Category: Radical behaviorism

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Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

Noam Chomsky – a radical behaviorist?

Noam Chomsky is easily the most frustrating intellectual and public figure for a radical behaviorist leftist (RBL). He is well known among leftist circles for his decade long criticism of corporatism, US imperialism and advocacy for social justice, democratic rule, anarcho-syndicalism. Likewise, he is famous among psychological circles – he is the linguist that with one fatal stroke allegedly dismantled behaviorism, Skinner’s Verbal Behavior and started the so-called “cognitive revolution” in psychology.

Nevertheless, a reappraisal and a critical look from the RBL perspective of Chomsky’s position is warranted to find out where he truly stands in relation to behavioral theory. We will see that his social views are not irreconcilable but rather, very compatible with Skinner’s radical behaviorism.

Peer evaluation of Chomsky

Let us examine a short collection of quotes, where Noam Chomsky’s views are reviewed. First of all, Sampson (1981) notes that there is a pronounced difference between political views that are advocated by authors prone to psychologization on the one side and Chomsky who takes up a more behavioral, perhaps even dialectical materialist point of view on the other:

For example, Billig contrasts Deutsch’s with Chomsky’s account of the United States in Vietnam. He suggests that whereas Deutsch emphasized “errors of judgment made by decision-makers” (Billig, 1976, p. 229) as key factors in the conflict, Chomsky saw these psychological errors to be derivatives of certain national practices involving the “needs of capitalist production” (Billig, 1976, p. 231). By reducing conflicts to individual subjective processes, we overlook those questions of social structure that are necessary to ground both our understanding and our recommendations for resolution. When we psychologize conflicts and their resolution, we fail to test or challenge the structures and practices of the larger society within which the various subjectivisms have developed and whose interests they often both veil and serve.

Sampson (1981) – Cognitive Psychology as Ideology (p. 730)

The second quote exposes Chomsky’s conflicting views. In his psychological accounts there is a tendency to promote an agential point of view that violates behavioral principles. From scientific grounds, however, this opposition is not viable anymore and one would suspect that Chomsky is aware of this:

Thirdly, Skinner’s account in Verbal Behavior left no room for the “autonomous speaking agent,” the speaker was a “locality” rather than an “actor.” This view directly contrasts with the agent inherent in Chomsky’s formulation, a view that Chomsky in recent years has related to political and moral causes; namely, that the concept of human rights is necessarily tied to particular views of human nature. Andresen asserts to the contrary, “The power of essentializing humanism is running out of steam, and the search for those genetically-encoded, hardwired, essential absolutes of humanness must eventually be abandoned” (p. 152). For Andresen, malevolence occurs “without any theory of language (or human nature) whatever” (p. 153). She observes that Chomsky has shifted his arguments against radical behaviorism from epistemological grounds to moral ones.

Knapp (1990) – Verbal Behavior and the History of Linguistics (p. 152)

Perhaps Chomsky fears that given widespread acceptance, the technology of behavior might end up in the wrong hands. Well, we should remind him and ourselves that this already is the case:

There are those who possess the power of algorithmic analysis and data mining to navigate a world in which there are too many pieces of data to be studied individually. These include market research agencies, social media platforms and the security services. But for the rest of us, impulse and emotion have become how we orientate and simplify our decisions. <..> ‘We’ simply feel our way around, while ‘they’ observe and algorithmically analyse the results. Two separate languages are at work.

William Davies (2015) – The Happiness Industry (p. 198-199)

The third quote might be less straightforward, but it is interesting to see what the anthropologist Marvin Harris has to say on the topic. It seems that he respected Chomsky’s account insofar it deals with sociocultural processes, while distancing himself from individualized explanations:

The tenacity with which even friendly linguists cling to the idea that the word is the alpha and omega of existence is truly astonishing. Words have no measurable energy cost; sociocultural evolution must concern itself with the energy budgets of specific populations in specific environments. Chomsky’s ideas will become relevant to the study of the evolution of technology, economic organization, kinship organization, political organization, and ideology, when he relates the rules of grammar to the rules which govern techno-economic and techno-environmental adaptations. In the meantime, I leave it strictly to the linguists to evaluate Chomsky’s influences upon anthropological studies of languages.

Marvin Harris’s Reply to Marshall Durbin (1968) – The Rise Of Anthropological Theory (p. 530)

Chomsky tells us how it is

After sifting through several secondary accounts let’s turn to the primary source. Having in mind how resentfully Chomsky has commented on behaviorism, let’s appreciate some ideas from the 2011 book How the World Works:

Does that mean that the desire to kill people is innate? In certain circumstances that desire is going to come out, even if it’s your best friend. There are circumstances under which this aspect of our personality will dominate. But there are other circumstances in which other aspects will dominate. If you want to create a humane world, you change the circumstances. (p. 129)

Does that mean they’re different genetically? No. There’s something about the social conditions in which they’re growing up that makes this acceptable behavior, even natural behavior. Anyone who has grown up in an urban area must be aware of this. (p. 130)

But that aside, what people want is in part socially created—it depends on what sort of experiences they’ve had in their lives, and what sort of opportunities. Change the structure and they’ll choose different things. (p. 246)

Noam Chomsky (2011) – How The World Works

To anyone with at least cursory understanding of Chomsky’s bibliography, these thoughts might seem astounding, perhaps even shocking. We would more likely expect to find such formulations in B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) rather than in any of Chomsky’s work. Additionally note that the first two quotes are taken from the chapter called Human nature and self-image (p. 127-131).

