| Radical Behaviorism
Radical behaviorism is the philosophy that underlies the approach
to psychology known as the experimental analysis of behavior, and
is a model developed by B. F. Skinner. The term 'radical behaviorism'
has also been associated with Skinner's theories of human behavior
and his political ideas.
Controversial issues
Radical Behaviorism has always been controversial, for a number
of reasons. The proponents of radical behaviorism will argue that
the theory is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. Some of the
issues will be elaborated upon in the following.
The basics - operant psychology
John B. Watson before Skinner, and Ivan Pavlov before Watson, studied
behavior from a stimulus-response perspective. From this perspective,
behavior is elicited by unconditioned stimuli. Behavior was manipulated
by pairing stimuli shown to elicit certain responses with neutral
stimuli. Eventually, presentation of the previously neutral stimulus
would elicit the response. This is called instrumental conditioning
or classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. Skinner felt
this approach too limited, since much interesting behavior cannot
be subject to instrumental conditioning, and invented operant psychology
as an extension to behaviorism.
In operant conditioning, behavior is seen as something that is
actively emitted by the organism. Operant conditioning is a procedure
where a stimulus is presented or withdrawn when a behavior occurs.
- If the strength or the frequency of the behavior is increased
upon presentation of the stimulus, the stimulus is labeled a positive
reinforcer.
- If the strength or the frequency of the behavior is reduced
upon presentation of the stimulus, the stimulus is labeled a positive
punisher.
- If the strength or the frequency of the behavior is increased
upon withdrawal of the stimulus, the stimulus is labeled a positive
punisher.
- If the strength or the frequency of the behavior is reduced
upon withdrawal of the stimulus, the stimulus is labeled a negative
punisher.
Instrumental conditioning says something about the future of the
stimulus: That in the future, the neutral stimulus may become a
conditioned stimulus.
Operant conditioning tells something about the future of the organism:
That in the future, the reinforced behavior will be likely to occur
more often.
Many textbooks wrongly label Skinner or Radical Behaviorism as
S-R (Stimulus-Response, or instrumental, or Pavlovian) psychology,
and argue that this limits the approach.
Many textbooks argue that radical behaviorism maintains the position
that animals (including humans) are passive receivers of conditioning,
failing to take into account that
- Operant behavior is emitted, not elicited: Animals act on the
enviornment and the environment acts back on them
- The consequence of a behavior can itself be a stimulus. One
needs not present anything for shaping to take place.
Explaining behavior and the importance of the environment
John B. Watson, Skinner's immediate predecessor, argued against
the use of references to mental states, and held that psychology
should study behavior and behavior only, holding private events
as impossible to study scientifically. Skinner expanded on this
idea, but for somewhat different reasons.
In Watson's days (and in Skinner's early days), it was held that
Psychology was at a disadvantage as a science because behavioral
explanations should take physiology into account. Very little was
known about physiology at the time. Skinner argued that behavioral
explanations of psychological phenomena are just as true as physiological
explanations. In arguing this, he took a non-reductionistic approach
to psychology. Skinner, however, redefined behavior to include everything
that an organism does, including thinking, feeling and speaking
and argued that these phenomena were valid subject matters of psychology.
The term Radical Behaviorism refers to just this: That everything
an organism does is a behavior.
However, Skinner ruled out thinking and feeling as valid explanations
of behavior. The reasoning is this. Thinking and feeling are not
epiphenomena nor have any other special status, and are just more
behavior to explain. Explaing behavior by refering to thought or
feelings are pseudo-explanations because they merely point to more
behavior to be explained. Skinner proposed environmental factors
as proper causes of behavior because
- Environmental factors are at a different logical level than
behavior
- One can manipulate behavior by manipulating the environment
This holds only for explaining the class of behaviors known as
operant behaviors. This class of behavior Skinner held as the most
interesting study matter.
Many textbooks, in noting the emphasis Skinner places on the environment,
argue that Skinner held that the organism is a blank slate or a
tabula rasa. Nothing could be further from the truth. Skinner wrote
extensively on the limits and possibilities nature places on conditioning.
Conditioning is implemented in the body as a physiological process
and is subject to the current state, learning history, and history
of the species.
Many textbooks seem to confuse Skinner's rejection of physiology
with Watson's rejection of private events. It is true to some extent
that Skinner's psychology considers humans a black box, since Skinner
maintains that behavior can be explained without taking into account
what goes on in the organism. However, the black box is not private
events, but physiology. Skinner considers physiology as useful,
interesting, valid, etc., but not necessary.
