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Beyond Freedom and Dignityreviewed by John Sullivan - 1972 ![]() Author(s): B. F. Skinner Publisher: John Wiley, New York ISBN: , Pages: , Year: Search for book at Amazon.com B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity is
clearly an important book, but how important is difficult to assess
at this time. Many books which have been historically influential
have not been acclaimed when first published and many so acclaimed
have not stood the test of later historical judgment. Some
historians suggest that the significance of an event for the most
part does not depend upon events which precede or accompany it.
What follows is more important. For instance, Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams (1900) would have been an
interesting contribution to the explanation of dreams, but not much
more. Because of the subsequent development of psychoanalysis
and the drift of Western culture it has become one of the basic
books of our time. By contrast, James Mill's Analysis of the
Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) marked both the culmination
and the end of the movement of simple association psychology. John
Stuart Mill's doctrine of emergent properties, called
chemism, and the influence of Darwinism resulted in a basic
re-orientation of British psychology. Though the historical
importance of Beyond Freedom and Dignity is impossible
to determine today, I shall attempt to evaluate its
contemporary significance. Skinner's fundamental method in this book is to define in a
behavioristic language a number of terms common in the
humanistic literature. Meanings and references of the humanistic terms are transposed from social contexts into
paradigms used in the experimental study of learning. The
intellectual feat is to make these translations in such a way
that no meanings of the humanistic terms are unaccounted for and
the new definitions have a practical use. Since he does not
explicitly restrict his claims, it is assumed that Skinner has done
both. An obvious advantage of his procedure is that if he is
able to make successful coordinations of terms from the
humanistic literature to his experimental paradigms,
and he knows the relevant variables in these paradigms, then
he is in a position to make significant analyses of
social situations. Social contexts may thus be analyzed in
different ways than have been done in the humanistic literature.
Skinner's analyses lead, so the claim goes,
beyond freedom and dignity to a social world based
upon positive reinforcement that could lead to the development of
man beyond the capability of our present social
arrangements. Such Utopian dreams are symptoms of the discontents of our
social world. These dreams have been called the "opium of the
intellectuals." Dreams of the conditions for social justice
invariably have a solution in terms of the particular
thinker's favored paradigms. For Plato the solution was
in the recognition of the natural hierarchy of classes and the
harmony of the functions of each class. Christian tradition found
the solution to living in this world to be composed of fortitude
and love in this world, and faith in the Utopian character of the
next world. For Marx the solution was found in the abolition of
class exploitation by a rearrangement of economic and political
power. For Freud the Utopian dream is viewed as a regressive
wish for the good mother who satisfies every need without
making demands. Reality, however, requires a measure of stoicism
and an attempt to extend conscious control when conditions
are propitious. For Skinner the dream is the design of social
controls without the use of aversive stimuli. Evaluation of Beyond Freedom and Dignity entails at least
three components: (1) an analysis of Skinner's specific
reductive procedures, (2) an analysis of the general
empirical tradition, and (3) a review of alternative analyses. One
who attacks, defends, or merely assesses the book is taking a
stand on the experimental analysis of behavior, empiricism, and the
generality of the experimental analysis of behavior. A network of interesting arguments is presented in Beyond
Freedom and Dignity. They will be constructed here in a form
slightly different from Skinner's presentation in order to
heighten their dialectical quality and to stress their related
character. The comments are my own. The Technology Dialectic Antagonist: Man is an autonomous agent; thus prediction
and control of his behavior are impossible. Skinnerian Reply: All behavior is determined, that is,
under some control. A technology of control of behavior has
developed as we have learned to manipulate environments which
reinforce behavior. The Values Dialectic Antagonist: The gap between what is and what ought to be
is unbridgeable. This is the gap between science and ethics, a
distinction between description and prescription. There can
be no scientifically based, so-called naturalistic ethics.
