Beyond freedom and dignity online.
Runes - 11/29/2021 I am starting to post my translation of chapters of Professor B.F.’s book published in 1971. Skinner's "Above Freedom and Honor" - B. F. Skinner, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity", the title of which is usually translated as "Beyond Freedom and Dignity." First of all, I should note that Skinner himself (see, for example, evidence in Skinner's biography: D. W. Bjork, "B. F. Skinner. A Life", p. 200) wanted to title this book " Freedom and Dignity
", but the publisher insisted that it be named in imitation of two notorious opuses: F. Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" and Z. Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." The negative consequences of this cheap commercial trick were not long in coming. All opponents of Skinner and behaviorism immediately seized on this title, reeking of cheap sensationalism, using it as the starting point of their attacks. Almost the entire “intellectual elite” of the United States took up arms against this book by Skinner - it was a very convenient target for attacks (which does not reflect the meaning of the book, which is scientific explanation, and not at all in the hooligan-anarchist overthrow of ethical principles) name. The singer of the chorus of media slanderers was the well-known Chomsky-Chomsky, a would-be linguist, occultist and social liberalist, with his devastating “review” of New York Review of Books
. He clearly did not read the book itself, and acted completely beside the point as a kind of noble knight filled with indignation, defending the “American values of freedom and democracy” from the imaginary misanthropic fantasies of Skinner, who allegedly does not see the difference between a person and pigeons or rats.
The reason for this retrograde movement from experimental science to speculative scholasticism, in my opinion, is the fundamental hypocrisy and criminality of the American way of life. The hidden mechanisms of the totalitarian power of capital that drive American society are masked by sacrilege and high-flown liberal demagoguery, and therefore the application of behavioral principles of social engineering to effectively and optimally correct the evils of the American way of life that became apparent in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s for very For many, awakened by the black rights movement and protests against US aggression in Vietnam, it was unthinkable for the true, behind-the-scenes lords of the dollar empire.
After all, it is one thing to have an anarchic individualist revolt of youth intoxicated by vague idealistic dreams, and quite another to offer not only an alternative way of life, but also a scientific and technological apparatus that provides a real opportunity to purposefully carry out the transformation of society. The existing state of affairs completely satisfied the ruling capitalist elite of the United States, and therefore it did everything possible to defame Skinner in the mass media with the hands of corrupt media “idealists”, and with the hands of pseudo-cognitive scientists to defame and discredit behaviorism, to deny him competence in the supposedly “ conscious and rational" sphere of social and interpersonal relations and ultimately consign it to general oblivion.
The Ukrainian “revolution of filth” is exactly that. The West has no other goal than to create in Ukraine a situation of permanent chaos and lawlessness, which it needs to wage a terrorist war against Russia. None of the Western puppets brought to power by Nuland, CIA & Co "will not give the fooled Ukrainians either a "European civilization" or a more or less tolerable standard of living. The future of Ukraine, destined by the West, can now be seen in Libya, Iraq and Yemen. It is no coincidence that the West brought our age-old enemies - the Zionist oligarchs - to power in Kyiv "Potroshenko-Valtsman & Co "His goal is to turn Ukraine into a "failed state - failed state ", and the fascist-Bandera component of the Kyiv puppet regime is aimed at destroying the usual way of life created in Ukraine by the Soviet Government, using terror against the civilian populationall Ukraine, and not at all to create some mythical “Euro-Bandera paradise.”
The teaching of radical behaviorism is socialist in its deepest essence, because it rejects the bourgeois idealistic, individualistic fabrications that supposedly “free individuals” create both the social order and history. On the contrary, the sober, truly scientific, supported by irrefutable experimental data point of view of behaviorism on social relations consists in the understanding that, just the opposite, a person is a product, a creation of the society that raised him, no matter how brilliant or, on the contrary, pathological, this person may be.
Consequently, interpersonal and social relationships shape human “characters” and “habits” (i.e., patterns of behavior), and not the other way around, and this process of operant adaptation of individuals to real (and not illusory) social norms is incommensurate in its power with the pathetic by the strength of individuals, quixotically trying to change society with the help of some of their “extra-valuable ideas”, be they religious, cognitivist, Marxist or any other.
Why did I find it necessary to translate the title of this book " Beyond Freedom and Dignity " into Russian like this: “Above freedom and honor”? - Because freedom and honor are individualistic and sometimes even antisocial values, transformed by bourgeois society into the arbitrariness and arrogance of money bags. What can stand above them? - Well, of course, not “values” ", and the principles of collectivism - equality, mutual assistance, solidarity and love for neighbors - which can be revived in a society distorted by capitalism only with the help of behaviorist technology of operant social engineering.
In short, behaviorist socialism is a real opportunity to purposefully implement Lenin’s most important behest, which neither he himself nor his crushed and corrupted CPSU “heirs” were able to implement: LEARN COMMUNISM! It is my hope that current readers of this book will recognize Skinner as right in his debate with the current political and scientific establishment in the United States and apply his scientific legacy to the construction of a socially just society.