Acceptance of mental life and introspection
Radical Behaviorism differs from other forms of Behaviorism in
that it treats everything we do as behavior, including private events
such as thinking and feeling. Unlike John B. Watson's behaviorism,
private events (often called cognitions) are not dismissed as "epiphenomenon,"
but are seen as potentially subject to the same principles of learning
and modification as have been discovered to exist for overt behavior.
Although private events are not necessarily publicly observable
behaviors, Radical Behaviorism accepts that we are each observers
of our own private behavior, such as with introspection.
Many textbooks, in emphasizing that Skinner held behavior to be
the proper subject matter of Psychology, fail to clarify Skinner's
position and implicitly or even explicitly posit that Skinner ruled
out the study of private events as unscientific.
Political Views
Skinner's political writings emphasized his hopes that an effective
and humane science of behavioral control - a behavioral technology
- could solve human problems which were not solved by earlier approaches
or were actively aggravated by advances in physical technology such
as the atomic bomb.
Skinner was sometimes unfairly accused of being a totalitarian
by his critics, and it is not difficult to see why. In addition
to his aspirations to state design, Skinner was a determinist, believing
that all of our behavior is profoundly determined and influenced
by the environment.
Skinner saw the problems of political control not as a battle of
control versus freedom, but as choices of what kinds of control
were used for what purposes. Skinner opposed the use of coercion,
punishment and fear and supported the use of reinforcement. Freedom,
or the sense of freedom, was the resistance to punishment and threat.
In this sense Skinner was a great advocate of freedom.
However Skinner didn't want to equate political freedom, which
was desirable, to philosophical freedom, which he indicated did
not exist. Furthermore, the advocates of political freedom avidly
attacked and resisted the opponents of phiosophical freedom. Noam
Chomsky's attacks on Skinner are clearly in this tradition. One
of Skinner's stated goals was to prevent humanity from destroying
itself,
Skinner's book Walden Two presents a vision of a decentralized,
localized society which applies a practical, scientific approach
and futuristically advanced behavioral expertise to peacefully deal
with social problems. Skinner's utopia, like every other utopia
or dystopia, is both a thought experiment and a rhetorical work.
However, as a utopian Skinner answers a problem that exists in many
utopian novels "What is the Good Life?" Skinner answers
that it is a life of friendship, art, leisure, health, games and
a minimum of work and unpleasantness. Additionally behavioral technology
offers alternatives to coercion, that good science applied right
will help society, and that we would all be better off if we cooperated
with each other peacefully. Skinner's novel has been described by
Skinner as "my New Atlantis" referring to Bacon's utopia.
Intellectual opponents, such as Chomsky, have in their zealous
attempt to show Skinner wrong, have equated what they wanted to
be wrong (Skinner's philosophic determinism with whatever position
they found most horrible (political oppression, concentration camps)
whether it had any relevance or not. The ends justifies the means
in this style of intellectual mud-slinging and Skinner has been
equated to political and social positions he never espoused and
even explicitly objected to. The positive and humane aspects of
Skinner's political views are often, perhaps deliberately, overlooked.
The level of intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy can be seen
ironically in the oft cited, but apparently little read or understood
"Review of Verbal Behavior" by Noam Chomsky. In it Chomsky
attacks the triumvirate of operant theory - stimulus, response,
reinforcement - as being applicable only to the laboratory and not
"real life". In "real life" it becomes definitionally
meaningless he says. He accuses Skinner of dressing up his theory
with the appearance of science using the technically precise language
of the laboratory to give his non-technical views on language prestige.
This rather causes one to wonder how B.F.Skinner who innovated the
very precise and technical language described in The Behavior of
Organisms in 1938 (and sited by Chomsky) could then apparently not
notice, or assume others would not notice, he was abusing the very
clear technical language he himself championed not only in 1938
but throughout his life? But this is just one of many curious statements
made by Chomsky in his critique not only of Radical Behaviorism,
but of Empiricism itself, that allow him to include references to
drive theory that Skinner rejected (and Chomsky concedes as much)
but then when Chomsky demolishes drive theory we are to conclude
that this also demolishes Skinner's position on Verbal Behavior.