Environmentalism and the left

As is advocated in this blog, being a leftist requires one to be a clear environmentalist – this means taking individual and systemic conditions into account when evaluating human behavior. In the words of Richard Owen:

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors and the circumstances which surround him.

Richard Owen (1813) – A New View of Society (p. 28)

Noam Chomsky neatly reflects this. Of course, in various contexts Chomsky’s verbal behavior differs – as for linguistics we have strange ramblings about genetically determined structures and generative grammar while discussing economics and society we get an analysis of systemic problems. I guess variations of such accounts manifest from most people and public figures who identify as leftists.

One has to be aware of the problem that denial of determinism regarding behavior and reliance on individual autonomy, responsibility and choice unwittingly leads into reactionary theory. It is enough to mention the conservative pundit Ayn Rand and her wish-wash about Skinner to make a point. Anyway, we don’t need look that far for an illustration – in the same book, Chomsky provides us with already questionable and quite ironic opinions:

When you get to cultural patterns, belief systems and the like, the guess of the next guy you meet at the bus stop is about as good as that of the best scientist. Nobody knows anything. People can rant about it if they like, but they basically know almost nothing. (p. 127)

The public also hated the true prophets—they didn’t want to hear the truth either. Not because they were bad people, but for all the usual reasons—short-term interest, manipulation, dependence on power. (p. 316)

Noam Chomsky (2011) – How The World Works

Some speculation

A question begs to be asked – how has such an ardent critic of the US and its criminal imperialist politics manage to achieve widespread fame? Why shouldn’t such a deviant be muzzled?

One might call this a conspiracy theory, but I would speculate that Noam Chomsky is a net asset for the legitimacy of the establishment despite his social critique. This benefit comes exactly because of his attitude towards Skinner and radical behaviorism. While social criticism is mostly benign, a scientific account defying the attitudes beneficial to the status quo is potentially uncontrollable. The criticism of radical behaviorism and the emersion of cognitive psychology was popularized by the elites, the powerful, the “haves” and the corporate media to obstruct the development of a dialectically materialist, progressive view of human nature and behavior. That is exactly why Chomsky was and is still “allowed” to criticize the establishment – he is used to disarm proper theoretical developments. I guess there is more than one way to fall prey to the traps discussed in Manufacturing Consent (2002).

Final evaluation

It is time to answer the question of the title – can Noam Chomsky be considered a radical behaviorist?

One comes to a clear conclusion – no. Nevertheless, Chomsky, has to be at least identified as a crude environmentalist as is said in Beyond Freedom And Dignity (p. 180-181)

The evidence for a crude environmentalism is clear enough. People are extraordinarily different in different places, and possibly just because of the places.

B.F. Skinner (1971) – Beyond Freedom and Dignity (p. 180)

His ideas and views regarding societal and political issues are definitely noteworthy. For that reason, he has been and will surely be cited in the future in this blog.

P.S. An attempt to integrate Skinner and Chomsky

A quite concise overview of Skinner’s philosophy is provided by the interview called “Philosophy of Behaviorism (1988). The interviewer is Eve Segal and she has attempted to integrate Skinner’s and Chomsky’s approaches. While the piece is quite difficult to understand, one might find the experiment interesting:

The plan of this chapter is to sketch one version of generative grammatical theory, the version of Chomsky’s (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, which is often called the “standard” generative transformational theory of syntax. Then I will sketch Skinner’s (1957) theory of verbal behavior. Then I will try to show, in a general way, how the theories complement one another.

Eve Segal (1977) – Toward a Coherent Psychology of Language (p. 1)
Categories
Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

Foucault on courts and the justice system

An interesting perspective on social power and the legal system is provided by the controversial French philosopher Michel Foucault. Let’s visit his views on courts and the implementation of popular justice and see them through the lens of radical behaviorism.

We must ask whether such acts of popular justice can or cannot be organised in the form of a court. Now my hypothesis is not so much that the court is the natural expression of popular justice, but rather that its historical function is to ensnare it, to control it and to strangle it, by re-inscribing it within institutions which are typical of a state apparatus. (p. 1)

What is this arrangement? [Of a court] A table, and behind this table, which distances them from the two litigants, the ‘third party’, that is, the judges. Their position indicates firstly that they are neutral with respect to each litigant, and secondly this implies that their decision is not already arrived at in advance, that it will be made after an aural investigation of the two parties, on the basis of a certain conception of truth and a certain number of ideas concerning what is just and unjust, and thirdly that they have the authority to enforce their decision. This is ultimately the meaning of this simple arrangement. Now this idea that there can be people who are neutral in relation to the two parties, that they can make judgments about them on the basis of ideas of justice which have absolute validity, and that their decisions must be acted upon, I believe that all this is far removed from and quite foreign to the very idea of popular justice. (p. 8)

Here the problem becomes very difficult. It is from the point of view of property that there are thieves and stealing. (p. 36)

Michel Foucault (1980) – Power. Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977

Stated succinctly, Foucault identifies three aspects of the arrangement of a court:

  1. The court is a third neutral party besides the litigants
  2. Decisions are implemented by virtue and by reference to objective truth, justice, fairness, common sense
  3. The court has a backing – power to enforce the judgement

What can be said about these aspects from the RBL perspective?

Third neutral element

The proclaimed neutrality of courts is hardly possible. One must remember that the parties, their struggles, the court itself all don’t exist in a vacuum. The institutions, the political situation, socio-economic conditions form a system that inevitably affect the actors. One has to ask who is in power, what enables and maintains the courts and their functioning. We can see that laws in modern western “democracies” are heavily in favour for property rights – Thomas Piketty calls this neo-proprietarian ideology.