Professor B.F. Skinner
"Chapter 1: Behavior Technology
As we try to solve the terrifying problems we face in today's world, we naturally do what we do best. We apply what we are strong at; and our strength is science and technology. To curb the population explosion, we are looking for better methods of birth control. Seeing the threat of nuclear war, we are creating a nuclear deterrent capability and a missile defense system. We are trying to prevent the global threat of hunger with new crops and more efficient ways to grow them. Improved sanitation and medicine will hopefully conquer disease; improved housing conditions and transport networks will solve the problems of black ghettos, and new methods of waste minimization and disposal will stop environmental pollution. We can even note significant achievements in all these areas, and it is not at all surprising that we should strive to further increase them. However, the situation is getting worse and worse, and it is disconcerting that it turns out that the technology itself is increasingly to blame for this. Sanitation and medicine made the problems of population growth more acute, war became even more terrible with the invention of nuclear weapons, and the consumer desire for well-being is largely responsible for environmental pollution. As Darlington said:
"Every new source from which man draws his power on earth has always been exploited in such a way that the prospects for succeeding generations are narrowed. All his progress has been achieved at the expense of damage to the environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee."
Whether the damage was foreseeable or not, a person must compensate for it or he will lose everything. And he can only do this if he understands the essence of the problem. The application of physical and biological sciences will not solve our problems, because the solutions lie in a completely different area. Better contraception will only curb population growth if people use it. New weapons systems will be able to overcome new defenses against them and vice versa, but nuclear disaster will be averted only when the conditions under which states go to war are eliminated. New methods Agriculture and medicine will not help if they are not applied in practice, and the housing issue is not only a matter of construction and planning of cities, but also of people’s lifestyle. Overpopulation can only be eliminated by encouraging people not to live in crowded conditions, and the environment will continue to degrade until people stop polluting activities.
In short, we have to make huge changes in human behavior, and we can't do it with physics or biology alone, no matter how hard we try. (There are also other problems, such as the crisis of our educational system and the discontent and rebellion of youth, to which physical and biological technologies have so obviously nothing to do with them that they have never been tried.) It is not at all enough to “use technologies with more deep understanding of human problems," or "put technology at the service of human spiritual needs," or "encourage technologists to engage with human problems." From such expressions it follows that where human behavior begins, technology ends, and here we must continue, as we have done before, relying on what we know from personal experience, or on the repository of the experience of people of the past, called history, or on those concentrates human experience, which can be found in folk wisdom and rules of thumb. All this has been available for many centuries, and all that can be shown as a result is the current state of affairs in the world.
What we lack is behavior technology. We could solve our problems very quickly if we could regulate the growth of the world's population as precisely as we adjust the orbit of a spaceship, or improve the state of agriculture and industry with even a fraction of the confidence with which we accelerate elementary particles to high energies, or moving towards world peace with something similar to the constant progress that is made towards absolute zero temperature (though both goals seem to remain out of reach). To do this, however, we do not have behavioral control technology comparable in power and precision to that of physics and biology; moreover, for those who do not consider the very possibility of this to be ludicrous, it is more terrifying than encouraging. That is how far we are from “understanding human problems” in the sense in which physics and biology understand problems in their own sphere, and how far we are from being able to prevent the catastrophe towards which the world seems to be moving inexorably.
We can say that two and a half thousand years ago a person understood himself to the same extent as any part of the world around him. Today he is able to understand himself worse than anything else. Physics and biology have come a long way of progress, but there has never been any similar development of something like a science of human behavior. The physics and biology of ancient Greece are now of little more than historical interest (no modern physicist or biologist would turn to Aristotle for help), but Plato's dialogues are still taught to students and quoted as if they shed light on human behavior. Aristotle could not understand a page of a current textbook of physics or biology, but Socrates and his friends would have only minimal difficulty understanding the latest scientific discussions on humanities. And when it comes to technology, we have made enormous strides in managing physical and biological processes, but the progress of our practical activities in the spheres of government, education and most of the economy, albeit adapted to a wide variety of conditions, is not particularly great.
We can hardly explain this by saying that the ancient Greeks knew everything there was to know about human behavior. Of course, they knew more about him than they knew about the physical world, but it was truly scanty knowledge. Moreover, their way of thinking about human behavior was obviously fatally flawed. While ancient Greek physics and biology, primitive as they were, eventually led to modern science, ancient Greek theories of human behavior have led us nowhere. And if they still dominate us today, it is not because they contained some eternal truth, but because they did not contain the seeds of anything better.
Of course, anyone can argue that human behavior is a particularly complex "matter." This is true, and we are especially prone to think this way precisely because we are so incompetent at it. But modern physics and biology successfully deal with subjects that are by no means simpler than many aspects of human behavior. The difference is that the tools and techniques they use are commensurate with the complexity of the tasks at hand. But the fact that tools and methods of adequate power are not available in the field of human behavior research is not the whole explanation, but only part of it. Is it really easier to fly a man to the moon than to improve the quality of education in our secondary schools? Or build better housing for everyone, worthy of a person? Or give everyone useful, well-paid jobs and, as a result, give them more high level life? The question here is not a matter of choosing priorities, because no one would dare to say that getting to the Moon is more important than all this. No, the exciting thing about going to the moon is that it has become possible. Science and technology had reached a level where, with one big leap forward, this could be done. But there is no such enthusiasm for problems related to human behavior. We are still far from solving them.