It is telling, and perhaps necessary, to take such a high-level
approach in attacking Skinner's basic work or its inability to be
generalized in undermining Skinner's theory of Verbal Behavior.
Because if you take the basic laboratory work and analysis as proven,
and even so-called cognitive scientists will do this, it becomes
very hard to challenge Skinner's theory of Verbal Behavior since
they so clearly parallel his basic laboratory work.
Science
Radical behaviorism inherits from behaviorism the position that
the science of behavior is natural science, a belief that animal
behavior can be studied profitably and compared with human behavior,
a strong emphasis on the environment as cause of behavior, a denial
that ghostly causation is a relevant factor in behavior, and a penchant
for operationalizing. Its principal differences are an emphasis
on operant conditioning, use of idiosyncratic terminology, a tendency
to apply notions of reinforcement etc. to philosophy and daily life
to a thoroughgoing, even obsessive, degree, and, particularly, a
distinctly positive position on private experience.
Importantly, radical behaviorism embraces the genetic and biological
endowment and ultimately evolved nature of the organism, while simply
asserting that behavior is a distinct field of study with its own
value. From this two neglected points issue: radical behaviorism
is thoroughly compatible with biological and evolutionary approaches
to psychology - in fact, as a proper part of biology - and radical
behaviorism does not involve the claim that organisms are 'tabula
rasa,' homogenous mush or black boxes with no genetic or physiological
endowment.
Skinner's psychological work focused on operant conditioning, with
emphasis on the schedule of reinforcement as independent variable,
and the rate of responding as dependent variable. Operant techniques
are a venerable part of the toolbox of the psychobiologist, and
many neurobiological theories - particularly regarding drug addiction
- have made extensive use of reinforcement. Operant methodology
and terminology has been used in much research on animal perception
and concept formation - with the same topics, such as stimulus generalization,
bearing importantly on operant conditioning. Skinner's emphasis
on outcomes and response rates naturally lends itself topics typically
left to economics, as in behavioral economics. The field of operant
conditioning can also be seen to interact with work on decision
making, and had influence on AI and cognitive science.
Outgrowths
There are radical behaviorist schools of animal training, management,
clinical practice (Applied Behavioral Analysis, or ABA) and education.
Skinner's political views have left their mark in small ways as
principles adopted by a small handful of utopian communities such
as Los Horcones, and in ongoing challenges to the hegemony of aversive
techniques in control of human and animal behavior.
Radical behaviorism has generated numerous descendants. Examples
of these include molar approaches associated with Richard Herrnstein
and William Baum, Rachlin's teleological behaviorism, William Timberlake's
behavior systems approach, and John Staddon's theoretical behaviorism.
Skinner's theories on Verbal Behavior have seen widespread application
in the use of effective therapies in creating and shaping effective
behavior in Autistic children and adults. This is an interesting
empirical development in light of Chomsky's repeated assertion in
his infamous "Review" that not only was Skinner "play-acting"
at science but his position was not only unproven, but impossible
to prove. Chomsky was then, and still is, wrong.
Arguably, one very important part of Skinner's legacy has been
omitted. That is cognitive science. Cognitive science was so particularly
shaped by his disapproval that he could, with only a little perversity,
be described one of its most influential forefathers. Insofar as
cognitive "science" is simply the Frankenstein like rebirth
of mentalistic humunculus-laden theories of inner determination
they represent little more than the perpetuation of the very theories
that Watson and Skinner attempted to displace (obviously with only
little success). It does seem though that cognitive "science"
has been shaped by Skinner in a negative sense. At least one cognitive-science
based book on learning and memory has laid out a roadmap of psychology
casting all pre-1950s psychology as being simply "classical
psychology" while portraying itself as the leading edge of
so-called Modern Psychology. Since cognitive "science"
is little more than pre-Behaviorist mentalism dressed up in the
latest fad computer-metaphor or neurobiological or genetic patois
it can be little said to be Modern unless Behaviorism would then
be "post Modern" to its Modernity. The strategy of the
cognitive (or perhaps "anti-behaviorist"?) schools is
to concede as little as possible where Skinner is concerned and
to extend every opposing theory of any area that has an opposing
theory to Skinner, to embrace many of the opposing Behaviorist theorists
who didn't eschew mental constructs and to knit together a whole
mismash of inconsistent theories and approaches all welded together
by their common slogan of "Mind!" and their hostility
to Radical Behaviorism's atheoretical approach.
|