Speaking about judges, they also act in accordance to their environment and context. There is always a long individual process of education and work – this results in a significant filter in possible judge behavior. Jobs in the legal system always require a law degree and the education system tends to favor the already more well-off. The conditioning along the way, the written laws and any Constitution which form the foundation for legal judgement do not make a progressive mechanism.

Basically, a neutral side is a preposterous notion. Herman & Chomsky (2002) have something to say about this in Manufacturing Consent regarding the media, but the same can be applied to the courts:

A propaganda model also helps us to understand how media personnel adapt, and are adapted, to systemic demands. Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to success. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as “irresponsible,” “ideological,” or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exceptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free—for those who adopt the principles required for their “societal purpose.”

Herman & Chomsky (2002) – Manufacturing Consent (p. 272)

Objective justice

As with neutrality, no such thing as an all-encompassing “objective” justice, as in separate from any person or system, can exist. We are once again dealing with human behavior and only behavior. The philosophical notions, i.e. Platonian ideals are true only in the eye of the observer (or the behaver in our case). Every person has a history and behavior happens because of this history of reinforcement.

Unavoidably implicit in the objectivity scheme is the definition of “crime”, i.e. what’s legal and what’s not. The question to ask here – who determines which behavior is a punishable crime and which isn’t. Why is stealing from a store a crime while wage labour where most of the created value is appropriated by capital owners is not? An answer suggests itself – power (most often economic) dictates what is legal, objective, just, fair etc. We can once again turn to a fitting quote:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France (1894) – Le Lys rouge

One may return to the last sentence of the Foucault citation above. People experience different economic conditions, different contexts, different pressures. Even though we “equally” apply the same laws to everyone, this will have non-equal effects. It is convenient for the “haves” to label some of the “have-nots” as thieves and we must see this as a defensive mechanism. Both the origin of property and the definition of property should not be overlooked. To keep things simple here, let Varoufakis do the talking:

Wealth is like a language.

Yanis Varoufakis (2020) – Another Now: Dispatches From An Alternative Present (p. 47)

Power relations

Finally, there are at least two relations of power required in the functioning of any court. I would like to designate an individual blog post on power, but for now it might be understood as the possibility of controlling not only the availability of ones own reinforcers (of course behavior is reinforced, not organisms), but also the availability of reinforcers and punishers for others – power is behavior control.

First is the power to enforce decisions – there has to be an apparatus stronger than both litigants to make sure the judgement is followed. In practice though, the court might not be stronger than a party in court, as some corporations are actually larger than individual countries. In any case, the state which requires a legal system is itself ruled by more wealthy interests and businesses (also called capital). Perhaps we need a reminder of problems with elections and their results.

The second power relation is more philosophical. In the three party arrangement, the court is placed above the litigants with it’s own set of criteria of justice. The resolution is that of the court and the parties must agree to the process and result. We already established that the criteria depend on individual context – the legal system does not allow a flexible way of contesting the rules of the court.

In the quoted interview, Foucault layed out illuminating insight into the court arrangement. These excursions into philosophy under influence of a radical behaviorist philosophy seems to me as a fruitful endeavour and I have no doubt there will be much more such commentary in the future.

Categories
Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

Competition, handicaps and behavior

With me joining the recent chess boom, including me playing the game as well as watching and reviewing the mini-series “The Queen’s Gambit”, some thoughts naturally arose about competition, different skill levels and ways to maintain a healthy amount of (competitive) behavior. This is an opportunity to ponder unequal starting positions, different skill levels, odds games, handicaps, also more generally fairness and equality because this generalizes from simple games to real life.

Let’s start with something commonly seen. Consider the following humorous video where monkeys are paid unequally for the same action:

For some reason we understand that the monkeys reaction makes sense. If we tried to explain what is happening, it would be fruitless to refer to a “sense of fairness” as what we are dealing are not abstractions but always some behavior. Moreover, we don’t really know the exact history of the given monkeys – it appears that grapes are already more reinforcing than cucumbers. What can probably be said that these monkeys lived together and were fed similar food – in this setting a fellow monkey getting a luxury food is an evocative stimulus for getting the same item – this is set up in the video as well. Once no reinforcement (grape) arrives we have a negative punishment situation (removal of a reinforcer). Now from classical theory we know what kind of behavioral reactions we get following this kind of punishment – we see counter-coercion (also known as counter-aggression).

Now let’s switch to another setting – one of behavioral science’s favourite animal – pigeons. I will be referring to a very fine article by John V. Keller “B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior” in the 2019 Q1 edition of the Operants journal.

Despite the complicated title the article deals with so-called “social behavior” in pigeons. Two pigeons had to peck a button for food and only the first pigeon to 10 presses gained the reinforcement – in other words there was a competition contingency. This is what transpired by the words of the author:

In my first experiment with this schedule I saw quickly that it wasn’t going to work. One pigeon (Bart), although he was only slightly faster, was winning virtually every bout. Homer was rapidly tailing out into extinction.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by this result. Pure competition often has the effect of producing permanent losers and winners in the game of life. Just ask any economist about laissez faire capitalism!

Keller (2020) – B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior

All right, no surprise here – no reinforcement, no behavior. What if we change the conditions? Why not introduce a handicap? (should we call it a “fairness measure”?):

The handicap, in this case, was an adjusting one. When a bird won a bout (i.e., received reinforcement at the end of an FR 10), its next ratio was increased by one, whereas its opponent’s ratio was lowered by one. Voila! This worked like a charm as you can see in the film clip.
It’s clear that both birds competed on every trial with great vigor. Their individual rates approached three responses per sec and rarely did the winner’s handicap grow to more than a response or two.

