Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) spent eighteen weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller list.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a 1971 book by American psychologistB. F. Skinner. Skinner argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as "dignity") hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner's philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls "cultural engineering".
Synopsis
The book is organized into nine chapters.
A Technology of Behavior
In this chapter Skinner proposes that a technology of behavior is possible and that it can be used to help solve currently pressing human issues such as over-population and warfare. "Almost all major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of human behavior."[1]
Freedom
In this chapter Skinner offers a more precise definition of freedom, one that allows for his conception of determinism, and speaks to the conventional notion of freedom. Skinner argues against "autonomous man".[2]
Skinner notes that the forces of Freedom and Dignity have led to many positive advances in the human condition, but may now be hindering the advance of a technology of human behavior: "[the literature of freedom and dignity] has been successful in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings..."[3]
Dignity
Dignity is the process by which people are given credit for their actions,[4] or alternatively punished for them under the notion of responsibility. Skinner's analysis rejects both as "dignity" – a false notion of inner causality which removes both credit for action and blame for misdeeds, "the achievements for which a person himself is to be given credit seem to approach zero.".[5]
Skinner notes that credit is typically a function of the conspicuousness of control. We give less or no credit, or blame, to those who are overtly coached, compelled, prompted or otherwise not appearing to be producing actions spontaneously.
Punishment
Skinner saw punishment as the logical consequence of an unscientific analysis of behavior as well as the tradition of "freedom and dignity". Since individuals are seen to be making choices they are then able to be punished for those choices. Since Skinner denies the existence of free will, he therefore argued against punishment which he saw to be ineffective in controlling behavior.
Alternatives to Punishment
Skinner notes that the previous solutions to punishment are often not very useful and may create additional problems. Permissiveness, the metaphor of mid-wifery (or maieutics, ie the Socratic Method), "guidance", a dependence on things, "changing minds", all contain either problems or faulty assumptions about what is going on.[6]
Skinner argues that this misunderstanding of control championed by the defenders of freedom and dignity "encourage[s] the misuse of controlling practices and block progress towards a more effective technology of behavior."[7]
Values
Skinner notes a 'prescientific' view of man allows for personal achievement. The 'scientific view' moves human action to be explained by species evolution and environmental history.[8]
Skinner speaks to feelings about what is right, as well as popular notions of "good". Skinner translates popular words and phrases around value issues into his view of contingencies of reinforcement. Skinner notes that even if the technology of behavior produces "goods" to improve human life, they expose environmental control, which is offensive to the "freedom and dignity" perspective.[9]
Skinner suggests that cultural evolution is a way to describe the aggregate of (operant) behavior. A culture is a collection of behavior, or practices.[10] Skinner addresses "social Darwinism" and argues that as a justification of the subordination of other nations or of war competition with others is a small part of natural selection. A much more important part is competition with the physical environment itself.[11] Skinner relates the idea of cultural evolution back to the question of values: whose values are to survive?
The Design of a Culture
Skinner notes that cultural design is not new, but is already existing and on-going.[12] Skinner notes that most discussions of current problems are dominated by metaphors, concerns for feelings and states of mind which do not illuminate possible solutions.[13] Skinner notes that behavior modification is ethically neutral.[14]
Skinner notes that Utopian speculations, like his novel Walden Two, are a kind of cultural engineering.[15] He then devotes much of the rest of this chapter to addressing the criticisms and complaints against cultural engineering.
What is Man?
Skinner again addresses the notion of the individual, and discusses how aspects of a person's character could be assigned to environmental factors.[16] He also covers cognition, problem solving, self-control and counters some arguments or possible misconceptions. Skinner notes that his analysis does not "leave an empty organism".[17] Skinner addresses the issue of mechanical models of human action, which are better addressed elsewhere.[18] Skinner notes that, "The evolution of a culture is a gigantic effort in self-control." and ends with, "A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man."
Walden Two
Beyond Freedom and Dignity is consistent with Walden Two, a 1948 novel by Skinner, depicting a utopian community based on his ideas regarding behavior modification. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity Skinner extends his argument for explicit cultural engineering of which Walden Two may be seen as an example.
Reactions
LinguistNoam Chomsky criticized Skinner's methods and conclusions. His 1971 essay "The Case Against B.F. Skinner" responded to Beyond Freedom and Dignity, arguing against behaviorism and its claim to scientific status.[19] In response to Skinner's denial of human dignity, Chomsky said, "It would be absurd to conclude merely from the fact that freedom is limited, that “autonomous man” is an illusion (...) It would be hard to conceive of a more striking failure to comprehend even the rudiments of scientific thinking ".[20]
John Staddon criticized Skinner's contention that punishment is ineffective and free-will an unnecessary concept, arguing that "Punishment doesn't always abolish freedom -- and freedom is not just absence of punishment".[21]
↑ "The fundamental mistake made by all those who choose weak methods of control is to assume that the balance of control is left to the individual, when in fact it is left to other conditions." p.99 - Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity
↑ p.150 "Such a technology is ethically neutral. It can be used by villain or saint." Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
↑ Although Skinner mentions Plato, Augustine and was presumably inspired by Bacon's Atlantic and does not explicitly mention Walden Two in this reference. p.153 Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
↑ Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. p.186 aggression, industry, attention are addressed specifically
↑ "A great deal goes on inside the organism" Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. p195
↑ Mecca Chiesa's Radical Behaviorism deals with the misunderstanding of Skinner's analysis as "mechanistic" in some detail
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. Considered the father of Behaviorism, he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are conditioned to occur or not occur depending on the environmental consequences of the behavior.
