Tag: Radical behaviorism

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Leftist thought Radical behaviorism

Coherence of behavior or how to be more Catholic than the Pope

One issue that behavioristic minded people need to come to terms with is applying the philosophical tenets to one’s own behavior. Simply put, verbal behavior regarding oneself is sometimes caused by other theoretical positions. The inconsistencies might be noticed individually as well as be pointed out by others. What is a behaviorist to do after realising that coherence was not maintained?

A direct confrontation with the current issue occurred in the debate between the renowned humanist psychologist Carl Rogers and the familiar B. F. Skinner. As recounted by Rogers:

One story I want to tell that also bears on that same issue, I believe… For more than a year now I wanted to ask Dr. Skinner about this. We were both at a conference in Boston, little more than a year ago, I think. It was quite a while ago. He had given his paper on the design of cultures and then had commented on that. After hearing his comments, I directed these remarks to him. I will read this from the tape-recorded discussion:
From what I understood Dr. Skinner to say, it is his understanding that though he might have thought he chose to come to this meeting, might have thought he had a purpose in giving this speech, such thoughts are really illusory. He actually made certain marks on paper and emitted certain sounds here simply because his genetic make-up and his past environment had operantly conditioned his behavior in such a way that it was rewarding to make these sounds; and that he as a person doesn’t enter into this. In fact, if I get his thinking correctly, from his strictly scientific point of view, he as a person perhaps doesn’t exist. I thought I would draw him out on a subjective side of why he was there but to my amazement he said he wouldn’t go into the question of whether he had any choice in the matter and added: “I do accept your characterisation of my own presence here”. [audience laughter]
I wondered ever since…

Carl Rogers (1976) – B. F. Skinner – Carl Rogers Dialogue Debate

Here, we have an example on how to gracefully accept the implications of behaviorist philosophy regarding one’s own circumstance. More generally and from personal experience, one shall find it amusing to wholeheartedly accept behavioristically consistent conclusions pointed out by interlocutors from external circles. After all, noticing and noting individual environmental and historical variables is a necessary condition for change of said variables and thus effective behavioral control.

Issues of internal consistency of behavior do not occur solely in the context of radical behaviorism. The general political left is notorious for it’s own internal squabbles and theoretical debates. Even the author of the most famous theory of the left (according to Richard Wolff) suffered his share of criticism:

Karl Marx was erratic. He changed his mind all the time, infuriating his friends and comrades. He wrote furious repudiations of his earlier ideas. And he could not stand those who called themselves… Marxist (e.g. famously saying ‘If they are Marxists, I am not’).

Yanis Varoufakis (2022) – Yanis Varoufakis on Crypto & the Left, and Techno-Feudalism

The question here is – how to be more Marxist than Marx himself? The follower and developer of Marxist thought Rosa Luxemburg voiced her opinion:

Not socialist theory or tactics, but the burning political exigencies of German democracy at the time – the practical interests of the bourgeois revolution in Western Europe – determined the viewpoint that Marx, and later Engels, adopted with respect to Russia and Poland. Even at first glance this standpoint reveals its glaring lack of inner relation to the social theory of Marxism. By failing to analyze Poland and Russia as class societies bearing economic and political contradictions in their bosoms, by viewing them not from the point of view of historical development but as if they were in a fixed, absolute condition as homogeneous, undifferentiated units, this view ran counter to the very essence of Marxism.

Rosa Luxemburg (1909, p. 14-15) – The National Question

The indictment is clear – Marx diverged from Marxist thought! In the context of verbal behavior, however, the concepts Marxism, Radical Behaviorism etc. are emitted under specific circumstances due to a particular history of conditioning. The fact that Marx’s behavior changed throughout his life poses no theoretical difficulty. In practice, nevertheless, past accomplishments cannot shield one from all criticism. Pure semanticists searching for the true “meaning” of Marxism shall not be pleased.

Retaining behavioral coherence might sometimes be regarded as staying true to oneself and others. Proper analysis will provide us with all relevant factors causing the current circumstances and behaviors. Furthermore, it is the only way to avoid oversights illustrated by the comic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/6c73ea/i_got_rich_through_hard_work/

In summary, effective behavior requires identification of its reasons. If someone points out that one is inconsistent, that one employs labels, that one disregards historical variables, at worst calls one a hypocrite by not applying the espoused principles to oneself – one is to politely thank the other party for drawing attention to the issue.