The simplest conclusion to draw is that there must be something in human behavior that makes scientific analysis, and therefore effective technology, impossible. But we have by no means exhausted the possibilities for this. On the contrary, there is even a suspicion that allows us to say that scientific methods have hardly been applied in the study of human behavior. Yes, the tools of science were used; something was calculated, measured and compared; However, something important for scientific practice is completely missing from almost all modern discussions of human behavior. This has direct bearing on our understanding of the causes of behavior. (The term “cause” is now rarely used in serious scientific works, but it can be used here.)
Man's first acquaintance with causes probably comes from the experience of his own behavior: objects move when he moves them. If other objects move, it is because someone is moving them, and if the mover is not visible, then it is because he is invisible. Ancient Greek gods served in this role as the causes of physical phenomena. They were usually located outside the objects they moved, but sometimes they could inhabit them, making them “possessed.” Physics and biology soon abandoned explanations of this kind and turned to more useful kinds of causes, but this step was never taken with regard to human behavior. Reasonable people no longer believe that there is "possession" by demons (although exorcism is sometimes practiced, and references to the demonic have reappeared in the writings of psychotherapists), but people's behavior is still usually attributed to some "agent" residing within them. For example, a juvenile delinquent is said to suffer from personality defects. It would make sense to express it this way only if the “personality” were something different from the body, which is what got into trouble. This difference becomes clear when it is argued that one body supposedly contains several personalities who control it differently at different moments. Psychoanalysts postulated three such personalities - "I - Ego", "Super-Ego" and "It-Id" " - and claim that the interactions between them are responsible for the behavior of the person in which they supposedly "dwell".
Although physics subsequently ceased to personify objects in this way, it continued for a long time when it was argued that objects supposedly have will, impulses, feelings, intentions and other private attributes of the “mover” that dwells in them. According to Butterfield, Aristotle argued that a body accelerates as it falls because it is more and more elated as it gets closer and closer to its goal, and later scholastic authorities believed that the nucleus is driven by a certain “impulse”, which was sometimes called “swiftness.” - impetuosity "All this was eventually abandoned, and rightly so, but the behavioral sciences still explain it in terms of similar internal "entities." No one is surprised when they say that a person, bringing good news, walks faster because he feels glee, or acts imprudently due to impulsiveness, or stubbornly sticks to the same course of action due to willpower. Careless teleological statements about “goals” can still be found in physics and biology, but standard practice has been eliminated. of them; on the contrary, almost all human behavior is attributed to intentions, plans, goals and objectives. If the question is still possible whether an automaton can have a goal of activity, then this question implies (and this must be emphasized): whether it can be similar to a person.
Physics and biology moved away from personalized causes when they began to attribute the behavior of things to entities, qualities, or their nature. For the medieval alchemist, for example, some of the properties of a substance could be related to the "mercurial" (mercurial) essence, and substances were compared according to what might be called the "Chemistry of Individual Differences." Newton complained about the habit of his contemporaries: “If we are told that every kind of thing is endowed with a secret, specific quality by virtue of which it acts and produces obvious effects, then essentially nothing is being said.” (The hidden qualities are an example of hypotheses that Newton rejected, declaring: “I make no hypotheses - Hypotheses non fingo ", although he himself was not always able to follow this motto.) Biology continued for a long time to refer to the "nature" of living beings, and did not completely abandon the concept of "life force" until the twentieth century. Behavior, however, still attributed" human nature", and there is the pompous "Psychology of Individual Differences" in which people are compared and described in terms of personality traits, abilities and skills."
Content
Chapter 1: Technology of Behavior Chapter 2: Freedom Chapter 3: Honor
Chapter 4: Punishment
Chapter 5: Alternatives to Punishment
Chapter 6: Values Chapter 7: Evolution of Culture
Chapter 8: Constructing Culture
Chapter 9: What is it - a person
Chapter 1: Behavior Technology
In an attempt to solve the terrifying problems that confront us in today's world, we,
Naturally, we do what we do best. We use what we are strong in. Our strength is science and technology. To curb the population explosion, we are looking for better methods of birth control. Seeing the threat of nuclear war, we will create a nuclear deterrent capability and a missile defense system. We are trying to prevent the global threat of hunger with new crops and more efficient ways to grow them. Improved sanitation and medicine will hopefully overcome disease, improved housing and transportation networks will solve the problems of black ghettos, and new methods of waste minimization and disposal will stop environmental pollution. We can even note significant achievements in all these areas, and it is not at all surprising that we should strive to further increase them. However, the situation is getting worse and worse, and it is disconcerting that it turns out that the technology itself is increasingly to blame for this. Sanitation and medicine made the problems of population growth more acute, war became even more terrible with the invention of nuclear weapons, and the consumer desire for well-being is largely responsible for environmental pollution. As Darlington said:
"Every new source from which man draws his power on earth has always been exploited in such a way that the prospects for succeeding generations are narrowed. All his progress has been achieved at the expense of damage to the environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee. "
Regardless of whether the damage could have been foreseen or not, a person must compensate for it or he will lose everything. Ion can only do this if he understands the essence of the problem. The application of physical and biological sciences will not solve our problems, because the solutions lie in a completely different area. Better contraception will only curb population growth if people use it. New weapons systems will be able to overcome new defenses against them and vice versa, but nuclear disaster will be averted only when the conditions under which states go to war are eliminated. New methods of agriculture and medicine will not help if they are not put into practice, and the housing issue is not only a matter of building and planning cities, but also of people’s lifestyles. Overpopulation can only be eliminated by encouraging people not to live in crowded conditions, and the environment will continue to degrade until people stop engaging in polluting activities.