Keller (2020) – B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior

Note: FR 10 means that the reinforcement schedule is a fixed ratio 10 – every tenth response is reinforced.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Access to reinforcement results in more behavior. Now if we apply this to human behavior or, returning to chess, as in the beginning of the post – playing a higher rated opponent and losing every time is not fun (i.e. behavior is not reinforced). Therefore we introduce odds games to even out the chances and ensure reinforcement to maintain behavior and fun play for both players.

Put simply, to have behavior we need reinforcement. This brings us to a very interesting idea that is the General level of reinforcement introduced by Joseph Cautela (1984). Here we will mention a related article. It discusses behavior of yet another animal species – dogs, as well as humans. The title is Understanding Depression in Dogs and Humans by Craig Mixon in the website DogScience. This is a very worthy additional read.

The author states that reinforcement is the energy that powers behavior. This is where the idea of general level of reinforcement comes in – much overall reinforcement results in a very vigorous and active organism while a low level gives a moping, sad individual – we often designate such state of affairs as “depression”. The article provides a neat connection to this blog’s leftist side:

Some celebrities receive continuous reinforcement across the board, by which I mean that they are in a position in which they can draw continuous reinforcement for absolutely everything they do. They can find people who want to listen to everything they have to say and people who will pay them just for the chance to spend time with them. For some celebrities, there is not anything they do for which they cannot find someone who will reward them in some way for doing it.

People who live their lives on a dense schedule of reinforcement tend not only to be busy, they also tend to be extremely happy.

When reinforcement falls below a certain level, people and dogs just stop responding. However, that should come as no surprise. Remember, reinforcement produces the energy that makes behavior happen. Therefore, when no reinforcement is forthcoming, lethargy soon follows. What you get, then, is an inactive organism that just tends to mope around.
When someone falls into a low energy, dysfunctional funk as a result of a thin schedule of reinforcement, that is by definition, depression.
Be they dog or human, that’s what’s happening when you are dealing with a depressed subject. They are operating under a schedule of reinforcement that is so thin that there are just not enough rewarding stimuli in their environment to keep them active and functioning effectively, not to mention happily.

In that sense, many people who are depressed due to ratio strain may actually be suffering much more from a situational problem rooted in environmental factors than from a true psychological disorder in the sense that one usually thinks of such things.

Mixon (2009) – Understanding Depression in Dogs and Humans

If stated differently – “successful people” are happy not because they are busy, but rather the other way around – they are busy because they are happy. Expressed with less psychologization and more in the vein of this post (and more generally of the RBL blog) – one gets reinforcement not exactly because one acts, but rather one acts because one’s behavior is reinforced. Keep in mind the principle of selection by consequences!

Extending the discussion of basically what is equal (or at least more equal) access to reinforcements (what can be called rights), let’s visit a discussion about economic inequality, where the oft-cited economist in this blog and Greek MP Yanis Varoufakis makes insightful commentary:

You see for a while now . . . hard work can no longer be relied upon to lift people from poverty. This is the tragedy of the last 30 years.
But let’s finish off positively. And let me convey to Larry [Summers] my kind of socialism, the kind of ideal that fires me up. It will be a sporting parallel. But it’s not going to be the Olympics. It’s going to be the national football league, your NFL. Where in the interests, remember of competition, not fairness, teams face a harsh salary cap and the best young players are forced to sign up for the weakest of teams. So by preventing the successful team from monopolizing the best players, the NFL’s constraints liberate the true spirit of competition.

Yanis Varoufakis (2020) – What to do about economic inequality

The point is hopefully clear – to have vigorous and happy individuals with a great deal of behavior, as well as to ensure competition which does not lead to monopolies or oligopolies, we have to secure a society where the distribution of income and (more importantly) wealth is more equal. Could anyone argue that wealth does not provide enhanced access to reinforcement?

The societal tendencies in the global post-2008 COVID-19 economy, however, are quite the reverse – inequality is rising. Without taking care of material inequalities any proposals to fight “psychological problems” like depression or demotivation are misled – hiring additional psychologists, ensuring the work of suicide hotlines, spreading positive thinking or the “Law of attraction”, establishing happiness economics are reactionary rumblings to maintain the status quo.

Categories
Radical behaviorism

How to get shadow banned in the psychology subreddit

I want to document a short happening of mine in the psychology subreddit of Reddit.

As almost all things psychology, this place is no exception in perpetuating mystified pseudo-science around behavior, in inventing hundreds of explanatory fictions and more generally serving the capitalist system by diverting attention from material conditions and reframing problems in terms of internal states, personal responsibility and individualised coping. Of course, to avoid taking part in reactionary name calling, we must see all human behavior from it’s proper cultural context. No other than Marvin Harris can help us:

One might very well wonder how cultural idealism, which is devoid of retrodictive or predictive principles, has been selected for and become dominant in anthropology and other social sciences. The answer may be quite simple: The majority of American social scientists are paid to prove that human behavior at both the psychological and cultural level is primarily a result of will or chance. Convinced that there are no nomothetic principles to be found, they don’t bother to look for them—and hence are never in any great danger of finding any.
This behavior—to continue to speculate—has been selected for because in our own particular form of hierarchical state society, the hungry, unemployed, and otherwise frustrated and unfulfilled majority are expected to blame their losses on wrong attitudes, bad values, weak wills, and lousy luck, rather than on the Alice-in-Wonderland design of the sociocultural system which governs their lives.

