On Sun, 11 Jan 2015 08:23:25 -0800,Paul Brandon wrote:
On Jan 10, 2015, at 2:34 PM, Mike Palij <[email protected]> wrote:
(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'.
This is one of those situations where providing supporting quotes
would be most useful in understanding/evaluating the point that Paul
is asserting.
Consider the following quote from the website we are discussing:
http://nazihomelessholocaust.blogspot.com/2012/06/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-bf-skinner.html
|The title of this provocative book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, is a
|slap in the face to libertarians, and each page of it stuns the reader
|with more unsettling ideas.
|
|Skinner writes about "the literature of freedom," which includes John
|Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty" and other writings opposed to tyranny
|and despotism. This literature, says Skinner, was useful in its day but
|is now obsolete. We know now that regimentation is a bad way to run
|a society. Diversity is important, and any society without it is poorly
|designed. The literature of freedom was helpful in getting people to
|realize this fact, but, says Skinner, this literature fosters other
ideas
|that act as barriers to further advances in the technology of
controlling
|human behavior. These barriers are individual autonomy, free will,
|volition, and consciousness itself. All of these concepts are supposed
|to have been fostered and made popular by the literature of freedom,
|and all of them, according to B. F. Skinner, are myths.
Now, this does not sound like the author, Roy Halliday, is saying
"you don't agree with me, so nyah-nyah-nyah!", rather, he is making
the point that Skinner is claiming a position that is at variance with
an established philosophical/theoretical/social perspective, the
so-called "literature of freedom"..
Consider the following quote from Skinner and examine his
statement's relationship to what is quoted above and further in
Halliday's article:
|A proper recognition of the selective
|action of the environment means a
|change in our conception of the origin of
|behavior which is possibly as extensive
|as that of the origin of species. So long as
|we cling to the view that a person is an
|initiating doer, actor, or causer of behavior,
|we shall probably continue to neglect
|the conditions which must be
|changed if we are to solve our problems
|(5).
The quote is the final paragraph in the Science article that Paul
references below and the endnote (5) refers to Skinner's BFD.
But don't take my word for it, see for yourself:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7244649
or (PDF available)
http://www.direncsakarya.com/?s=selection+by+consequences
(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)
It's times like this that makes me want to find out where the hell my
copy
of this book is. A quick search (i.e., 10-15 minutes) does not turn it
up
but I do know I have a copy (indeed, I think bought a second copy after
having a hard time finding my first copy which eventually turned up).
For a single statement:
. Selection by consequences. Science, 1981, 213, 501-504.
Well, I guess the only question that remains is whether Michael Britt
had this article in mind when he wrote the first post "What Would
Skinner Do?" I'd bet that he did not.
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.
When I was young and foolish, I was read a lot of Skinner's writing.
True Story: I read "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" the summer before
I started college and it convinced me to become a psychology major.
It was presented in reduced form in two issues of "Psychology Today".
But like other bad habits in my youth, I outgrew this infatuation. ;-)
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'.
I'm not sure that you want to go there. Consider the following article
which points out some of the problems in defining "structural
unemployment" (in contrast to "cyclical unemployment") which
is likely to be a driver of "structural homelessness".
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/imfer/journal/v61/n3/full/imfer201313a.html
The "Daily Show" bit showed that homelessness can be easily
solved:by providing affordable housing. I think economic factors are
less relevant than psychological factors, such as the Fundamental
Attribution Error explanation of homelessness as displayed
by the Daily Show's correspondent.
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.
Okay, I'll be nice and won't say that "anecdotes about one's family's
attitudes constitute data" ;-) but I think that it would be hard to
determine
whether there is support for the assertion that "people were more
optimistic in the Depression". I do not think there are surveys
relevant
to this but there are studies of how "relief" programs helped to
ameliorate the poverty and homelessness associated with the
Great Depression, as represented in the program developed and
implemented in NY State and reported here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=9VIo8eK-GeUC&pg=PA23&dq=optimism+attitude+%22great+depression%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Vb6yVIjnGciOsQTJtoCQDQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=optimism%20&f=false
It has to be noted that during the Great Depression being poor and
homeless was probably less stigmatized than it is today simply
because so many people were poor. Today, when a person's
worth and value is often evaluated in terms of how much money
they make or their net worth, the poor are to be despised and
to be avoided like lepers lest their "taint" infect the "good" people.