In short, we have to make huge changes in human behavior, and we can't do it with physics or biology alone, no matter how hard we try. (There are also other problems, such as the crisis of our educational system and the discontent and rebellion of youth, to which physical and biological technologies have so obviously nothing to do with that they have never been tried) It is not enough to “use technology with a deeper understanding human problems," or "to put technology at the service of man's spiritual needs, or "to encourage technologists to deal with the problems of humanity." From such expressions it follows that where human behavior begins,
technology ends, and here we must continue, as it was done before, relying on what we know from personal experience, or on the repository of the experience of people of the past,
called history, or those concentrates of human experience that can be found in folk wisdom and rules of thumb. All this has been available for many centuries, and all that can be shown as a result is the current state of affairs in the world.
What we lack is behavior technology. We could solve our problems very quickly if we could regulate the growth of the world's population as precisely as we adjust the orbit of a spaceship, or improve the state of agriculture and industry with even a fraction of the confidence with which we accelerate elementary particles to high energies, or moving towards world peace with something similar to the constant progress that is being made towards absolute zero temperature (although both goals seem to remain out of reach. However, for this we do not have behavior control technology comparable in strength and accuracy with the technology of physics and biology, moreover, those who do not consider the very possibility of this ridiculous,
it is more terrifying than reassuring. That is how far we are from “understanding human problems” in the sense in which physics and biology understand problems in their own sphere, and how far we are from being able to prevent the catastrophe towards which the world seems to be moving inexorably.
We can say that two and a half thousand years ago a person understood himself to the same extent as
like any part of the surrounding world. Today he is able to understand himself worse than anything else. Physics and biology have come a long way of progress, but there has never been any similar development of something like the science of human behavior. Physics and biology ancient Greece are now only of historical interest (not a single modern physicist or biologist will turn to Aristotle for help, but Plato’s dialogues are still taught to students and quoted as if they shed light on human behavior. Aristotle could not understand a page of a current textbook physics or biology, but Sokrati's friends would have only minimal difficulty understanding the latest scientific discussions on humanitarian issues. And as for technology, we have made enormous strides in the control of physical and biological processes, but here is the progress of our practical activities in the spheres of government. ,
education and most of the economy, although adapted to a wide variety of conditions, is not particularly large.
We can hardly explain this by saying that the ancient Greeks knew everything there was to know about human behavior. Of course, they knew more about him than they knew about the physical world, but it was truly scanty knowledge. Moreover, their way of thinking about human behavior was obviously fatally flawed. While ancient Greek physics and biology, despite all its primitiveness, ultimately led to modern science, the ancient Greek theories of human behavior have led us nowhere. And if they still dominate us today, it is not because they contained some eternal truth, but because they did not contain the seeds of anything better.
Of course, anyone could argue that human behavior is a particularly complex
matter. It is true that we are especially inclined to think this way precisely because we are so incompetent in it. But modern physics and biology successfully deal with subjects that are by no means simpler than many aspects of human behavior. The difference is that the tools and techniques they use are commensurate with the complexity of the tasks at hand. But the fact that tools and methods of adequate power are not available in the field of human behavior research is not the whole explanation, but only part of it. Is it really easier to fly a man to the moon than to improve the quality of education in our secondary schools, or to build better housing for everyone, worthy of a person, or to provide everyone with useful, well-paid jobs and, as a result, give them a higher standard of living? The question here is not a matter of choice priorities, because no one would dare say that getting to the moon is more important than all of this. No, the exciting thing about going to the moon is that it became possible. Science and technology had reached a level where, with one big leap forward, this could be done. But there is no such enthusiasm for problems related to human behavior. We are still far from solving them.
The simplest conclusion to draw is that there must be something in human behavior that makes scientific analysis, and therefore effective technology, impossible. The nomes have by no means exhausted the possibilities for this. On the contrary, there is even a suspicion that allows us to say that scientific methods have hardly been applied in the study of human behavior. Yes, the tools of science were used, things were calculated, measured and compared, but something important for scientific practice is completely missing from almost all modern discussions about human behavior. This has direct bearing on our understanding of the causes of behavior. (The term “cause” is now rarely used in serious scientific works, but it can be used here.)
Man's first acquaintance with causes probably comes from the experience of his own behavior; objects move when he moves. If other objects move, then this is because someone is moving them, and if the mover is invisible, then this is because
that he is invisible. The ancient Greek gods served in this role as the causes of physical phenomena.
They were usually located outside the objects they moved, but sometimes they could move into them,
making them "possessed." Physics and biology soon abandoned explanations of this kind and turned to more useful types of causality; this step was never taken with regard to human behavior. Reasonable people no longer believe that there is "possession" by demons (although exorcism is sometimes is practiced, and references to the emonic have reappeared in the works of psychotherapists, but people's behavior is still usually attributed to some "active principle" residing within them. For example,
They say that the juvenile delinquent suffers from personality effects. It would make sense to express it this way only if the “personality” were something different from the body, which was the one that hit the tree in the first place. This difference becomes clear when it is argued that one body supposedly contains several personalities who control it differently at different moments.
Psychoanalysts have postulated three such personalities - the "I-Ego", the "Super-Ego" and the "It-Id" - and argue that the interactions between them are responsible for the behavior of the person in which they supposedly "dwell".