Walden Two is a utopian novel written by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, first published in 1948. In its time, it could have been considered science fiction, since science-based methods for altering people's behavior did not yet exist. Such methods are now known as applied behavior analysis.
An operant conditioning chamber is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
Radical behaviorism is a "philosophy of the science of behavior" developed by B. F. Skinner. It refers to the philosophy behind behavior analysis, and is to be distinguished from methodological behaviorism—which has an intense emphasis on observable behaviors—by its inclusion of thinking, feeling, and other private events in the analysis of human and animal psychology. The research in behavior analysis is called the experimental analysis of behavior and the application of the field is called applied behavior analysis (ABA), which was originally termed "behavior modification."
The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization. A central method was the examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled. It owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's procedures of operant conditioning, both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.
George Armitage Miller was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science.
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.
Verbal Behavior is a 1957 book by psychologist B. F. Skinner, in which he describes what he calls verbal behavior, or what was traditionally called linguistics. Skinner's work describes the controlling elements of verbal behavior with terminology invented for the analysis - echoics, mands, tacts, autoclitics and others - as well as carefully defined uses of ordinary terms such as audience.
The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. Other approaches, such as theories related to neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning. Some psychological approaches, such as social constructivism, focus more on one's interaction with the environment and with others. Other theories, such as those related to motivation, like the growth mindset, focus more on individuals' perceptions of ability.
The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between the fields of psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, neuroscience, and philosophy. The approaches used were developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience. In the 1960s, the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies and the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California, San Diego were influential in developing the academic study of cognitive science. By the early 1970s, the cognitive movement had surpassed behaviorism as a psychological paradigm. Furthermore, by the early 1980s the cognitive approach had become the dominant line of research inquiry across most branches in the field of psychology.
In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes, for example: mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, as in cognitive psychology. The term mentalism has been used primarily by behaviorists who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal relationships to reflexes and operant responses or on the functions of behavior.
Countercontrol is a term used by Dr. B.F. Skinner in 1953 as a functional class in the analysis of social behavior. Opposition or resistance to intervention defines countercontrol, however little systematic research has been conducted to document its occurrence. Skinner also distinguished it from the literature of freedom, which he said did not provide effective countercontrol strategies. The concept was identified as a mechanism to oppose control such as escape from the controller or waging an attack in order to weaken or destroy the controlling power. For this purpose, Skinner stressed the role of the individual as an instrument of countercontrol, emphasizing the notion of vigilance along with the concepts of freedom and dignity.
Instinctive drift, alternately known as instinctual drift, is the tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes with learned behaviour from operant conditioning. Instinctive drift was coined by Keller and Marian Breland, former students of B.F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota, describing the phenomenon as "a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and father of operant conditioning, which is learning strategy that teaches the performance of an action either through reinforcement or punishment. It is through the association of the behaviour and the reward or consequence that follows that depicts whether an animal will maintain a behaviour, or if it will become extinct. Instinctive drift is a phenomenon where such conditioning erodes and an animal reverts to its natural behaviour.
Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Ellis T. Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920. He defined imperialism as "the sense of arbitrary and capricious domination over the bodies and souls of men," he used the term "scientific imperialism" to mean "the subjection of all the developed and undeveloped powers of the earth to the mind of man."
Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution is a treatise by Austrian school economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises. It can be thought of as a continuation in the development of the Misesian system of social science. In particular, it provides further epistemological support for his earlier works, esp. Human Action. Most notably, Mises elaborates on methodological dualism, develops the concept of thymology – a historical branch of the sciences of human action – and presents his critique of Marxist materialism.
Theoretical behaviorism is a framework for psychology proposed by J. E. R. Staddon as an extension of experimental psychologist B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. It originated at Harvard in the early 1960s.
Anthony Charles Catania is an American researcher in behavior analysis known for his theoretical, experimental, and applied work. He is an Emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he taught and conducted research for 35 years prior to his retirement in 2008. He received a B.A. (1957) and M.A. (1958) at Columbia University in Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard University in 1961. He remained at Harvard to conduct research as a postdoctoral researcher in B. F. Skinner's laboratory. Prior to his career at UMBC, he held a faculty position for nearly a decade at New York University (NYU).
Matthew Israel is a controversial American behavioral psychologist who is known for founding the Judge Rotenberg Center and inventing the Graduated Electronic Decelerator. As a freshman in college, Israel read B. F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two, in which the heroes build a utopia by conditioning the residents of a commune through the behaviorist principles of reward and punishment. Israel said that reading Walden Two was like a "religious conversion" for him. After reading the book, Israel devoted himself to making the utopia described in it a reality. Israel said that the period between reading the book and his first attempts to start the utopia was a very difficult time of his life. "I thought about committing suicide," he said. "If I couldn't bring a community into existence, [in] what sense was life worth living?" Israel went on to study behaviorism under B. F. Skinner and to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960.
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