Marvin Harris (1986) – Cultural Materialism and Behavior Analysis:
Common Problems and Radical Solutions (p. 45)

Now, the misdemeanour that caused the shadow ban, was my comment to the following post: Hi all! If you don’t know me, my names Ava, I’m a PhD student in mental health neuroscience. I make weekly science videos and this week I looked at research based tips on how to reduce sadness/depression during Covid and general life. I hope some of you find it useful 🙂 The video linked is not very helpful and is basically telling people “think about it more”. The comment read:

What this channel only does well is demonstrating the absolutely pathetic state of modern psychology – filled with vague psychologisations and hopeless statements about the brain and neurotransmitters. Only looking inside people further perpetuates the myth that “you can do it”, “bad things happen to everybody” without ever advocating to actually address the unfavorable (material) conditions for some more than others.

Does anyone have a guarantee for a good life? Absolutely – the wealthy, the ones (white collars) having the luxury to work from home.

Allegedly the video gives tips to reduce sadness, but speaking about achievements at 10:00, studies about genes related to serotonin and dopamine are cited. How is this supposed to help anyone?

Unfortunately, we as a culture are still some way from disposing idealism, “inner agents” and moving on to actually proper thinking about human behavior à la Cultural Materialism of Marvin Harris and Radical Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner.

Radical Behaviorist Leftist (2021-01-15)

Admittedly, the comment being bileful, the psychology subreddit employs a very ironic way of punishment – the shadow ban. I know it is a shadow ban because other users cannot see my comments in other psychology posts as well. With the psychology subreddit being a place of positivity, mindfulness, open communication, one could say that shadow banning instead of outright banning and providing no message to the user is at least manipulative. Almost 80 years with sound behavioral science (since B.F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior), one realises that cultural and political forces are still stronger than the inevitable spread of the scientific view of human behavior.

Categories
Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

On empathy (aka understanding behavior)

In the spirit of the concluding post of 2020, a very fitting liberal-minded article has come to my attention – I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People. This can serve as an illustration for the second point – understanding people and reasons for their behavior. Furthermore, this article will let us see why both behaviorist and leftist thought is needed to understand the world.

Misunderstanding of behavior

The political situation described is obviously aversive to the author and no behavior is available to fix it – there we have this so-called “politics fatigue”. Without any better explanation, the text is loaded with labels such as fundamentally different person, good person, callousness, selfish, cruel, etc. Whatever we call another person – we call him that because of some behavior – let Marvin Harris help us once again:

For each such case, cultural materialist explanations reverse the causal arrow and raise additional questions which open the way to nomothetic solutions. Males are aggressive because they make war. They make war because of population pressure and resource depletion. Whites are prejudiced against blacks because blacks are discriminated against. The reason why they are discriminated against has to do with the economic role of unemployed blacks as buffers against white unemployment.

Marvin Harris (1986) – Cultural Materialism and Behavior Analysis:
Common Problems and Radical Solutions (p. 45)

The author lacking a proper theory of behavior unsurprisingly does not know where to look for reasons of any persons behavior – therefore it is misunderstood, misattributed and there isn’t a large probability of future investigation. We can point out the irony of empathy – while it is said “I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy.”, in a way shown in this post, the author himself lacks understanding.

Misunderstanding of finances

A label often attributed to the likes of the author is a “liberal”. What this often means is calling for more “personal responsibility”, “individual choice and actions”. This is evident in the text:

“Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.”

“I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools”; “If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP.”

This sentiment surrounding taxes and money is misplaced. While the author would state that everyone must pay their fair share, the word “fair” is crucial. With increasing income and wealth inequality health care and education funding should not be provided by those who don’t have that much themselves. In other words – without progressive taxation there will be no adequate and fair funding. Just like charities – average citizens are encouraged to share the crumbs while the majority of the proverbial cake is safe elsewhere (probably in an offshore). Charities/foundations used for tax write-offs by rich donors is yet another absurdity.

Some good old radical behaviorist leftist clarity

We can say the author’s mind is in the right place – universal health care, proper wages, adequate funding of the education system is advocated. What the author lacks is a proper theory of behavior – the problems discussed in the piece cannot be solved merely by dialogue or discussions. The political situation, the divided society arise because of material conditions, because of still deeping inequality and only in addresing these is where the solutions lie.

Categories
Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

A year of radical behaviorist leftist thought

One year ago (2019-12-19) the radical behaviorist leftist emerged. In the opening post some global problems were cited, while the one that is currently shaping our lives so fiercely – COVID-19 – was just starting to get a foothold in Wuhan, China. 21 posts in English, 8 posts in Lithuanian and 2 posts in German were just a (new) beginning for radical behaviorist leftist thought. Let us see what’s ahead – as is customary in this blog, we’ll lean on quotes from other authors to shape our narrative.

People are not provided with the means to explain their own behavior

Unfortunately, obscurantism applied to lifestyles does not self-destruct. Doctrines that prevent people from understanding the causes of their social existence have great social value. In a society dominated by inequitable modes of production and exchange, lifestyle studies that obscure and distort the nature of the social system are far more common and more highly valued than the mythological “objective” studies dreaded by the counterculture. Obscurantism applied to lifestyle studies lacks the engineering “praxis” of the laboratory sciences. Falsifiers, mystics, and double-talkers do not get swept out with the rubble; in fact, there is no rubble because everything goes on just as it always did.