Although physics subsequently ceased to personify objects in this way, this continued for a long time, when it was argued that objects supposedly
there is will, impulses, feelings, intentions and other private attributes of the “mover” that dwells in them. According to Butterfield, Aristotle argued that a body accelerates when falling because it is more and more exultant, finding itself closer and closer to its goal, and Later scholastic authorities believed that the nucleus was driven by a certain “impulse, which was sometimes called impetuosity. All this was eventually abandoned, and rightly so, but the behavioral sciences still explain it in terms of such internal “entities.” No one is surprised when it is said that a person who brings good news walks faster because he feels elated, or acts carelessly because of his impulsiveness, or stubbornly adheres to one course of action because of his willpower. Careless teleological statements about "goals" can still be found in physics and biology, but standard practice has gotten rid of them; instead, human behavior is almost universally attributed to intentions, plans, goals, and objectives. If the question is still possible whether an automaton can have a goal of activity, then this question implies (and this must be emphasized) whether it can be similar to a person in this.
Physics and biology moved away from personalized causes when they began to attribute the behavior of things to essences (principles, qualities or their nature. For a medieval alchemist, for example, some of the properties of a substance could be associated with a "mercurial" (mercurial) essence, and substances were compared according to what may be called "The Chemistry of Individual Differences," Newton complained about the habit of his contemporaries: "If we are told that every kind of thing is endowed with a secret peculiar quality by which it operates and produces manifest effects,
then in essence they do not say anything" (Intimate qualities are an example of hypotheses that Newton rejected, declaring “I do not compose hypotheses - Hypotheses non fingo,” although he himself was not always able to follow this motto) Biology continued to refer to "nature" of living beings, and did not even completely abandon the concept of "vital force" until the twentieth century. Behavior, however, is still attributed to "human nature", and there is a pompous "Psychology of individual differences" in which people are compared and described in categories. character traits, abilities and skills.
Almost everyone who deals with human affairs - political scientists, philosophers, writers,
Economists, psychologists, linguists, sociologists, theologians, anthropologists, educators and psychotherapists continue to talk about human behavior in this unscientific way. Every issue of daily newspapers, magazines, professional periodicals, and every book that has anything to do with human behavior will provide us with an abundance of examples. We are told that to control the world's population we must change our attitude towards children, overcome pride in the number of offspring in the family or sexual potency, acquire a certain sense of responsibility towards offspring, and reduce the role that large families play in overcoming the worries of old age. Like,
fighting the hurt of the world, we are dealing with the will to power or paranoid delusions
rulers, and we supposedly must remember that wars begin in the minds of people, that supposedly there is something suicidal in human nature - probably the death instinct, which will lead to wars, that man is aggressive by nature. To solve the problems of the poor, we say, we must instill in them self-respect, encourage initiative and reduce the feeling of hopelessness. To overcome youth discontent, we must give them meaning in life and reduce their feelings of alienation or hopelessness. Realizing that we don't have effective ways achieve any of this, we ourselves can experience a crisis
faith or lose faith in oneself, which can supposedly be restored only by returning to faith in the inner strength of the individual. We are fed all this every day, and almost no one questions it. However, there is nothing like this in modern physics or much of biology, and this fact may well explain why behavioral science and technology has fallen so far behind.
It is usually assumed that "behaviorist" objections to ideas, feelings, character traits, will, etc., are related to the material from which they are supposedly made.
Some damned questions about the “nature of consciousness, of course, have been debated for more than two and a half thousand years and still remain unanswered.
How, for example, can consciousness move the body? This continues to this day in 1965, Karl
Popper could pose the question this way: “We want to understand how such intangible things as goals, thoughts, plans, decisions, theories, doubts and values can play their role in bringing about material changes in the material world.” And,
of course, we also want to know where these intangible things come from. The ancient Greeks had a simple answer to this question from the gods. As Dods noted, the ancient Greeks believed,
that if a person behaved stupidly, it was because a god hostile to him had instilled passion) in his chest. Hell, the friendly god could give the warrior an additional amount, with which he would fight brilliantly. Aristotle thought that there was something divine in thought, and Zeno believed that reason was God.
We cannot continue in the same spirit today, so the most common alternative is to refer to previous material phenomena.
Universal human qualities, this product of the evolution of the human race, as they say,
explain part of the workings of his consciousness, and the rest - the history of his personal experience.
For example, due to (material) competition entering evolution, people now have
(intangible) feeling of aggressiveness that leads to (material) acts of hostility. Or (physical) punishment to which a small child is subjected,
being caught playing sexually produces a (non-physical) feeling of fear,
which interferes with his (physical) sexual behavior in adulthood. This intangible, non-physical stage apparently extends over long periods of time; aggression has its roots in millions of years of evolutionary history, and fear,
experienced in childhood oppresses even into old age.
The problem of transition from one type of phenomena to another could be avoided if they were all either mental (spiritual or physical, and both of these possibilities had their supporters. Some philosophers tried to stay in this world of the soul,
asserting that only direct experience is real, and experimental psychology began as an attempt to discover the mental laws that govern the interactions between mental phenomena. Modern "intrapsychic" theories of psychotherapy discuss how one feeling leads to another (how, for example, frustration gives rise to aggression, how feelings interact, and how feelings expelled from consciousness make their way back into it. The opposite position claims that the mental stage is actually physical, was taken, oddly enough, by Freud, who believed that physiology would ultimately explain the work of the psyche. In a similar spirit, many physiologists.
psychologists continue to talk uncontrollably about states of consciousness, feelings, and so on,
in the hope that it is only a matter of time before we understand their physical nature.