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Radical behaviorism

Behaviorism revisited

In 2021, we already have more than a hundred years of behavioral science and philosophy:

Behaviorism began with a 1913 article in Psychological Review by John Broadus Watson, chair of the psychology department at John Hopkins University. For the next hundred years much of the story of behaviorism has been the rise and fall and rise again in the influence of Burrhus Frederic Skinner, long-time psychology professor at Harvard University. Writing in Science in 1963, Skinner described Watson’s article as “the first clear, if rather noisy, proposal that psychology be regarded simply as the science of behavior.”

Richard Gilbert (2013, p. 3) – Behaviorism at 100 – An American History

In the latest issue of the B.F. Skinner Foundation’s magazine Operants Parvene Farhoody authored an article entitled Animal Training Revisited. Here, Farhoody asserts that behaviorism is a branch of biology and an independent science:

From the beginning, Skinner’s discovery and approach to describing behavior as a basic science has contradicted other explanations of behavior across philosophy, psychology, and theology. This is because the basic tenet of operant conditioning is that the control of all organisms lies outside the organism. (p. 10)

The experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) is a basic science that requires the same use of scientific method to separate hypothesis from validated theory and opinion from scientific fact. Therefore, it follows that those who have alternative explanations about why behavior occurs must use the same technical language set forth by EAB to demonstrate that previous findings are unsupported.
To this day, no such evidence has been brought forward to successfully refute Skinner’s basic findings that the behavior of all organisms is caused by contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that exist within environments—not within organisms. In contrast, data continue to be compiled that strengthen the fundamental principles of operant conditioning and advance our understanding of the four fundamental forces that control behavior —positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment. These forces, like the force of gravity, are neither good nor bad; they are descriptions of naturally occurring phenomena that act upon all organisms. (p. 11)

Parvene Farhoody (2021) – Animal Training Revisited in Operants, 2021 (2)

Continuing on, an overview of the contemporary status of the behavioral enterprise is provided:

Basic science often discovers things that individuals and society are not ready to hear. Most know the consequences to Galileo for stating that the earth was not the center of the universe when he lived in a culture steeped in Christian theology. To accept Galileo’s measures of the observable universe, people could no longer believe the information they had been taught from childhood. One might say that Skinner’s findings were the behavioral equivalent of Galileo’s discovery. Skinner stated that organisms are not the center of their own universe and that human and nonhuman animals are therefore not initiating agents of their own actions. This is in direct contrast to what almost every human being is taught to believe and remains in conflict with what is said in all other branches of psychology/behavior science. In his time, Galileo expressed his frustration that those who condemned him would not even look at his data. How could he argue his own innocence if people would not look at what he had found? The implications of Skinner’s findings were as expansive as Galileo’s, and this new way of looking at behavior was perhaps even more difficult to accept than altering a perception of the universe outside oneself. Should we be surprised, then, that in a mere blink of time—83 years—scientists and laymen alike continue to fight against Skinner’s discovery by ignoring the findings of a science that questions what a person believes about why they do what they do? Should we be surprised that today, most of those claiming expertise in the science of behavior disregard or circumvent Skinner’s basic scientific findings? (p. 11)

Parvene Farhoody (2021) – Animal Training Revisited in Operants, 2021 (2)

Any person aware of B.F. Skinner’s (and others) essential behaviorist findings and ideas, will have felt the frustration in seeing idealistic psychologised explanations of human behavior persist and helplessness when trying to disseminate some basic knowledge of radical behaviorist philosophy.

