Philosopher views
CRITICISMS OF SKINNER'S UTOPIA
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- SKINNERS ETHICAL SKEPTICISM
- SKINNER AND "MENTALISITIC" CONSTRUCTS
- SKINNER AND CONTROL
- SKINNERS THEORIES ON EDUCATION
CRITICISMS OF SKINNER'S UTOPIAThere are many criticisms of Behaviorism in general and Skinner in specific, most of which revolve around the behaviorist view of humans as mechanical organisms, lacking any metaphysical characteristics such as freedom or self-determinism. Behaviorist’s critics argue that this view of humans as only the sum of their visible parts justifies the atrocities committed daily in the name of science. For instance, genocide is committed because we see people as possessing no inherent value, they are expendable. Similarly, science uses humans as experiments, who don’t matter so long as knowledge is gained at the end of it all. Further examples would include killing being justified during war time or the death penalty. Skinners failure to delineate the differences between people and animals also earned him much criticism. According to Skinners theories the behavior of a dog or rat or pigeon functioned just the same way a human mind would. However, the reasons for this perceived similarity were never made explicit. This drew Skinner heavy criticism from religious theologians and religious philosophers. SKINNER'S ETHICAL SKEPTICISMSkinner’s views on ethics and morals can best be described as skeptical. He does not believe that metaphysical concepts like freedom, ethics or morals should be talked about at all because they are not quantifiable and thus no “truth” can be reached on them. In order to see how this is true, ask people to define "freedom." Even opposite courses of action can both be defined as freedom. Some would claim we have the freedom to own a gun, while others would argue guns should be banned since we have the freedom to be safe. Skinner is an atheist so his rejection of divine power is an easy place to look to when trying to understand his extreme ethical skepticism. He saw religion as a way to attempt to justify these abstract concepts that he felt could never be defined. He thought the best way to move toward some good action was not through a god, but through conditioning a person that doing good was rewarding. SKINNER AND "MENTALISITIC" CONSTRUCTSSkinner believes that concepts such as freedom and dignity are mentalist constructs. Mentalist constructs are the unobservable aspects of the human, like the mind, personality, soul and of course the ego. Skinner vigorously disputes the existence of what he calls the homunculus, the inner self in all humans that can’t be seen. Since the existence of the values couldn’t be proven, Skinner argued they didn’t exist. Instead, Skinner saw all values as a product of behavior, so discussing any metaphysical theories of values was irrelevant. Skinner also considered all statements of value to be a matter of sheer linguistics, instead of proof. To Skinner , statements like "murder is wrong" contained no factual information, instead all they expressed was personal feelings. The statement should be viewed as "murder is" with the value judgement being applied due to the past reinforcers of the person making the statement. Therefore, statements of value contained no statement of truth which could be applied universally, instead all they showed was an insight into the reinforcers of the speaker. SKINNER AND CONTROLSkinner rejected most arguments that portrayed his behavior modification techniques in a negative controlling way. According to Skinner, it is impossible to eliminate control since all human behavior is shaped by reinforcers. With the inability to escape the effects of reinforcers on behavior, Skinner argued that it was impossible to eliminate control. He responded to these criticisms by discussing the idea of counter-control. A critical first step, however, is recognizing control as it exists around us. Pretending that we can eliminate that control will get us nowhere, and will deny us progress in moving forward as a society. Instead, we can act out to exert counter-control, which is predicated upon accepting that control will always exist in some form or another. According to Skinner, counter-control through his operant conditioning was the only real way to provide a check on the constant control people encounter. He felt his behavior modification regimes were also an effective means of counter-control. Skinner argued that the benign control he discuses in his behavior modification theory allowed a constant check against negative types of control because under his regime, those negative forms of control would be weeded out through behavior modification. However, this solution by Skinner fails to account for people who would use his operant conditions for re-enforcing negative behaviors. SKINNER'S THEORIES ON EDUCATIONShortly after publishing his work on operant conditioning, Skinner began trying to use these discoveries to find the best way of instructing children in the classroom. It was there that he came up with what was probably his most infamous invention, the Skinner Box. The Skinner Box was a cubical space where children could sit inside, that used his principles of operant conditioning to instruct students. Skinner believed that since behavior was based solely on reinforcers, individuals would learn better if they were showed the correct way to do a math problem after they tried each one. These techniques became widely used in the classroom. Skinner then began focusing on automated teaching, a method of instruction that would teach using his principles of operant conditioning without a teacher present. Eventually, due to cost and lack of public interest, Skinner put his effort to develop automated teaching into creating books that taught students using operant conditioning. These self-teaching textbooks remain popular to this day, an example of types of books that use these principle are math books that contain the answers to the problems in the back. 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