The dimensions of the world of consciousness and transitions from one world to another cannot but cause discouraging problems; usually, they can be ignored, and this, apparently,
a successful strategy because the more important objection to mentalism (cognitivism)
of a completely different kind. (For mentalists) the world of consciousness obscures everything else. (Real)
behavior is not recognized as a subject of independent research. IN
in psychotherapy, for example, the abnormalities that a person does or says are almost always considered merely symptoms, and in comparison with the fascinating dramas supposedly playing out in the depths of the psyche, the behavior itself seems to be only a superficial phenomenon. In linguistics and literary criticism, what a person says
almost always seen as an expression of ideas and feelings. In political science, theology, and economics, behavior is usually seen as the material from which inferences are made about attitudes, intentions, needs, and so on. For more than two and a half thousand years, the closest attention was paid to the life of the “soul”, but only at the most Lately attempts are being made to examine human behavior as more than just a side effect.
The conditions on which behavior depends are also neglected. Mentalistic
The (cognitivist) explanation suppresses any curiosity. We see this effect in ordinary conversation. If we ask someone “Why did they go to the theater” and they will answer “Because I wanted to”, we tend to accept this answer as some kind of explanation. It would be much more correct to find out what happened when he went to the theater in the past, or what he heard or read about the play he went to see, or what other phenomena in his past or present life might induce him to go to the theater
(instead of doing something else, we are satisfied with this “Because I wanted to” as a kind of summary of it all, and are not inclined to ask further.
Professional psychologists often stop at the same point. Many years ago
William James corrected a common misconception about the connection between feelings and actions, arguing, for example, that we do not run away because we are afraid, but because we are afraid
because we are running away. In other words, what we feel when we feel fear is our behavior, the same behavior that, according to the traditional view, expresses and is explained by the feeling. But how many of those who have considered the argument
James, notice that there is actually no indication of a prior event?
As well as the fact that this “because” should not be taken seriously at all. And it doesn’t explain at all why we run away and feel fear.
If we think we are explaining feelings, or saying that feelings cause behavior, then we are paying too little attention to antecedent circumstances.
The psychotherapist learns about the early years of his patient's life almost exclusively from his memories, which, as we know, do not inspire confidence, and he may even claim that
that what is supposedly important is not what actually happened, but what the patient remembers. IN
psychoanalytic literature, perhaps, for every
Above freedom and honor
B.F. Skinner
Translation into Russian: behaviorist-socialist
Layout of the e-book: Igor Mukhin
Chapter 1: Behavior Technology
In an attempt to solve the terrifying problems that confront us in today's world, we,
Naturally, we do what we do best. We apply what we are
strong; and our strength is science and technology. To contain the population explosion, we are looking for
best methods of birth control. Seeing the threat of nuclear war, we create
nuclear deterrence potential and missile defense systems. We
trying to prevent the global threat of famine with new agricultural
crops and more efficient ways of growing them. Improvement of sanitary
conditions and medicine, we hope, will defeat diseases; improvement of living conditions and
transport network will solve the problems of black ghettos, and new methods of minimizing and
Waste disposal causes environmental pollution. We can even
note significant achievements in all these areas, and it is not at all surprising that
we must strive to further increase them. However, the situation is getting worse
worse and worse, and it’s disheartening that it turns out that more and more people are to blame for this
the technologies themselves. Sanitation and medicine made population growth problems
Moreover, war became even more terrible with the invention of nuclear weapons, and
consumer desire for well-being is largely responsible for
environmental pollution. As Darlington said:
"Every new source from which man draws his power on earth is always
used in such a way that the prospects for future generations are narrowed. All of him
progress has been achieved at the expense of environmental damage that it cannot
compensate and could not have foreseen."
Regardless of whether the damage was foreseeable or not, the person must
compensate him, or he will lose everything. And he can only do this if he understands the essence
Problems. The application of physical and biological sciences will not solve our problems, because
the solutions lie in a completely different area. The best contraceptives will curb growth
population, only if people use them. New weapon systems will be able to
overcome new means of protection against them and vice versa, but a nuclear disaster will
prevented only when the conditions under which states
are starting a war. New methods of agriculture and medicine will not help if they are not available
put into practice, and the housing issue is not just a matter of construction and planning
cities, but also people's lifestyles. Overpopulation can only be eliminated by encouraging
people will not settle crowded together, and the environment will degrade until
people will not give up activities that pollute it.
In short, we have to make huge changes in human behavior, and we don't
can only do this with the help of physics or biology, no matter how we
no matter how hard they tried. (There are also other problems, such as the crisis of our system
education and discontent and rebellion of youth, to which physical and biological
technology is so obviously irrelevant that it has never been attempted
apply.) It is not at all enough to “use technology with a deeper understanding
human problems" or "putting technology at the service of spiritual needs
Human" or "to encourage technologists to tackle problems
humanity." From such expressions it follows that where human behavior begins,
technology is ending, and here we must continue, as we did before, relying
on what we know from personal experience, or on the repository of the experience of people of the past,
called history, or those concentrates of human experience that can be found in
folk wisdom and rules of thumb. All this has been available for many centuries, and
all that can be shown as a result is the current state of affairs in the world.