As I have discussed previously in Psychology is a pseudoscience, mentalism rather than retreating, has been advancing further into the understanding of animal behavior and Farhoody notices this in the context of animal training – particularly salient culprits are the words “choice” and “control”:

A fundamental misrepresentation of operant conditioning is found in the colloquial statement “giving the animal choice and control” over its environment. We can forgive the colloquial verbal behavior but not the explanatory fiction being touted as scientific fact—specifically as behavior analytic fact. Animals do not control their environment; animals are controlled by their environment. Choice is not a cause of behavior. Control is not a cause of behavior. These are cognitive explanatory fictions that do not explain why an animal exhibits behavior X and not behavior Y or Z. (p. 12)

Behavior does not change because the animal has “made a choice” or “tried to control its environment” or “feels empowered” by “making its own decision.” Such colloquial use of language has led to preposterous circular statements such as “control is a primary reinforcer.” Such a statement twists Skinner’s profound discussion of consequences as feedback from the environment into a circular, reified construct called “control.” (p. 12)

In his 1966 essay, What is the Experimental Analysis of Behavior?, Skinner stated that such cognitive circular explanations of why behavior occurs results when one “has not been able to relate the behavior to the contingencies.” (p. 12)

If a final behavior has been carefully considered by the animal’s caretakers, and training has been deemed necessary for the health and welfare of the animal, then such lack of stimulus control is the result of training failure and not animal “choice.” (p. 13)

Parvene Farhoody (2021) – Animal Training Revisited in Operants, 2021 (2)

To illustrate Farhoody’s point, one does not need look far – in the same issue of Operants, the article Behavior Analysis and the Shaping of the Modern Zoo, which ironically directly follows the article highlighted in this blog post, includes an absurd paragraph:

Thus, contemporary animal training, not unlike much of ABA, has the benefit of giving animals the ability to “choose” if they will be involved in any procedure. The focus on rewards, much in line with ABA’s philosophical and ethical underpinnings, have given zoo animals control over their environment. Animals can be asked (i.e., prompted/cued), “can you do this for me?”, and the consequences for doing so are the appetitive rewards/reinforcers that maintain all operant behavior.

Eduardo J. Fernandez (2021, p. 14) – Behavior Analysis and the Shaping of the Modern Zoo

One may recognize in the citation above another fault-ridden word in the context of behaviorism – “reward”. This word is often considered as a synonym of reinforcement, but such usage is misleading. It has many additional unscientific connotations and is preferred in the idealistic cognitive, self-help (e.g. Atomic Habits), psychological discourse. To clarify issues with the word, let’s turn to proper literature:

Interchanging the terms reinforcers and rewards presents problems, because rewards are not necessarily reinforcers. Rewards are stimuli that others think should reinforce your behavior, perhaps because these stimuli reinforce their behavior. However, a reward has not yet met the definition of reinforcers, at least with respect to the behavior of the organism of concern, possibly you. Remember, we have tested and observed reinforcers being stimuli the occurrence of which, immediately after a response, makes the evocative stimulus for that kind of response more effective across subsequent occasions. Rewards receive no such testing. Besides, if and when a reward meets this definition after testing, then we should call it a reinforcer, not a reward. Also, the concept of rewards supports the false and scientifically irrelevant notion of personal agency. How? A reward is for “you” (as the inner agent inside the particular carbon unit that others tact with your name). Furthermore a reward is for you rather than for your behavior, whereas reinforcers—as defined—do not reinforce you; they only reinforce behavior.

Stephen F. Ledoux (2014, p. 267-268) – Running Out Of Time – Introducing Behaviorology To Help Solve Global Problems

This “scientific” (or rather “pseudoscientific”) vocabulary stems from interests of the economic elite where the individualistic, liberal discourse based on “free-will” is most instrumental. No wonder widespread knowledge is still tainted by cognitive fallacies and Skinner’s science is in danger:

Colloquial language can do a great disservice to the genuine student of behavior who wishes to learn about operant conditioning and understand stimulus control. It is a frightening time for those seeking deeper knowledge in the experimental analysis of behavior and its application. When those hailed as experts at teaching operant conditioning misrepresent Skinner’s most basic findings while professing to be one of his followers, their teaching more closely resembles religious zealotry than the expansion of an elegant and far-reaching science. Only when one abandons cognitive fictions can one truly begin to learn what stimulus control means and how to teach in ways that are maximally effective and minimally restrictive; only then does one begin an education in the natural phenomenon called operant conditioning. When personal agendas become more important than scientific discovery, we can predict that those most dedicated to comprehensive scientific analysis will encounter increasing pressures to accept popular opinion. This is found in many areas of the animal-training community: Those who do not accept overly simplistic representations of a complex science encounter consequences deleterious to their professional standing. (p. 13)

