: This is not to say that 'internal processes' emit behavior. To continue our (classic) example, a toothache is not what is felt, but is the result of tangible stimuli 'within the skin' (a tangible place); it is the result of inflamed gums, cavities, infection, etc. The feeling does not make the feeling---the very awkwardness of that phrase suggests how unlikely that would be! The feeling is what is felt, and that is not some mystical 'inner process.' When we have a cavity, we feel the cavity, not the feeling. The feeling is a concomitant of the cavity, it is not the cause...This says a lot about relations to sense, but little with regards to internbalised values or ideology.
: This statement fails to appreciate (or generalize, in behavioral terms) the implications of the matching law, the law that temporal relations affect each decision. 'Self-control' arises from long-term contingencies having more control over behavior than short-term ones. Inconspicuous reinforcers (even 'heavenly life after death') can control behavior. Are temporal decisions what you call 'self'?---or are these decisions simply a different set of contingencies each emitting different behavior? The 'self' is the decisions that get made, but these decisions do not originate within, they originate outside the deciding individual (although there are so many decisions each 'self' certainly is unique). They are what the individual chooses from. This distinction is important. As Skinner put it:
Well, talking the self as a linguistic reation, we could say that each self has associated schematic actions that are presupposed in the ideal, and are carried around in our heads, imagined self if you like. And it is this imagined self that we refernce before acting, whenever we contemplate action, or try to read through our desires. What I am trying to get at, to go back to Marxan ternminology, is that whilst you try and elminate the superstructure, and make self a contigency of the base (much like Althussarian Marxism, itself derivative from teh French Communist Party's Practises 'Get down on you knees, and then you will believe? I'd rather believe first' Satre: the age of reason), but I contend that there is an imaginary structure built in our heads based on enculturation mixing with our own internal desires (we have desire and sensation before we have society, we have hunger, we have pain and screaming, we have shitting, etc.)...
: There are many different choices and what you call intention is the probability that a certain one will be made (a certain behavior will be emitted). The 'greater gratification of self identity,' as you so immodestly
immodestly???? You don't think that some people are intensely gratified to think they exist, or are terrified at the prospect of the loss of self identity? Tell that to an orangeman, see the response...
: But to say, as you seem to, that no one responds to reinforcement (or people 'create' their own) is merely superman talk...
No, I don't say that, what I say is that because self identity is very bendy and highly vairable, and is too complex for us to be able to predict scientifically each time, that systems set up to reinforce behaviour will always face some random awkward sod....
: Such lionization from a Marxist. I thought the point was not to interpret the world, but to change it...
Indeed, his actions do change the world, his analysis is revealing, he leaves it up to the rest of use also to decide how to change the world...
: You're doing it again. You are insinuating that all behavioral control is and has been 'behavioral' control (as in the type of 'control' urged by behaviorists, i.e. positive reinforcement). This assumption is the cornerstone of Chomsky's erroneous and antagonistic thesis.
I am merely pointing out that in Modern minds there is a distinct link between enforced sociial behaviour, 'managed' (I'll avoid the word control since it causes yay much confusion) by whatever group, and with totalitarianism,. etc. Particulalry so in the Orwell school, to which I think Chomsky places himself of time. (Orwell: Anarchism is authoritarian).
:It's like saying Hitler was a behaviorist because he controlled human behavior.
Much of his power came through heavilly enforced ritual actions...
:For the nth time: Behaviorism repudiates all forms of punishment. (Can your Marxist doctrine claim as much?)
It is not the punishment, but the enforced 9through whatever means) action. (BTW- I repudiate retributive methods as much as yourself, frankly I think that social disapprobation can often be enough).
: Sounds like some ripe 1984 gulag (punitive society).
I said nothing about punishment, you could say, you will not recieve your positive reinforcment if you get cuaght. PLus the idea is that people don't do anything wrong in teh first place, because they can never be sure they won't get cuaght. Like I said, this is a utilitarian paradise...
: Behaviorism is not, contrary to propaganda, about 'setting' anyone 'to task.'
But if we set up a community, where people took it in turns to possibly be in the tower, whiule everyone else got on their work?
:It's not about anyone 'getting caught.' It's about people being motivated to perform tasks for themselves. Who motivates? The community that employs a technology of incentive (various schedules that sustain high rates of responding). The designers of the culture, to be honest, submit to their own design (i.e. Los Horcones who 'live in their laboratory'...)
I wasn't actually comparing the Panopticon with Bahviourism, just asking for a behaviourist critique of it, which you have failed to provide. What if the peopel thought that observation may end in them getting a positive reinforcement?
: Your intimation that privacy would be 'invaded' by behaviorism resembles anti-communal sentiment.
I never said any such thing, I was curious to know what behaviourism said about the panopticon. You've had these sorts of arguments too many times my dear, and are slipping into supposing that I'm making all the same points you've heard before...
: Communities do observe themselves closely---that's why they do not need police, armed forces, leaders, etc. Face-to-face control (public censure and commendation, requiring observation) obviates specialized 'controllers.' The notion that 'everyone should mind their own business' is simply bourgeois rhetoric.
Correct.
: _______________
: The computer analogy. Aren't you at least a little bit suspicious that the 'computer storage' model for cognition came into use...er...right about when computers were being marketed? Sorry, but I agree with Wittgenstein that the 'life' of language is to be found in its use.* Even if we do 'store' information in our brains like so many software disks, where does that information come from?
Certainly Voloshinov who I have a lot of time for says the same thing of langugae, but niether he nor Bakhtin (if indeed he is not Bakhtin) could not emliminate some form of structure from their theories, merely taht they thought it was less important. Chomsky is close of prooving this, because his observations turn out to be pretty banal (like where to place both in a sentence), but it is scientifically valid.
I use the computer analogy, because its comfortable for me coz I knows computers. Look at it this way, the difference between data and information. At birth teh language around me is raw data, I need a form, a pattern to store it in, so that it means something, and becomes information. The LAD is the form which makes teh data make sense.
There is simply not enough data to allow use to learn language from its use around us, tehre must be some input on our part from somewhere...
Take as an example, I can't source it, it was a tele progeamme for teh OU I saw years ago...
A slave ship crashes on a carribean island, and the survivors form a community. Now, they speak several lanmguages, so they have to knock up a pidgin language between them, a langugae that will get them by.
their children however, grow up being able to spoeak to each other, with a fully functional grammar and syntax. They can't have learnt it from their environment, they'd have had to derive it for themselves. Where'd it come from?
Deathy