What we lack is behavior technology. We could solve our problems
very quickly, if it were possible to regulate the growth of the world population as accurately as
we are adjusting the orbit of a spacecraft, or improving the state of agriculture
and industry with at least a fraction of the confidence with which we are accelerating basic
particles to high energies, or move towards world peace with something
similar to the constant progress with which we approach absolute zero
temperature (although both goals, it seems, will become inaccessible). However, for this we have
there is no behavior control technology comparable in power and precision to technology
physics and biology; Moreover, those who do not consider the very possibility of this to be ridiculous,
it is more terrifying than reassuring. That's how far we are still from "understanding
human problems" in the sense in which physics and biology understand problems in
our own sphere, and how far we are from being able to prevent that
a catastrophe towards which the world seems to be moving inexorably.
We can say that two and a half thousand years ago a person understood himself to the same extent as
like any part of the surrounding world. Today he is able to understand himself worse than
anything else. Physics and biology have come a long way of progress, but no
There has never been a similar development of something like a science of human behavior. Physics and
biology of ancient Greece are now only of historical interest (not a single
a modern physicist or biologist will not turn to Aristotle for help), but the dialogues
Plato is still taught to students and quoted as if they were illuminating
on human behavior. Aristotle could not understand a page of the current textbook
physics or biology, but Socrates and his friends would have had only minimal difficulty with
understanding of the latest scholarly discussions on humanitarian issues. And as for
technology, we have made enormous strides in managing physical and biological
processes, but here is the progress of our practical activities in the spheres of the state,
education and most of the economy, albeit adapted to the most diverse
conditions, not very great.
We can hardly explain this by saying that the ancient Greeks knew everything there was to know about
human behavior. Of course they knew more about him than they knew about the physical
world, but it was truly scanty knowledge. In addition, their way of thinking about behavior
the person obviously had a fatal defect. While ancient Greek physics and
biology, despite all its primitiveness, ultimately led to modern
science, the ancient Greek theories of human behavior have led us nowhere. And if they
prevail over us today, this is not because they contained some eternal truth, but
because they did not contain seeds of anything better.
Of course, anyone can argue that human behavior is a particularly complex
"matter". This is true, and we are especially inclined to think so precisely because
we are so incompetent at it. But modern physics and biology are successfully engaged in
subjects that are by no means simpler than many aspects of human behavior. Difference in
that the tools and methods they use are commensurate with the complexity
according to the assigned tasks. But the fact that tools and methods of appropriate power
are not available in the field of human behavior research - this is not the whole explanation, but
only part of it. Is it really easier for a man to fly to the moon than
improve the quality of education in our secondary schools? Or build for everyone
the best housing worthy of a person? Or provide everyone with a useful, well-paid
jobs and, as a result, give them a higher standard of living? The question here is not one of choice.
priorities, because no one would dare to say what is more important than all this
get to the moon. No, the exciting thing about going to the moon is that it became
oh we do. Science and technology have reached a level where, with one large
a leap forward could have been done. But regarding behavior problems
man, there is no such enthusiasm at all. We are still far from solving them.
The simplest conclusion to draw is that there must be something in human behavior that
makes scientific analysis, and therefore effective technology, impossible. But we
still have by no means exhausted the possibilities for this. On the contrary, there is even
suspicion that allows one to say that scientific methods have hardly been applied in
study of human behavior. Yes, the tools of science were used; something
calculated, measured and compared; however, something important for scientific practice
is completely absent from almost all contemporary discussions of human behavior. This
has direct bearing on our understanding of the causes of behavior. (The term "reason" is now
rarely used in serious scientific works, but here it can be used.)
Man's first acquaintance with causes probably comes from his own experience.
behavior: objects move when he moves them. If others move
objects, then this is because someone is moving them, and if the mover is not visible, then this is because
that he is invisible. The ancient Greek gods served in this role as the causes of physical phenomena.
They were usually located outside the objects they moved, but sometimes they could move into them,
making them "possessed". Physics and biology soon abandoned explanations of this kind and
turned to more useful types of causes, but this step was never taken in
regarding human behavior. Reasonable people no longer believe what happens
"possession" by demons (although exorcism is sometimes practiced, and references to
demonic appeared again in the opuses of psychotherapists), but people's behavior is still
usually attributed to some "active principle" dwelling within them. For example,
the juvenile delinquent is said to suffer from personality defects. It was meant to be expressed this way
would make sense only if “personality” were something different from the body, which
and got into trouble. This difference becomes clear when they begin to reason that one body
supposedly contains several personalities who control it differently at different moments.
Psychoanalysts have posited three such personalities - “I - Ego”, “Super-Ego” and “It”
- Id" - and argue that the interactions between them are responsible for human behavior, in
which they supposedly “live”.
Although physics subsequently ceased to personify objects in this way, this
continued for a long time, when it was argued that objects supposedly
There is will, impulses, feelings, intentions and other private attributes of the person who lives in them.
