Skinner

[jolly]

"Mexico is a statistician, and his probability analyses raise the possibility > that Pavlov was wrong (he was), that brain functioning at the neuron level > *in terms of transmission* -- of data or energy or whatever -- might not be > "like" an on-off light switch after all, but more like a dimmer switch, or > even a timer switch;"

Obviously behaviorists work with statistics, data, and samples; Thorndike's entire method--one of the precursors to behaviorism--was based on inferences drawn from data. And S-R was never proven wrong. Yes, there is an issue whether the S-R theory derived from animal psychology is relevant when applied to humans, but the operationalism and positivistic elements of Skinner and later psychologists account for that in part. Behavioral models have shortcomings (though they work quite well in education, business, and treating alcohol/drug addiction), but the problems are far less than the "mentalism" of any philosophy of mind or phenomenology. Reading a classic study such as Milgram's experiments--where some 80-90% of hundreds of tested subjects responded positively  to an assumed authority figure's orders to administer severe and even lethal shocks to a hidden "deviant" person  ( of course there was no actual person)--oen gains a great deal of appreciation for behavioral methodology. 
 Milgram's experiments do something a novelist or phenomenologist could never do--they specify injustice and sadism, rather than just rhapsodizing about them. 

Philosophers, from Chomsky (and Chomsky is as about as near to Plato as any 20th cent. phil. comes) , to Ayn Rand to Searle have objected vehemently to behaviorism:  Skinner's attacks on mentalism and metaphysics are not good for the philosophy biz, nor for lit.. or "generational grammar" (whatever that really is)--  Are the philosophers then arguing for a non-material consciousness, a soul? It would seem so; and the soul of course will keep the private theology schools and quasi -jesuistical metaphysical types in biz. 

Searle though does admit that consciousness is a product of our brain, and biologically determined, at least to some degree. He, like his associate Dreyfus,  seems to be playing a sort of lightweight critic to real cognitive scientists and psychologists by saying --"but wait you haven't explained everything yet"--sort of like a luddite in 1800 uttering "your leyden jars can't cook my food or  power my wagon can they?", only to be disproven a  few decades later. 

Another thing: Skinner asserted in quite a few places  that genetic material, rather than environment, might be controlled and manipulated; and neo-behaviorists do take into account genetics and findings of cognitive science.   When behaviorism is combined with a theory on genetic preparedness, many key concepts about human action  are answered and the applications still hold true.

 


			
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