VALUES CAN'T SOLVE CONTROL

VALUES CAN'T SOLVE CONTROL

1. ONLY COUNTER-CONTROL IS A VIABLE MEANS FOR STOPPING ABUSES OF CONTROL,VALUES DO NOTHING

Paul Sagal, Philosopher, B.F. SKINNER, 1981. p. 95.

The attempt to “control” control, as it were, with counter control rather than with either freedom or suppression is a neat ploy and much more semantically sophisticated then anit-Skinnerians could see. If it were true that human beings could live better with no controls upon them and still survive - that is, if they could live without habits and adjustments and learned values then the elimination of all control would be reinforcing. The denunciation of all controls, however, is in fact only a special kind of control: namely, a plea that is differently reinforcing (usually as words) to special groups preciously conditioned to feel less anxiety when they are told they are “free.” Eventually, of course, the issue narrows down to the difference between good and bad controls, for nothing except chaos is free. Fortunately, “good” and “bad” are definable with reference to survival value. Those who find this parameter to narrow or otherwise distasteful must then in all fairness disprove Skinner’s contentions by improving society without invoking controls. To do so, of course, would require, at least at first, the stringent control of all would-be controllers.

Paul Sagal, Philosopher, B.F. SKINNER, 1981. p. 100-101.

Traditional virtues and ideals are also brought down to the earthiness of behavioral specifications. Bravery is not necessarily virtuous, and happiness is not necessarily trivial; both, however, are often indistinguishable from ignoble qualities when defined behaviorally. Bravery and foolishness, for example, are quite similar. “A fool” according to Skinner, “rushes into a dangerous situation not because he feels reckless but because reinforcing consequences have completely offset punishing . . . . “ (64). A brave act and a foolish one are both controlled by the kind of reinforcement which the community uses to offset obvious risks.

BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION IS A REGIME OF DISCIPLANRY POWER

1. REGIMES OF DISCIPLINARY TECHNOLOGY ARE OPRESSIVE

Michel Foucault, Philosopher, THE FOUCAULT READER, edited by Paul Rainbow, 1984. p. 188.

The chief function of the disciplinary power is to “train,” rather then to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them. Instead of bending all its subjects into a single, uniform mass, it separates, analyzes, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and sufficient single units. It “trains” the moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual elements - small, separate cells; organic autonomies; genetic identities and continuities; combinatory segments. Discipline “makes” individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a triumphant power, which because of its own excess can pride itself on its omnipotence; it is a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated but permanent economy. These are humble modalities, minor procedures, compared with the majestic rituals of sovereignty or the great apparatus of the state. And it is precisely they that were gradually to invade the major forms, altering their mechanisms and imposing their procedures. The legal apparatus was not to escape this scarcely secret invasion. The success of disciplinary power derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it - the examination

Michel Foucault, Philosopher, THE FOUCAULT READER, edited by Paul Rainbow, 1984. p. 195.

In short, the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression. It brings five quite distinct operations into play,: it refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation, and the principle of a rule to be followed. It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: and the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected, or as an optimum toward which one must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchies in terms of value the abilities, the level, the “nature” of individuals. It introduces, through this “value-giving” measure, the constraint of a conformity that must be achieved. Lastly, it traces the limit that will define difference in relation to all other differences, the external frontier of the abnormal (the “shameful” class of the Ecole Militaire). The perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes.

INDIVIDUAL AGENCY IS KEY

1. DENYING INDIVIDUALS OF THEIR AGENCY IS SPIRIT MURDER

Szasz, Professor of Psychology at State University, New York, “Against Behaviorism: A review of B.F. Skinner’s About Behaviorism,” LIBERTARIAN REVIEW, December 1974, p. 1.

One of the things that distinguishes persons from animals is that, for reasons familiar enough, persons cannot simply live: they must have, or must feel that they have, some reason for doing so. In other words, men, women [sic], and children must have some sense and significance in and for their lives. If the do not they perish. Hence, I believe that those who rob people of the meaning and significance they have given their lives kills them and should be considered murders, at least metaphorically. B.F. Skinner is such a murderer.

Charles E. Scott, Professor of Philosophy Indiana University, THE QUESTIONS OF ETHICS, 1990. p. 56-57.