such stuff...The artistic achievement in dramatic irony requires that the spectator respond to some extent as a member of both audiences.(1)
Of course, this is not to say that the 'ironic' individual has two 'personalities,' or is of 'two minds,' but rather that the ironic individual is under the stimulus control of two different listeners. The audiences are outside, where the responses occur...
* 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...Note:
1. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), pp. 232-33.