The field of behavior analysis is experiencing the outcome Skinner warned against in the 1980s. The dedicated animal trainer, behavior analyst, or concerned consumer must take notice. The older hard sciences remain valid today because they have had centuries (arguably millennia) to build their foundation. Today, one is hard-pressed to find a master’s or PhD program anywhere in the world that teaches the experimental analysis of behavior as its focus rather than applied behavior analysis as a helping profession. If we value the discoveries of this science, we must return to an emphasis on teaching its basic tenets as the foundation of the technology of behavior. (p. 13)

Parvene Farhoody (2021) – Animal Training Revisited in Operants, 2021 (2)

Let’s allow Gilbert to conclude the current post with ideas needed for the acceptance of behaviorism:

At least three things stand in the way of that acceptance. One is the laxness of everyday ways of speaking about the causes of behavior, which still contaminate psychological discourse in the way Watson deplored 100 years ago. Another is the threat that coherent explanations of behavior pose to cherished notions of human freedom and dignity. (Skinner’s best-known book has the title Beyond Freedom and Dignity.) A third could be the enormity of the challenge of identifying a neurological mechanism for reinforcement equivalent to the processes of heredity whose discovery made natural selection acceptable.

Richard Gilbert (2013, p. 3) – Behaviorism at 100: An American History
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Radical behaviorism

Psychology is a pseudoscience

The philosophy of radical behaviorism and the science of behavior leaves one with a major question – what is the status of psychology? What is the scientific standing of this field? How to interpret the widespread and popular explanations of behavior? In this post, I shall argue that psychology is not and cannot be considered a science.

Definition and subject matter

Let’s start at the very foundation. Psychology is defined as the study of the mind and behavior – such a definition is provided by the APA (American Psychological Association). Therein lies a major problem and we must critically evaluate the concept of the mind. Despite being the object of study, it is impossible to properly define – we cannot find a physical existence of such a thing beyond naming the conditions under which we utter the word mind.

What makes psychology pseudo-scientific is not the methods employed but it’s philosophy and subject matter. The field is marred with similar reifications, unnecessary and unworkable ideas for scientific analysis. All in all, psychology still remains in the 17th century pre-scientific Cartesian mind-body dualism.

Under closer inspection one can see, that most concepts employed in psychology are created seemingly out of thin air, while observable and measurable behavior serves as a proxy for supposed inner workings. Ideas are liberally and often uncritically borrowed from folk psychology. To illustrate the point, let us visit Chomsky’s and Mischel’s views:

Behavior is evidence. It’s not what you are studying; what you are studying is competence, capacity. If you study man’s insight you want to know what is going on in his brain; behavior gives the evidence for that. But the study of behavior is like calling physics ‘‘meter-reading science’’ because meter readings are the data. But in a serious field, you wouldn’t identify the subject with the study of the data.

Noam Chomsky in Virue´s-Ortega (2006, p. 245) – The Case Against B. F. Skinner 45 Years Later – An Encounter With N. Chomsky

Now the term “behavior” has been expanded to include virtually anything that an organism does, overtly or covertly, in relation to extremely complex social and interpersonal events. Consider, for example, “aggression,” “anxiety,” “defense,” “dependency,” “self-concepts,” “self-control,” “self-reinforcement.” Such categories go considerably beyond self-evident behavior descriptions. A category like aggression involves inferences about the subject’s intentions (e.g., harming another versus accidental injury) and abstractions about behavior, rather than mere physical description of actions and utterances.

Walter Mischel (1973, p. 268) – Toward a Cognitive Social Learning Reconceptualization of Personality

Both authors are conditioned to speak about things beyond behavior. Mischel seemingly does not recognize that formation of verbal behavior depends on individual history and also that nouns do not necessarily signify the physical reality of the word. Chomsky stumbles when identifying the proper subject matter of behavioral science – in a “serious field” one shouldn’t go around conjuring things. Skinner has a recommendation:

But the really great oversimplification is the traditional appeal to states of mind, feelings, and other aspects of the autonomous man which a behavioural analysis is replacing. The ease with which mentalistic explanations can be invented on the spot is perhaps the best gauge of how little attention we should pay to them.