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.
There has always been a working poor underclass in the U.S., with
the distinction becoming clearer after the second World War when the
U.S. developed a strong middle class. However, since Reagan, there
has been an assault on the middle class that reduced their ranks
(the Clinton years may have something of an exception but the
W Bush years did away with any of that -- remember the recession
associated with the bursting of the "Dot com" internet stock bubble
in 2000 which destroyed a lot of wealth and retirement accounts,
the 2008 just repeated this but now, we have the top 10% winning
the race to riches while the rest tries to hold onto what they have
or are new members of the lower classes/castes).
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.
Wrong direction. Canal St is SOUTH of Greenwich Village (by a
good deal) while the Bowery is to the EAST of Greenwich Village.
Broadway below 14th St in Manhattan serves to demarcate
Greenwich Village (West of Broadway) from the East Village/Lower
East Side (East of Broadway). The Lower East Side has historically
been associated with housing the newest immigrants to the
U.S., hence, the poorest people -- see Jacob Riis' "How the
Other Half Lives" available for free on books.google.com; see:
https://books.google.com/books?id=3cFIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22how+the+other+half+lives%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fMSyVKG0AbePsQSei4GIDA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22how%20the%20other%20half%20lives%22&f=false
True Story: I grew up in the East Village and was still living there
when I started college. The new NYU Bobst Library was about
five blocks west of where I lived and I wondered whether I could
get library access as (a) a CUNY student and (b) living in the
neighborhood. I was informed that it didn't matter that I was
a CUNY student, they weren't allowed in, and I lived too far
east, past Broadway, and was not considered a "member of
the neighborhood". Today, NYU has several buildings in the
East Village and it is no longer considered not part of its
neighborhood.
It is possible that Skinner may have gone East past Broadway
on occasion: sections of the Bowery were well known for their
prostitution, both straight and gay (in Martin Scorcese's "Mean
Streets", the prostitutes hang out on 13th St and 3rd Avenue,
which is what the Bowery becomes north of 8th St/St Marks
Place; a classmate of mine lived down the block from there
and we both thought it was cool that the nabe was in a movie ;-).
Second Avenue also has a history of supporting the Yiddish
Theatre, with several theaters providing venues for performances
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If Skinner was
a fan of Yiddish theatre, it is possible that he may have taken
in a show. But maybe not. In the 1960s, most of the Yiddish
theaters had closed or were converted in to movie houses
or for other purposes (e.g., burlesque/strip joints). The Loews
Commodore on 6th St and Second Ave was a movie theatre
from the beginning but in the 1960 the Loews people gave it
up and it subsequently became a strip joint, indie movie house,
and then the Fillmore East, the music venue that some might
remember. Along with the influx of hippies (i.e., middle class
kids from the suburbs who found it a drag to be at home
and wanted to drop out, at least for a little while) who found
cheap rents, and an environment that provided a lot of
"freedom". And then gentrification came, the poor had to
move elsewhere (except for the very old who had nowhere to
go, could not afford to leave their rent-controlled apartments
where they would ultimately die), and the Yuppies and their offspring
would take over the nabe. Now, we have a cast member from
the TV show Friends coming in and doing their own form of
urban renewal; see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/david-schwimmer-east-village-demolition_n_1257496.html
But he's been a good neighbor, especially with his security cameras:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/man-arrested-slashing-david-schwimmer-block-held-20-000-bail-article-1.1806904
In the first article, the yellow building is the original building, in
the
second article is it replaced with a brown brick facade -- NOTE:
no metal fire escape steps in the front.
What a long strange trip it's been.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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