"mover". According to Butterfield, Aristotle argued that a body accelerates when falling
because it rejoices more and more, finding itself closer and closer to its goal, and more
later scholastic authorities believed that the nucleus is driven by a certain “impulse”, which sometimes
called "impetuosity". All this was eventually abandoned, and
they did the right thing, but behavioral sciences still explain it like this
internal "entities". No one is surprised when they say that a person, bringing
good news, walks faster because he feels elated, or acts
careless due to impulsiveness, or stubbornly sticking to the same thing
course of action because of one's willpower. Neo-cautious teleological statements about
"goals" can still be found in physics and biology, but standard practice is no longer
got rid of them; on the contrary, almost everyone attributes human behavior
intentions, plans, goals and objectives. If the question is still possible, can the machine
have a goal of activity, then this question implies (and this must be emphasized): can
in this he is like a man.
Physics and biology moved away from personalized causes when they began
attribute the behavior of things to essences (principles), qualities or their nature. For
medieval alchemist, for example, some of the properties of a substance could be associated with
"mercurial" (mercurial) essence, and the substances were compared according to what could be
call it "The Chemistry of Individual Differences." Newton complained about his habit
contemporaries: “If we are told that every kind of thing is endowed with a hidden
specific quality due to which it acts and produces obvious effects,
then in essence they do not say anything." (Secret qualities are an example of hypotheses that
rejected Newton, declaring: “I do not compose hypotheses - Hypotheses non fingo,” although he himself did not
always managed to follow this motto.) Biology continued for a long time
time to refer to the “nature” of living beings, and has not even completely abandoned
the concept of "life force" up to the twentieth century. The behavior, however, is still
attributed to "human nature", and there is a pompous "Psychology
individual differences" in which people are compared and described in terms of traits
character, abilities and skills.
Almost everyone who deals with human affairs - political scientists, philosophers, writers,
economists, psychologists, linguists, sociologists, theologians, anthropologists, teachers and
psychotherapists - continue to talk about human behavior in such pre-scientific ways
way. Each issue of daily newspapers, magazines, professional periodicals and any
a book that has anything to do with human behavior will give us an abundance of
examples. We are told that to control the world population we must
change your attitude towards children, overcome pride in the number of offspring in a family or gender
potency, to gain a certain sense of responsibility towards the offspring, and
reduce the role played by large families in overcoming the worries of old age. Like,
when fighting for the cause of peace, we are dealing with the will to power or paranoid delusions
rulers, and we supposedly must remember that wars begin in the minds of people, which supposedly
there is something suicidal in human nature - probably the death instinct, which
will lead to wars, and that man is aggressive by nature. For solutions
problems of the poor, we supposedly must instill in them self-respect, encourage initiative and
reduce feelings of hopelessness. To overcome youth discontent, we must
Give her meaning in life and reduce her feelings of alienation or hopelessness. Realizing that
we have no effective way to achieve any of this, we ourselves may experience a crisis
faith or lose faith in oneself, which can supposedly be restored only by returning
to faith in the inner strength of the individual. We are fed all this every day, and almost no one
calls this into question. However, there is nothing like this in modern physics or more
parts of biology, and this fact may well explain why science and
technology behavior is so far behind.
It is usually assumed that "behaviourist" objections to ideas, feelings, traits
character, will, and so on, relate to the material from which they are supposedly made.
Certain damned questions about the "nature of consciousness" are, of course, debated on
for more than two and a half thousand years, and still remain unanswered.
How, for example, can consciousness move the body? This continues to this day; in 1965 Karl
Popper could pose the question this way: “We want to understand how such
intangible things like goals, thoughts, plans, decisions, theories, doubts and values can
play our part in bringing about material changes in the material world." And,
of course, we also want to know where these intangible things come from. To this question with
The ancient Greeks had a simple answer: from the gods. As Dodds noted, the ancient Greeks believed
that if a person behaved stupidly, it was because a god hostile to him infused
(passion) in his chest. And a friendly god could give the warrior an additional amount
μένος, with the help of which he will fight brilliantly. Aristotle thought that in thought
there is something divine, and Zeno believed that reason is God.
We cannot continue in the same spirit today, so the most common
the alternative is to refer to previous material phenomena.
Universal human qualities, this product of the evolution of the human race, it is said,
explain part of the work of his consciousness, and the remaining part - the history of his personal experience.
For example, due to (material) competition during evolution, humans now have
(intangible) feeling of aggressiveness that leads to (material) acts
hostility. Or (physical) punishment to which a small child is subjected,
being caught playing sexually produces a (non-physical) feeling of fear,
which interferes with his (physical) sexual behavior in adulthood. This
the immaterial, non-physical stage obviously extends over long periods
time: aggression is rooted in millions of years of evolutionary history, and fear,
experienced in childhood oppresses even into old age.
The problem of transition from one type of phenomena to another could be avoided if all
they were either mental (spiritual) or physical, and both of these capabilities had
their supporters. Some philosophers tried to stay in this world of the soul,
asserting that only direct experience is real, and experimental psychology
began as an attempt to discover the psychic laws that govern interactions
between mental phenomena. Modern "intrapsychic" theories of psychotherapy
discuss how one feeling leads to another (such as disappointment
generates aggression), how feelings interact, and how feelings are expelled from consciousness
they sneak back into it. The opposite position, which claims that mental
stage is actually physical, was taken, oddly enough, by Freud, who believed that
physiology will ultimately explain the functioning of the psyche. In a similar spirit, many physiologists
Psychologists continue to talk uncontrollably about states of consciousness, feelings, and so on,
in the hope that this
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