B. F. Skinner (1971, p. 157) – Beyond Freedom And Dignity

Stated succinctly, psychology has pseudo-scientific features – non-natural phenomena are allowed, the natural history of an individual organism is not adequately considered and often ignored, teleological as well as inner agent/free-will statements are common and the sheer quantity of terminology is unmanageable. For this last point, one can simply review some studies of cognitive psychology and count the listed number of concepts, to name a few – motivation, emotions, feelings, memory, goals, personality, depression, self-efficacy, confidence, consciousness, instinct etc. No scientific philosophy is in such a milieu possible.

One must note that the application of the scientific method does not make a field a science. Astrology, for example, might employ some scientific methods, observe movements of the celestial bodies, demonstrate accurate star charts, but we are not misled by these. Besides, a part of psychology called behavior analysis that actually follows radical behaviorist principles is undeservedly undervalued – operant principles are granted only a small role in behavior explanation. This impedes the evolution of the field considerably.

Another bizarre feature of psychology is its relation to animal studies, that can fittingly be called a schism. Psychologists most often display an allergy to generalize findings found in animal studies to humans. Actually, the reverse has become more preponderant – we see a frenzy of anthropomorphisation (e.g. bees and numbers – “We’ve learned bees can understand zero and do basic math, and now a new study shows their tiny insect brains may be capable of connecting symbols to numbers.”). Furthermore, how does the idea of the mind, an anthropocentric concept, contribute in understanding animal behavior?

A science of behavior in contrast, is a subdivision of biology, and no critical problems arise when comparing animal and human behavior. One can argue that fundamental behavioral principles are not to be studied in humans because sufficient control of all the historic variables is not possible. Furthermore, genetic studies have model organisms such as e. coli bacteria, yeast, roundworms, thale cress plant, fruit fly, zebrafish, mice; correspondingly behaviorology has Thornidikian cats, Pavlovian dogs and Skinnerian mice and pigeons – animal studies help us establish general principles of both genetics and behavior.

Circularity

The importance of the following point is so great, that it has to be stressed – most psychological explanations and concepts are circular in nature. Take intelligence for example. High intelligence allegedly explains behavior such as high scores for aptitude tests, but the only way to know that a person has a high intelligence are the same aptitude tests:

Not only do psychologists describe their subject matter in non-parsimonious—mentalistic—terms, they explain the behavior they do observe as being caused by the very cognitive processes they can never observe or measure. Such explanations are circular (Skinner called them explanatory fictions) in that the only evidence of the cognitive processes is the very behaviors they are trying to explain in the first place. When we are given circular explanations, we are being bamboozled into thinking that the behavior has been explained when it hasn’t. Or as Skinner has written, such explanations function to “allay curiosity and to bring inquiry to an end.”

Henry D. Schlinger Jr. (2019) – All’s Behavior – And the Rest Is Naught in OPERANTS_Q2_2019

Criteria of science

Referring to another article, 5 criteria are named for a field to be considered a science. They are:

  1. Clearly defined terminology
  2. Quantifiability
  3. Highly controlled experimental conditions
  4. Reproducibility
  5. Predictability and testability

Psychology does not meet the 5 criteria for a field to be considered scientific. We already visited the terminology issues. The problem of quantifiability naturally follows the undefinable concepts. Regarding the other points, control in human studies is often limited, historical variables are not adequately considered and self-report correlational studies are generally of dubious value. Moreover, psychology and social sciences are perpetually experiencing a reproducibility crisis. The cumulative nature of science in psychology is hardly to be found.

