-----Original Message----- From: David Epstein [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 11:02 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Re: Fwd: Great books of science (top 25 anyway)
On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] went: > I can't speak to Harris' work, but what kind of data would David > Epstein like Skinner to have included in BF&D, short of reviewing > several hundred pages of papers published elsewhere? I can't think of any data that would falsify (or support) what Skinner wrote about the irrelevance of thoughts and feelings to behavior. And that's all right, I guess. IT'S INTERESTING THAT WE ARE HAVING THIS DISCUSSION. I SUGGESTED THAT BF&D SHOULD NOT BE ON THE LIST OF SCIENCE BOOKS, AND DAVID EPSTEIN THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE. YET, I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE BOOK AS IS AND HE DOES. ANYWAY, IF ANYONE IS STILL LISTENING.... IT'S IMPORTANT TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN CLAIMS BASED ON DATA AND CLAIMS BASED ON THE LOGIC OF THE SYSTEM. RE: THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS, THOUGH, EVEN COGNITIVE TYPES ARGUE THAT TO CHANGE THESE, YOU CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT. ISN'T THIS THE APPROACH TAKEN BY A COGNITIVE THERPAIST WHO INSTRUCTS HIS/HER CLIENT TO MODIFY IRRATIONAL THINKING AND PROVIDES RELEVANT TRAINING (THERAPY)? THE DATA THAT SPEAK TO THE SUCCESS OF SUCH THERAPY ARE SUPPORTIVE OF SKINNER'S POINT: START WITH THE ENVIRONMENT. PERHAPS OTHER THAN DATA, THOUGH, MORE EXPLANATION OF A BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO PSYCHOLOGY MIGHT HAVE BEEN USEFUL TO INCLUDE IN BF&D. SKINNER LATER WROTE _ABOUT BEHAVIORISM_ (1974) FOR THAT REASON, I THINK, BUT THE BOOK WAS TOO MUCH FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE. I'M BETTING THAT "SKINNER'S PHILOSOPHY" -- NOT LACK OF DATA -- IS WHAT MOST PEOPLE HAD TROUBLE WITH IN BF&D. BUT I GUESS WE'D HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE REVIEWS TO BE SURE. ON THE RELEVANCE OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS TO SKINNER'S ANALYSIS, SEE, E.G., HIS _SCIENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR_ (1953, pp. 23-42). What's not all right is how Skinner sets it up in chapter 1. Take a good, hard look, especially at the final sentence: "In what follows, these issues are discussed 'from a scientific point of view,' but this does not mean that the reader will need to know the details of a scientific analysis of behavior. A mere interpretation will suffice. [...] The instances of behavior cited in what follows are not offered as 'proof' of the interpretation. The proof is to be found in the basic analysis." That passage probably comes across like this to a reasonable lay reader: "Every assertion I make in the following pages is supported by a basic analysis of experimental data; I'm just not citing it. You can find it elsewhere." HARD FOR ME TO SAY WHAT A GENERAL LAY READER WOULD CONCLUDE. SEEMS LIKE AN EXTREME CONCLUSION TO DRAW, THOUGH: "EVERY ASSERTION...." BUT, YES, THE DATA WERE ELSEWHERE. WE CAN CONTINUE TO ARGUE ABOUT WHETHER DATA SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRESENTED -- AND WHAT DATA (SEE BELOW) -- BUT THAT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE GETTING US ANYWHERE. But that's not true, as every commentator here on TIPS seems to have acknowledged. In implying that it's true, Skinner was being--at best--sloppy. He could have been far clearer about what was backed by evidence and what wasn't. He chose to be utterly opaque about it. That's a funny thing to do when you're making far-reaching social prescriptions in the name of psychological science. NOT SURE WHAT THIS REFERS TO -- "EVERY COMMENTATOR HERE ON TIPS...." SKINNER'S PROGRAM IN BF&D IS GENERAL. HE IS CRITICIZING "INNER AGENTS" AND ARGUING FOR THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTINGENCIES OF REINFORCEMENT. THE DATA COME NOT FROM ONE CRUCIAL EXPERIMENT, BUT FROM HUNDREDS OF PAGES IN SOMETHING LIKE THE _JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR_ WHERE EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL OF BEHAVIOR WAS DEMONSTRATED AGAIN AND AGAIN. THE MESSAGE, WHILE IMPORTANT, IS GENERAL: CONTINGENCIES WORK. SAY THAT, ADD SOME CITATIONS, AND YOU'RE DONE. IF THAT'S WHAT DAVID EPSTEIN IS LOOKING FOR, I'LL GO ALONG. > He published what he published and here we are 30+ years later > discussing it. Will we be able to say the same for Harris' work? Now, that's a question we can settle empirically! My guess is yes. Meet me here in 30 years and we'll know. OKAY, BUT I'LL COUNT ON YOU TO REMIND ME. -BRYAN M. On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, Paul Brandon went: >> Chomsky's rebuttal seems to put some pretty big dents in it, too: >> <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19711230.htm> > Haven't waded through this one (I'm skeptical about people who > publish commentaries supposedly about science in the New York Review > of Books ;-) but I doubt that Chomsky read BF&D any more carefully > than he did Verbal Behavior (his 'rebuttal' to that was better > rhetoric than science since it is filled with errors and > misstatements of Skinner's positions). I read the Chomsky rebuttal immediately after having finished _Beyond Freedom and Dignity_ and I didn't catch anything that seemed like a misrepresentation of what I'd just read in Skinner. It was a very negative assessment--much more negative than mine had been--but if it was factually unsound, I didn't know enough to see where. I'm open to being set straight on that (I mean that honestly, not as some kind of rhetorical flourish). --David Epstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=engl ish --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
