:"Reducing matters a great deal, 'internal processes' such as 'feelings' are the collateral products of our behavior. Humans not only behave, but they have been conditioned by verbal communities to talk about their behavior, to speculate about their (and other's) behavior. These feelings were taught; not taught to be felt but taught to be expressed. For example, my toothache (accurate or not) becomes a comparison for yours, and vice versa. Your toothache is private; it becomes public relative to what the verbal community calls a toothache." ----
Well I can agree that we interpret feelings in others by their behavioral responses. But this still seems to tell us nothing about whether there are or are not "internal processes" at work, only that we respond to outward manifestations. The problem as I see it is that by denying the existence of such "internal" functions, we may be attempting to elicit (through reinforcement techniques, laws, etc.) certain "normative" behaviors. I would ask you how you would define or explain the following "conditions" or human "characteristics".
1. Attention Deficit Disorder, autism, Tourret's Syndrome, Williams Syndrome, etc.
2. The desire for revenge (eye for an eye) (is it something that is "inherent" that must be "unlearned"?
3. Is homosexuality "learned" or "unlearned" through reinforcement?
4. The "inherent"(?) desire for freedom from forms of restraint.
This latter gets into the question of power and how it is used. This is one of the primary concerns of Marx. I think this was also a concern of Foucault's though in a different context. Knowledge becomes power when it used instrumentally (as in medicine, scientific fields, penology etc.) in creating norms and standards by which we make judgements both about ourselves and others.
Skinner is also concerned with freedom when he writes:
It is easy to object to the control of human behavior by applying the slogans of democracy. But the democratic revolution in government and religion was directed against a certain type of control only. Men were freed from autocratic rulers employing techniques based upon force or the threat of force. It does not follow that men were thus freed of all control, and it is precisely the other forms of control which we must now learn to contain and to which the pattern of the democratic revolution is inappropriate. The democratic concept of 'freedom" is no longer effective in international politics because it has lost its point. All major governments profess to be governing for the people, and no government will bear close scrutiny of its actual practices. A new conception of the function and practice of government is needed in dealing with the counter-control of techniques against which there is no revolt.*
I appreciate the sentiments offered here and support his insights. Yet
this "new conception" involves some assumptions. A little earlier in the chapter he wrote:
"To confuse and delay the improvement of cultural practices by quibbling about the word improve is itself not a useful practice. Let us agree, to start with, that health is better than illness, wisdom better than ignorance, love better than hate, and productive energy better than neurotic sloth."**
With the possible exception of "love is better than hate", each of these have probably had different meanings throughout history. It is interesting that the seemingly abstract and "internal" state of "love" vs "hate" seems more readily accessible to an agreed understanding than the others. I would add: Kindness is better than cruelty, or the value of freedom from forms of domination. But "neurotic sloth"……?
bill
*B.F. Skinner; Cumulative Record (Third Ed) p. 23 (yup, tracked down a copy!)
**Like Ibid. p.6