Due to the paucity of meaningful enduring results of psychological research, psychology has never condensed into a consistent, monolithic field. Therefore no proper foundation to psychology exists and it is illustrated by lack of proper introductory materials with textbooks being hodgepodge collections of different subjects with completely different terminology e.g. David Myers – Psychology:

In the typical introductory textbook, each chapter covers one of the various subfields of psychology. Collectively, the chapters provide a broad survey of topics, but in a way that is more patchwork than coherent. There is no overarching framework to organize and integrate the chapters, no basis for treating some material as basic and other material as derivative or advanced. Each chapter is self-contained, presenting its material in terms of the distinctive conceptual language typical of the subfield. The impression one gets is that psychology is a loose federation of relatively independent subfields, each with its own theoretical concerns and conceptual language, rather than a unified scientific discipline.

Textbooks that give high priority to the most up-to-date research contribute further to the sense that psychology is fragmented. Such textbooks can be useful, certainly, in providing a sort of snapshot or status report on what researchers at a particular time find most interesting. But the material cited is not necessarily of lasting significance. It is often the case that the “hot” topics of one period become passe in the next, and the patterns of changing “hotness” do not, in retrospect, always seem like progress. Textbooks that emphasize current research interests for the sake of being current can become dated quickly, and the field they describe can appear faddish.

Richard L. Shull (1995, p. 14) – Foreword II to F. S. Keller & W. N. Schoenfeld (1950) – Principles of Psychology

Psychological research

We can visit thoughts by other authors to identify additional problems in the scientific undertaking of psychology. Firstly, regarding the replication crisis and comparisons of statistical results with other fields:

This can happen in any field, but the replication crisis has unveiled a surprising resistance to the concept of replication within psychological science. (p. 529)

However, and as the second point, even had they been meaningful statistically, they were nonetheless an “apples and oranges” comparison. Psychological research very often has to contend with “proxy” measures that estimate the actual behavior of interest. Neither laboratory measures of behavior sampled under unrealistic and unnatural circumstances nor self-report surveys are a true measure of most of the behaviors that interest us. Thus, even for the best measures of behavior, there are issues related to reliability and validity. However, many medical epidemiological studies measure mortality or pathology rates that are not proxy measures; put simply, death is a perfectly reliable and valid measure of death. Thus, overzealous comparisons between psychological and medical research are fraught and potentially do more to make the field appear desperate rather than rigorous. (p. 537)

Ferguson (2015) – “Everybody Knows Psychology Is Not a Real Science”

Secondly, regarding biases in psychological research and general shakiness of the results:

As they are not only researchers, but also ordinary people, they can easily take their participants’ role and observe their own reactions to the candidate stimuli. Such an intuitive selection process will typically favor those stimuli that happen to bring about the expected phenomenon, making mental simulation an omnipresent source of bias in behavioral research.

Although commonly treated as one of psychology’s best-established phenomena, overconfidence is largely confined to studies in which judgment items were selected intuitively, presumably with a good feeling of which tricky knowledge questions will produce the desired effect.

Running many experiments using different stimuli but only reporting a single study that yields the desired result would be certainly regarded as illegitimate. However, if the same researcher runs and reports only one ‘‘main study’’ with the intended outcome, nobody would care about ‘‘pilot testing’’ used to select the stimuli that bring about that outcome.

Fiedler (2011, p. 165) – Voodoo Correlations Are Everywhere – Not Only in Neuroscience

Theology with statistics

Psychologists might find comfort in the fact that their field is not the only one that is misleadingly called a science. Yanis Varoufakis in a chapter entitled Theology with equations contests the notion of economics as a science:

Many people will tell you that your father doesn’t know what he’s talking about; that economics is a science. That just as physics uses mathematical models to describe nature, so economics uses mathematical models to reveal the workings of the economy. This is nonsense.

Economists do make use of lovely mathematical models and an army of statistical tools and data. But this does not really make them scientists, at least not in the same way that physicists are scientists. Unlike physics, in which nature is the impartial judge of all predictions, economics can never be subjected to impartial tests.

When economists insist that they too are scientists because they use mathematics, they are no different from astrologists protesting that they are just as scientific as astronomers because they also use computers and complicated charts.

But were we to confess that we are at best worldly philosophers, it is unlikely we would continue to be so handsomely rewarded by the ruling class of a market society whose legitimacy we provide by pretending to be scientists.

