I think Khon nailed it on the head when he said "The one real insight about Skinner that came to me after talking with him for a while was that he was less a theorist than a technician. The man was fascinated-indeed almost obsessed-with practical problems of design" Khon PUNISHED BY REWARDS 280). Because he was a technocrat his half-baked theory gives itself airs of scientificity, much as a "computer scientist" does, although they're both no more than technicians.
Skinner's derangement is all too thinly veiled by his scientistic belief in causality--showing he knows nothing about MODERN science and the relative status causality assumes there under the Principle of Uncertainty and the limitations of the quantum of action; he obviously has little to no philosophical trainning, not a shread of epistemology and ludicrous extrapolation of results from pigeons to human beings-in a word, all the ingredients of an ideologically motivated pseudo-science.
Here's Skinner on himself as a nonperson: "I am sometimes asked "Do you think of yourself as you think of organisms you study?" The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting...If I am right about human behavior, I have written the autobiography of a nonperson" (Khon PUNISHED BY REWARDS 7)
Nice work ABAisSCIENCE! Your citations are good and useful in critiquing "Chomsky's" arguments; thorough and meaningful! The only thing I'd encourage is to be careful about the use of inflammatory words (ex. "IDIOTS"). We want to engage meaningful discourse with everyone. The science of ABA stands on its own. It despretaly needs ambassadors! But Good JOB on all this!
ABAisSCIENCE(Tuesday 30th of December 2008 10:19:49 PM)
Skinner's right about morals & freedom. Wrong only on philosophy. Man is not a "caged ape," but rather able to condition more fully by thought then by action in environment. Still thought is controlled by external stimulus, but thought conditions more. Hence your free will is merely a sharpened discriminative control.
Ray, B. (1969) Selective attention: the effects of combining stimuli which control incompatible behavior. J. of the Exp. Analysis of Beh., 12, 539-550.
ABAisSCIENCE(Tuesday 30th of December 2008 10:13:05 PM)
Chomsky distinguishes E-language (external, or language as behavior) & I-language (internal, an essential, innate asset), I-language is central notion; E-language is derivative, remote from mechanisms & of no particular significance (Chomsky, 1991, p. 10). Moreover, a strong antipathy to behaviorism still pervades field of linguistics.
Chomsky, N. (1991). Linguistics & related fields: A personal view. In A. Kasher (Ed.), The Chomskyan turn (p. 5-23). Oxford: Blackwell.
IDIOTS ALL
ABAisSCIENCE(Tuesday 30th of December 2008 10:04:45 PM)
Palmer (2000) states, The choice of a unit of analysis in behavior is critical. The orderly relationship between behavior & its controlling variables deteriorates if we consider units that are too broad, too long, or too narrowly specified (Skinner, 1935)."
Palmer, D. C. (2000). Chomskys Nativism Reconsidered. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, Vol. 17, 51-56.
Skinner, B. F. (1935). The generic nature of the concepts of stimulus and response. Journal of General Psychology, 12, 40-65.
ABAisSCIENCE(Tuesday 30th of December 2008 10:07:12 PM)
"If one defines ones units a priori rather than empirically, it is possible that behavior will appear to be infinitely variable & to bear little relationship to environmental events. Chomsky commits this error by choosing the sentence as a unit of analysis. Palmer (2000) points out that, By misrepresenting the power of behavioral interpretations, Chomsky persuaded a generation of linguists to dismiss the law of effect as an important variable in the interpretation of grammar.
IDIOT
ABAisSCIENCE(Tuesday 30th of December 2008 09:59:07 PM)
PT 2: "It's important to assess his (Chomsky's) position carefully, not only because he concludes that little is to be gained by pursuing the analysis of verbal behavior with the assumptions & methodology of radical behaviorism but because he claims to have achieved considerable success with very different assumptions & methodology."
PT 3 NXT
