: OK, OK, OK...I would not recommend BF&D as anyone's first Skinner book. Contingencies is perhaps his most sophisticated (a favorite). Whether or not the Foundation is going to reprint Cumulative Record in its 3rd edition (best form) is not known at present; if they do, it will be an ideal intro to Skinner. Although About Behaviorism is not Skinner's best book, it is a good start (for the skeptical)...
: 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.
Keller and Schoenfeld, who taught Skinnerian psychology to the first generation of radical behaviorists, once observed: 'Behavior is always consistent with the laws of behavior, but not always with logic.'(1) As far as Skinner's own writings are concerned, he did not consider himself an oracle-bearing magician. He stated that '[l]earning does not occur because behavior has been primed; it occurs because behavior, primed or not, is reinforced.'(2) It is contingent upon the environment to 'decide' the validity of behavior theory, not the theory's logic itself---although our actions upon the environment shape its influence upon our subsequent behavior...
: : '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.
Can there be a 'self-governing state' run by 'rule of law,' as in 'law' outside the self? If behaviorism stands for anything, it is the idea that every act of behavior is caused. Science is devoted to the idea that all within its ken is lawful. (Wittgenstein stated once that ignorance is autonomy, but behaviorism seeks to replace our ignorance with empirical observation...)
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: The internal nature [of black holes] is speculative, but through speculation, scientific experimental observations result in such discoveries as gravity lenses which reveal information about such "unobservable" entities.
That is a good point. Obviously science begins with a theory (or sets of theories) and proceeds to generalize from there. As Lewis Carroll once pointed out, a truly exhaustive world map would be the size of the world, and unfolding it would blot out the sun. Often we know a fact before it can be proven (Einstein); often we must abandon theories when facts don't add up (William James). The science that engendered gravity lenses, however, does not prove its farthest surmises; it only acts to encourage further investigation. (The same certainly applies to behaviorism.) If science cannot control what it studies (such as astronomy), it is responsible for predicting what it studies...
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: : '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.'
: 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.
Yes, ontogenically---although phylogenically (as Darwin stated), it will also...
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: : 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...
Environmental histories, combining both genetic and social contingencies, are unique. They are, however, most relevant to the study of human behavior. One way of making this study possible is to simplify variables (as in a controlled environmental space), another way is to broaden research. (Consider my map analogy.) I submit that the intricate variables of all 'particular' reinforcers are ultimately accountable.
As to why you are dissatisfied by a behavioral account, one reason may very well be a few hundred years of bourgeois liberation literature. We presently entertain the notion that, say, due to 'bad' social environments (such as 'broken homes,' 'ghetto poverty,' etc.) a person who behaves against the interests of society as a whole may not deserve blame, but rather the social environment is to be blamed. We are altogether less likely to reverse the notion, however, and entertain the idea that our accomplishments are the result of 'good' social environments. For example, we generally credit someone when she or he does something as, say, a sacrifice and are less likely to credit the same actions when, say, there is direct (and personal) recompense.This is BF&D territory indeed:
Under punitive contingencies a person appears to be free to behave well and to deserve credit when he does so. Nonpunitive contingencies generate the same behavior, but a person cannot be said to be free, and the contingencies deserve the credit when he behaves well. Little or nothing remains for autonomous man to do and receive credit for doing. He does not engage in moral struggle and therefore has no chance to be a moral hero or credited with inner virtues. But our task is not to encourage moral struggle or to build or demonstrate inner virtues. It is to make life less punishing and in doing so to release for more reinforcing activities the time and energy consumed in the avoidance of punishment.(3)
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Notes:
1. Keller and Schoenfeld, Principles of Psychology (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950), p. 371.
2. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968), p. 212.
3. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Knopf, 1971), p. 81.
None.