Reply: An ultimate value for humans is survival. What is
good is what contributes to long-term survival. To ask if something
is good is only to ask if it contributes positively to the
fulfillment of human development. Comment: This is the Darwinian metaphysic of the
Skinnerian system. It might better be stated as a hypothetical
statement: If survival is our ultimate value, then whatever
contributes to survival is good. The Autonomous Man Dialectic Antagonist: Man's behavior is controlled by his
wishes, perceptions, and ideas. Reply: To explain a person's actions by his ideas is
simply to push the problem of explanation back to the conditions
which determine the development of his ideas. Comment: A
variation on this argument is to hold that behavior is
determined by a person's habits, motivational states,
individual differences like intelligence, and the
environmental stimuli. It might then be objected that it is not the
stimuli per se that are important but how the stimuli are
perceived. But this is to require all over again that habits,
motivational states, and individual differences explain
the perception of stimuli. The Dignity Dialectic Antagonist: Some people deserve credit for their strength
of character and dignity. Reply: We tend to explain behavior in which the causes
are inconspicuous as due to the properties of the agent or his
will. But all behavior is under controls such that the person
should be given neither blame or credit for his dignity.
The Freedom Dialectic Antagonist: Freedom is an unrestricted good, is the
condition for the development of the person to the fullest, and is
incompatible with control in any form. Reply: Behavior is always under control of some form or
another. The literature of freedom has arisen from a
rejection of aversive social controls. This literature is largely
concerned with avoidance or escape from aversive controls. But this
formulation distorts the problem. The values of positive
social controls are denied in the wish to escape from aversive
controls. Since behavior is always under environmental
control, the problem is to shift controls from aversive to
positive stimuli. The Reinforcement Dialectic Antagonist: Reinforcement theory which is at the base of
your psychology cannot explain the behavior of people who are free,
particularly their creative behavior. Reinforcement by its nature
only increases the probability of what has already occurred.
Reply: Creative behavior is under the control of
normative systems, like language is under the control of syntactic
rules which are learned. Such rules applied over and over again
with different contents may generate infinitely varied
sentences. Rule-mediated behavior is ultimately under
the control of reinforcing environments. Scientific laws
generally are learned by reinforcement principles and are
maintained by social and physical reinforcements.
The Empiricism Dialectic Antagonist: Out of pure reason it is possible to
construct concepts that have an explanatory function in the
physical world. Mathematical concepts are standard examples.
Reply: All knowledge comes from experience. In order to
have meaning, theoretical terms must be reducible to terms of
direct experience. Comment: Skinner's work is in the tradition of radical
empiricism. His reduction of the terms "freedom" and
"dignity" is comparable in method to Hume's reduction of "cause"
and "self to elements of his psychology, of impressions and
ideas related by laws of association (A Treatise on Human
Nature, 1739). Skinner's reduction is also similar in form to
Mach's reduction to his psychology of the terms of Newtonian
science (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch
dargestellt, Leipzig, 1883) and William James' reduction of
"consciousness" ("Does Consciousness Exist,"
1904). Much that irritates about Skinner may be traced to the bland
assertiveness of his style. This assertiveness is also of an
extreme position that leads to paradoxical conclusions that are counter-intuitive and against ordinary
language usage. A cluster of notions has been traditionally associated
with empiricism. The position was given a classic statement
by Locke, who held that all knowledge comes from experience. This
doctrine was aimed polemically at the Platonic doctrine of innate
ideas (first stated in Meno). The main thrust of Skinner's
polemic is against abstract notions, with the accompanying doctrine
that all behavior is controlled (ultimately) by reinforcements.
Skinner is concerned with behavior, not ideas. Classical empiricism
concerned with knowledge and mind has been shorn of its
mentalistic trappings and given a new formulation in terms of
experimental analysis of behavior. Skinner's version is that
knowledge comes from reinforcements and further that ultimately the
control of behavior is to be found in reinforcements and not in
ideas or knowledge. Skinner is thus giving us a modern experimental
psychologist's version of Ockham's Razor: don't multiply entities
beyond reinforcements. Ockham's (don't multiply
entities beyond necessity) thrust was against the existence of
Platonic universals and a preference for Aristotelian
particulars. There may be physical objects, white in color.