Marvin Harris (1974) – Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches (p. 255-256)

If you don’t have Marxism, if you don’t have the Marxist method, then it’s highly likely that as you suffer, whether it’s the alienation or the instability, or the inequality, or the injustice of capitalism, you don’t have the systemic analysis to tell you how this happens. You then become vulnerable to crazy alternative theories about what it is.

Richard Wolff (2018) – Global Capitalism: Linking Trump and Marx’ Critique of Capitalism

It’s a shame that even when methods to effectively explain human behavior, societal problems and cultural norms are available – speaking of radical behaviorism, cultural materialism – society in large is not provided with these means. It makes sense because once it is recognized that only material and environmental conditions shape behavior – we will have to seriously grapple with the fact that living conditions differ, people are not poor and disadvantaged “by choice”, that these are not mental attitudes and cannot be wished away. Labels such as COVIDiots, uneducated, rational/irrational will not cut it.

The first thing to strive for going forward – spread and demistify proper behavior explanations.

Understand people and their reasons

I think the strategy of progressives must be to engage with the people who are susceptible to the fascist narrative, to do exactly the opposite of what Hillary Clinton did, which is to refer to them as “deplorables” and therefore to deliver them straight into the hands of the fascists like Donald Trump; it is to do the opposite of what “hard” remainers did in Britain, which is to treat those who voted for Brexit as if they were vermin in a zoo; and to engage with people; to understand that people in the north of England, in coastal areas, in the midwestern United States, here in Greece, even when they vote for a ultra-right xenophobe, it’s an act of desperation; to have sympathy with them, to have empathy with them, to discuss with them, to explain to them why they are in a sense empowering somebody who is going to turn against them, who is going to give them a few crumbs off their table in exchange for perfect and perpetual servitude. I personally refuse to abandon those people to the sirens of the fascists.

Yanis Varoufakis (2020) – “We live under something far worse than capitalism”

Little can be added to Varoufakis’s words – we must repeatedly stress that people act the way they do for specific reasons. Let’s us not take shortcuts in trying to explain behavior – the material (“mundane” as Marvin Harris calls them) reasons can be identified and nothing less will do.

Second thing to strive for – encourage and maintain dialogue, understanding and identification of reasons for behavior.

Everything is politics

Some argued that the prolonged dominance of less effective or impractical science in psychology was largely a result of politically defended access to a variety of reinforcers, some extraneous, within that organized discipline. Resistance to behaviorism on the scientific and technical front where Skinner had fought his battles was of lesser importance. (p. 16)

Many training problems in behaviorology stem from delaying the study of behaviorology until a student enters higher education—in many cases, graduate school. Unlike other basic sciences, which are introduced to students in primary and secondary schools, behaviorological science under any label has been generally unavailable to students until they have become adults. In contrast, mentalistic and cognitive psychology courses are occasionally offered in high schools. Perhaps worse, most kindergarten-through-twelfth grade curricular materials on other subjects are heavily laced with inaccurate references to behavior that are based on the mentalistic assumptions prevailing throughout the culture. (p. 20)

Fraley & Ledoux (1997) – Origins, Status and Mission of Behaviorology (p. 16)

Let’s throw out the liberal mantra of “not politicizing an issue”, of “sticking to science/facts”. Everything in life is politics – it’s just another way of saying that behavior is environmentally and culturally shaped. One is not to fall into this trap – HOW we speak about an issue, WHAT issues we are speaking about, advertisements, our behavior, our individual lives are politics. Furthermore, inequalities of narrative shaping, power structures, labor relations are not written in stone and are political issues and thus can be changed.

Final thing to strive for – not to hesitate in tackling any issue in society.

With such an abundance of problems in the world radical behaviorist thought is all the more needed. With the addition of a fourth language (Serbo-Croatian), 2021 is shaping (see what I did there?) to be a pivotal year. As the Democracy in Europe Movement 25 (DiEM25) says – Carpe DiEM!

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Radical behaviorism

Appendix #1 for radical behaviorist starting points

Main article is here.

– Humans are living organisms / animals. As B. F. Skinner said in Philosophy of Behaviorism (1988) humans are complicated bio-chemical systems. We have to not lose this from sight when speaking about human behavior – let’s not attribute more than is due (what’s unscientific) to clumps of material. Life is first and foremost a way how materials and elements move around, change and reproduce itself under certain conditions. In this context using ego, intelligence, stupidity, personality as explanations and not looking at the circumstances is already dubious.

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Radical behaviorism

Schizophrenia of our times – my brain and me

How behavior is explained outside the context of radical behaviorism is a fascinating subject laden with errors, misconceptions, invalid constructs, inventions and (perhaps) most importantly heavy political baggage. Such fortuitous explanations including the mind, choice, will, intentionality, cognitive structures, intelligence, personality are familiar to almost anyone. The current “go-to” word in psychological subjects, however, is the “brain”.

Ledoux (2014, p.150) identifies coincidental selectors – factors that change the later probability of response, where the behavior has not produced the reinforcer – in other words any behavior in the particular situation would have been reinforced. This phenomenon is more commonly known as superstition. All of cognitive psychology and behavioral explanations including the brain are complex-sounding variants of this.

