On Jan 10, 2015, at 2:34 PM, Mike Palij <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, 10 Jan 2015 11:40:13 -0800, Paul Brandon wrote: >> Haven't read the whole article you cite, but a quick sampling indicates some >> glaring misstatements of Skinner's positions, both scientific and >> philosophical. And note that Skinner wrote About Behaviorism to clear up >> some >> misconceptions of his pints in Beyond Freedom and Dignity. >> Both books, of course, were written as popularizations for a lay audience. > > A couple of points: > > (1) I didn't include the article because it was a rigorous refutation > of Skinner's position -- that would be comparable to trying to > settle the debate "Why My God Is Greater Than Your God" -- > but because it provides a fairly common interpretation of Skinner's > BFD and popular understanding of his philosophical positions, at > least with respect to the "image of man" and it's implications for > social policy. You know, the opinions that your students are likely > to hold.
I would disagree on the rigor. Detail does not equal rigor; many of his arguments are of the form ‘you don’t agree with my basic assumptions so you’re wrong’. > (2) Though Skinner wrote BFD for a popular audience, the common > interpretation of it seems to indicate that he failed to adequately make > his points clear and convincing. If he tried to make his points clearer > in subsequent writings, he hasn't done such a good job either. > I think that this shows that asking "What would Skinner Say/Do" > requires one to be very specific about what time and which Skinner > one is referring to instead of implying that is a single, definitive > interpretation of Skinner. If there is, I'd appreciate a cite. One possibility is the collection of papers in Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers: Definitive Edition (1999) For a single statement: • Selection by consequences. Science, 1981, 213, 501-504. There’s a reasonable complete bibliography at http://www.bfskinner.org/publications/full-bibliography/ Most of my comments have been my own synthesis based on my readings and listenings over the past 50+ years of most of his major works. > (3) Hey, it's BFD, hardly Skinner's most important writing. So, no BFD. ;-) > >> An ancilliary point:I wonder how much a perceived problem >> homelessness was in the '50's and '60's when Skinner was >> doing his main writing on social issues. It certainly existed, >> but might have been regarded as a transitory phenomena that >> would fade away as society matured. I suspect we're less >> sanguine in these days of falling wages. > > Homelessness has been a problem for societies throughout history > whenever people have been marginalized and relegated to a state > of poverty that prevents them from moving out of their situation. > In the U.S., hobos, vagrants, and a fair number of mentally ill represented > the homeless. The onset of the Great Depression made people > homeless on a massive scale. After WW2, with the development of > a new middle class, homelessness was seen less as a social condition > and more due to individual failures, such as alcoholics on "Skid Row" > (a real place in Los Angeles; see: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles ) and the The difference may be in what the economists would call ‘structural homelessness’. In some ways people were more optimistic in the Depression; they believed that things would get better and that they would spend most of their lives employed. My parents were in their teens in the Depression; that was certainly their attitude. Now we’re locked into steadily increasing proportions of structural unemployment, and minimum wages that have not increased in the last eight years (actually, they’re down slightly in real dollar terms). So we’ve reached the point where we have people who are both employed and homeless. > The success that American cultural values and norms have had in > perpetuating a "Fundamental Attribution Error" view of why people > behave (as well as assuming the "Fair World Hypothesis"), has > led people to think that homelessness is rare or a recent development. > The only thing that is recent is how many families, primarily mothers > with their children, have become homeless -- the culture has been > less successful in "Bloomberging" these folks (Note: "Bloomberging" > refers to Mike Bloomberg's solution to homeless: get them out of > public sight and "incentivize" entrepreneurs and real estate speculators > to convert blighted areas into gentrified social zones for the moneyed > class; today it is harder to find a Single Resident Occupancy [SRO] > hotel or "flop house" on the Bowery than a store appealing to hipster > sensibilities). > > Did Skinner know about Skid Row or the Bowery or the homeless? > I certainly don't know but I'd bet that he didn't nor do I think he was > aware of the homeless in Boston when he was alive (I don't remember > Skinner as being all much into charity work, especially for the poor). After he did his undergraduate work as an English major, Skinner spend two years in Greenwich Village trying to be a writer. It’s hard to believe that he never made it below Canal Street. > I may have been lucky in that I grew up a couple of blocks from > the Bowery in Manhattan and had the benefit of seeing the "bums" > and the "lost men" up close and personal. I saw the dramatic > increase in homeless people that occurred during the 1970s > during the fiscal crisis in NYC and difficulty of finding places > to put homeless families. Today, the Bowery is a chic place to > visit and the homeless are neatly hidden from the tourists. > > -Mike Palij > New York University Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. 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