These objects may be said to have the property of whiteness. Since
many different objects may have the property of being white,
whiteness is designated a universal. The problem is to
consider whether "whiteness" has an existence apart from the
objects which have it as a property. Nominalists like Ockham held
that the only things that existed were particulars; they were
against the multiplying of entities like Platonic universals.
Freedom is also a universal of the Platonic type; the question is
whether it is reducible to simple situations. Since it is not a
variable in an experimental situation, the problem is to translate
the term into behavioristic vocabulary. In performing this
reduction, note that Skinner refers to the behaviors of
people and not the property of an individual. "Man's struggle for freedom is .. . due ... to certain
behavioral processes . . . the chief effect of which is the
avoidance or escape from so-called 'aversive' features of the
environment." (p. 42) "The literature of freedom . . . has been
forced to brand all control as wrong and to misrepresent many
of the advantages to be gained from a social environment. It is
unprepared for the next step, which is not to free men from
control but to analyze and change the kinds of control to
which they are exposed." (pp. 42-43). These two quotations, patched
together as they are from Skinner's text, do not, I believe,
distort it. The core of his argument is contained here.
Briefly, in terms of the dimensions mentioned above, the
literature of freedom arises in conditions of strong aversive
control, but we are able to use controls non-aversively toward
goals which have ultimately good outcomes. "We recognize a person's dignity or worth when we give him
credit for what he has done. The amount we give is inversely
proportional to the conspicuousness of the causes of his behavior.
If we do not know why a person acts as he does, we attribute his
behavior to him." (p. 58). My evaluation of Skinner's proposals is based upon a fundamental
agreement and a fundamental disagreement. The agreement is
probably a professional distortion, sort of a special knothole view
on the world, that psychology is the propaedeutic social science.
This is the thesis that most of what is interesting in the social
sciences can be given an explanation in psychological terms. The
disagreement is on the question of how far a reduction can be made
of any social phenomena. The question "how far a reduction?" is
connected with the question, "to what psychology will
the reduction of humanistic terms be most
productive?" It is reasonable to hold that even freedom implies the
direction of a person's behavior by his own set of values,
ideas, etc. Thus the notion of freedom implies control. The
argument is not about control or no control but the loci of
control. That there can be differences in the ratios of external
versus internal control of a person's behavior is difficult
to dispute. It is important in evaluating actions to assess them as
wise or foolish, intelligent or not intelligent, compelled or
relatively free. These actions are to be judged in terms of
criteria relative to the pursuit of goals, ends, values, etc. The
region where it is important to preserve the notions of
freedom and dignity is precisely in the opportunity to have
behavior under the control of one's own values, etc. and not
someone else's. No doubt one's politics, religion, views on
education, love, life, etc, are determined by one's
background, ultimately by reinforcement from one's own physical and
social environments. To be controlled by someone else's background,
values, etc. is to be unfree. The argument is not for ultimate
freedom but for freedom to control one's own behavior and
environments in terms of one's own states. The area in which terms
like freedom and dignity occur is not in ultimate
explanations but in immediate ones. This is a thesis of levels of
explanation and casual chains. My fundamental disagreement is to which of the various
psychologies the terms of humanistic literature will be reduced. At
this stage of our understanding of psychological processes
one cannot rule out competing psychologies. Reduction of terms like
"freedom" and "dignity" to a psychology that does not admit
of inner states of organisms inevitably ends by dissolving
these concepts. If one assumes the existence of mediating states or
cognitive processes, the chance of the survival of some of the
ordinary language meanings of these constructs is
increased. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity is of great value
for it sharply illuminates the controlling features of our
environments. As a result of this book we ought to be
increasingly sensitive to being controlled and the
opportunity to exercise counter-control in our environments. How
this works in miniature can be illustrated by the fact that
copyrights of Skinner's previous books were owned by the
publishers. He, however, owns the copyright to Beyond Freedom
and Dignity. He probably would interpret this behavior as rule-
mediated which is reinforcing. I hold that this is an advance in
Skinner's freedom and probably a considerable contribution to
his worth.
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