Let’s begin by seeing how the present discourse of psychology looks like:

Discourse of psychology

If one checks the psychology subreddit practically any day, the top posts always include references to the brain, how it works, how to change it’s functioning etc. Some posts among the top ones from two dates:

  1. Our brains reveal our choices before we’re even aware of them, study finds (2020-09-27)
  2. A world-first study has found that severely overweight people are less likely to be able to re-wire their brains and find new neural pathways, a discovery that has significant implications for people recovering from a stroke or brain injury (2020-09-27)
  3. In this special episode of *Your Brain in the Time of COVID-19*, we discussed the book Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. We explored loneliness, self-image, how to cope with the quarantine isolation, and realistic representation of mental health struggles in books and movies. (2020-11-14)

The references to the brain as some entity besides the person is so widespread, that it is reflected in common language. Statements such as “I can’t get it into my brain”, “my brain works strange sometimes” are not uncommon. Conversations regarding behavior are filled with cerebral inputs:

  1. How the brain works
  2. How to remember (almost) anything!

How did this come to be

Two main ways come to mind when thinking about how the brain became the golden standard in psychological explanations:

The first is due to the boom of neuro-imaging studies. Psychological curricula include and hold in high esteem among its research methods various brain scanning studies. Examples include MRI, PET, EEG. What is quite sad and pathetic that psychologists often have no access to such methodology and also often cite brain studies in search of explanations. A sample statement from Dean Burnett’s (2018) book The Happy Brain:

So important do our brains think social interactions are, they’ve evolved specific, dedicated emotions to regulate them! Thankfully, happiness doesn’t seem to be one of these, although as we’ve seen, it’s a lot easier to be happy with other people than without.

Perhaps inevitably given all this, the people we relate to and interact with play a big part in our sense of self, our identity. Scanning studies have revealed that when we contemplate being part of a group or think about those we identify with, we see raised activity in areas like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior and dorsal cingulate cortex. But these areas also show raised activity when we think about our sense of self. The implication is that the groups and communities we belong to are a key part of our identity. This shouldn’t be surprising; we saw earlier that our possessions and homes inform our identity, so it’d be weird if the people we surround ourselves with didn’t.

Burnett (2018) – The Happy Brain (p. 70)

This passage demonstrates the short-sightedness of the author and the significance of coincidences. Some spurious data is taken into account and enormous implications are made as a result. Do remember, that all behavior is represented in brain – it can be said that the activity of the brain is behavior itself or part of behavior. Anything that one does will have related brain activity – this should not be taken as proof for any construct (i.e. verbal behavior) the author is already conditioned to say. In summary, neuro-imaging studies have their proper place in neurophysiology and medicine, but not in psychology.

The second way of the cerebral proliferation is the ever elusive search of the internal agent. Various circles have accompanying constructs that represent the inner homunculus:

While the first is simply discarded, the second somewhat controversial, the third is widely accepted – the brain lends some plausibility as the organ really exists. Alas, this is yet another comically bizarre, somewhat scientifically sounding explanatory fiction – some agency is put into the “brain”. The absurdity is revealed when one says “my brain”. Whose brain? Where then am I? How can one separate oneself and his/her brain? Isn’t this a delusional way to see reality, described in the diagnosis of schizophrenia? These are all facets of the same fallacy and are forever condemned to failure in explaining behavior:

Even then consciousness won’t be found in the brain—no behavior will be. We need to be cautious about searching for the location of behavioral traits in the brain, what psychologist William Uttal has called “the new phrenology.”

Henry D. Schlinger Jr. (2020) – Consciousness is Nothing but a Word – in Operants (Q2, 2020, p. 23)

So much for description, now it’s time for some explanation:

Mereological fallacy

To ascribe psychological attributes to the brain is to commit a mereological fallacy – akin to claiming that it is aeroplane’s engines, rather than aeroplanes, that fly, or that it is the great wheel of a clock, rather than the clock as a whole, that keeps time. (p. 8)

In the first place, brain/body dualism commits a mereological fallacy. Where Descartes ascribed psychological attributes to the mind, crypto-Cartesian scientists ascribe much the same functions to the brain – which is but a part of a human being. Moreover, both do so in order to explain the psychological functions of human beings. But not only is it mistaken to ascribe such attributes to the brain, it fails to explain anything. (p. 15)

Hacker (2012) – The Relevance of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology to the Psychological Sciences

The confusions and fallacies that are under scrutiny concern the brain as a part of a human being in the same sense in which the heart is part of the human being. (p. 2)

Kenny (1984) used the term ‘homunculus fallacy’. He argued that ascribing psychological predicates to the brain invites the question of how the brain can for example see or remember something. Since it does not make sense to say that the brain sees or remembers something, Kenny argued that ascribing psychological predicates to the brain leads to the absurd consequence that one has to assume a homunculus in the brain. We prefer the term ‘mereological fallacy’ because the fallacy is about applying predicates to parts (not to an alleged homunculus in the head) of living creatures. This also clarifies why the fallacy extends to machines. Aeroplanes fly and clocks indicate time, but it makes no sense to say that the engine of an aeroplane flies or that the fuse´e of a clock indicates time. (p. 2-3)

Smit & Hacker (2017) – Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy

Moral of the story: assigning properties of the whole to its parts is always sus (using contemporary language from the game Among us) – do it and you might just become a psychologist whose best explanation of anything human related: “brains work that way”.

Radical behaviorist clarity

But many contemporary psychologists, following the quest of these predecessors going back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, now seek the elusive agent in the brain. In either case the agent is circularly inferred from the same behavior to be explained (p. 22)

No matter how fanciful or far–fetched the theory, some physiological activity is always present to be correlated with the behavioral events said to be external representations of whatever internal functions the theory hypothesizes—an approach prone to fallacies and low on the quality scale in scientific practice. (p. 24)

Fraley & Ledoux (1997) – Origins, Status and Mission of Behaviorology

Both the mind and the brain are not far from the ancient notion of a homunculus—an inner person who behaves in precisely the ways necessary to explain the behavior of the outer person in whom he dwells.

Malone & Cruchone (2001, p. 47) – Radical Behaviorism and the Rest of Psychology – A Review-Precis of Skinner’s About Behaviorism

The CD reinforces the reality that with regard to having a brain, there is only one entity, the whole person, that makes the statement sensible (Schlinger, 2005).
The syntax and structure of everyday language, however, create the confusion of a duality of ‘‘me and my brain’’ when no such independent duality exists (Hineline, 1980).

Phelps (2007, p. 218) – Why We Are Still Not Cognitive Psychologists: A Review of Why I Am Not a Cognitive Psychologist

No explanation of behavior is provided by analyzing the functions of any internal organs – the focus on the external/internal environment and individual history is unavoidable.

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Radical behaviorism

Albert Bandura’s three factor reciprocal determinism

One example of a modern theory of psychology is the Social cognitive theory developed by the renowned psychologist Albert Bandura. In this post, I would like to focus on one particular part of the theory – the so-called three factor reciprocal determinism model – and comment upon it from the eyes of a radical behaviorist.

One possible visualisation of the model:

https://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reciprocal-Determinism-.jpg

This graph concisely illustrates a great deal of what is wrong with mainstream “scientific” psychology:

  1. Separation of behavior and person/cognition. We must remember that “All’s behavior – and the rest is naught” – internal happenings (that we call cognitions, beliefs, attitudes) are still behaviors subject to the same natural laws as externally visible behavior.
  2. Separation of internal environment and external environment. One must not imply that different laws are at work when considering internal and external variables in determining behavior, just because we have greater difficulty in identifying covert factors.

Stated simply, the third side of the model (P – Person) is unnecessary for a complete account of an organisms behavior. By including it, one once again commits the fallacy of reification. Radical behaviorism is widely misunderstood as being an S-R psychology and (aware of the slight irony), if one insists on such a simplified link, then E-B (Environment-Behavior) is an adequate approximation. Remember, that the internal state of a person is included as the internal component in the Environment side. Any cognitions, beliefs, attitudes etc. that we might identify are to be understood as verbal behaviors and included in the Behavior side. Finally, note that behavior which changes the environment is also a learned behavior and, as any other behavior, is shaped by environmental variables via the same principles of selection by consequences.

In conclusion, even “robust” and respectable psychological theories are loaded with explanatory fallacies. When encountering psychological material and explanations, always be aware of this – “inventing” explanations on the fly, creating “constructs” that have to be themselves explained.

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Radical behaviorism

Radical behaviorist starting points

In this post, I would like to gather the most appropriate talking points for introducing a person to the theory of radical behaviorism. Of course, this issue has already been addressed by other researchers, e.g. the 2004 video material by Keenan & Dillenburger “Why I Am Not a Cognitive Psychologist: A Tribute to B. F. Skinner”. Links for reference:

  1. Video part 1
  2. Video part 2
  3. Review of the video material by Phelps (2007) – “Why We Are Still Not Cognitive Psychologists”

I have listed the arguments in order of complexity, from the least to the most complex. In other words, for the latter arguments to have an appropriate effect, it is contingent upon a more extensive personal history of one’s interlocutor.

WARNING: Using the listed arguments below in a conversation has risks. In our individualized, “free-will”, mainstream psychology dominated world the following points might be met with unwanted consequences – anger, shouting, slurs etc. Skinner himself faced this issue and addressed it in his “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”. He explains that people’s effective social repertoire consists mostly of statements not compatible with the philosophy of radical behaviorism, therefore when speaking about behavior beyond the idea that “you choose” threatens to remove reinforcers of one’s behavior and that will most likely met with counter-control.

– Reasons for behavior: There are always reasons for any action and most of the time you can tell why you are doing something. For example, you can name why you go to school/work every day, why you eat, why you speak the language you’re speaking, why you are reading this right now. So we can frame the question like this – are you the one “choosing” your actions or are the reasons determining yours or others behavior?

– Role of the future: This can be introduced with 2 questions:
1. Can the future affect behavior right now? Most people should tend to answer “no” because the future does not yet exist and cannot cause anything right now.
2. “Can one’s goals cause behavior?” or “Do goals exist?” Here the same people should answer “yes”. The problem here lies that “goals” are understood as a reference to the future. The solution is to realize that one’s so called goals are also caused by previous circumstances. We don’t need any reference to the future to talk about this. If stated in more complex terms, a “goal” specifies a controlling relation between behavior and its consequences. This also relates to topics and problems of teleology/intentionality.

– Behavior as a subject of natural science: People that consider themselves as “scientific-minded”/”rational” should pay attention to this argument. A logical proposal (as is the theme of the blog) is to speak about behavior as a naturally occuring phenomenon. Behavior happens in this world, not without reason, we can speak about it and explain it without evoking mystical or immaterial constructs. If we adopt a scientific mindset for everything, this should include our own behavior.

– Selectionism: As is discussed in the introductory series, the similarity between different forms of selection should seem powerful to people knowledgable of Darwin’s natural selection. As are genetic traits “selected” by the environment, similarly behavior is “selected” by one’s surroundings and it’s consequences. If organisms with a certain trait survive more, the prevalence of the trait increase in subsequent generations. If behavior of an organism is reinforced, the probability of the action is increased in subsequent occasions.

Appendix #1

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