Yanis Varoufakis (2013, p. 118) – Talking to My Daughter About the Economy

The argument applies with full force to psychology as well. Difficult statistical models, explanatory or confirmatory factor analyses, mediational or moderational analyses, cluster analyses, multi-level modelling cannot salvage a faulty philosophy, reified concepts, poor quality data or studies without proper variable control.

So much for statistics. Now, what about the theology part? In the aptly named book What Causes Human Behavior – Stars, Selves or Contingencies? (2017) Stephen Ledoux explains:

In addition, the agential entities in the secular mysticism of psychology merely present a scaled–down version of the agential–entity power of theological mysticisms. Supposedly, for example, our culturally common heavenly maxi–god can move mountains. However, inner–agent mini gods (e.g., souls, minds, psyches, or selves) can only move body parts (e.g., arms and legs).

Stephen Ledoux (2017, p. 122) – What Causes Human Behavior – Stars, Selves or Contingencies

We can also visit a beloved idea by New Age Atheists – the Occam’s Razor. This clique would swear by following scientific principles but come human behavior, the objective monistic outlook (quite expectedly by now) breaks down. The idea is also known as the Lloyd Morgan’s Cannon – psychology violates fundamental scientific principles of parsimony:

In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.

F. S. Keller (1958-1959, p. 31) – Supplementary Notes in F. S. Keller & W. N. Schoenfeld (1950) – Principles of Psychology

It’s cultural (isn’t everything though?)

It should be clear that psychology suffers from an inadequate philosophy, but one may look at the issue from another standpoint. Let’s not forget that scientists are also behaving organisms and the “science” done is conditioned by the wider political, ideological and social context. It won’t come as a surprise that psychological research is susceptible to private funding, wealthy interests and corporate adoption:

Yet, each of these critics and, for the most part, the majority of other critics of contemporary psychology, with few exceptions (e.g., see Gergen, 1978; Gergen & Morawski, Note 3), have failed to go beyond the threshold that their critique suggests. I believe that the step beyond has eluded them because it would demand a radical break not only with the existing tradition in psychology but also with psychology’s relation to society: This step beyond challenges some of the major value assumptions that have governed Western thought and that continue to serve particular interests and particular social arrangements and practices. (p. 733)

Furthermore, not only are these mental operations cut off from their objective roots in social and historical practice, but also, in being located within the mind of the individual, they cut off people from effective action to change their circumstances rather than their subjective understanding of these circumstances. (p. 733)

Reified cognition and reified psychological processes take what is empirically observed, abstract it from the particular sociohistorical conditions of its constitution, and grant it a timeless, objective standing. (p. 737)

Psychological reifications clothe existing social arrangements in terms of basic and inevitable characteristics of individual psychological functioning; this inadvertently authenticates the status quo, but now in a disguised psychological costume. What has been mediated by a sociohistorical process—the forms and contents of human consciousness and of individual psychological experience—is treated as though it were an “in-itself,” a reality independent of these very origins. (p. 738)

However, if psychology insistently turns its back on its reifying tendencies, it will continue uncritically to affirm existing social arrangements even while it purports simply to be discovering and describing the nature of human realities. The dual reductions of subjectivism and individualism carry the seeds of the psychological reifications that permit ideology to reign because of our ignorance of and blindness to its very presence. (p. 739)

Sampson (1981) – Cognitive Psychology as Ideology

Concluding remarks

Psychology is not a science – as was argued in this post, most of the concepts psychologists employ are hardly anything more than explanatory fictions. Transition to strict materialism in science was and always is filled with strife, bile and denial. Psychology failing to do this in the middle of the 20th century is becoming a dead-end. Even it’s contemporary philosophical ideas already belong in the faculties of history, where they will eventually end up, but due to cultural inertia and power structures likely later rather than sooner:

The manifest inability of our overspecialized scientific establishment to say anything coherent about the causes of lifestyles does not arise from any intrinsic lawlessness of lifestyle phenomena. Rather, I think it is the result of bestowing premium rewards on specialists who never threaten a fact with a theory. A proportionate relationship such as has existed for some time now between the volume of social research and the depth of social confusion can mean only one thing: the aggregate social function of all that research is to prevent people from understanding the causes of their social life.

Marvin Harris (1974, p. vii) – Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches – The Riddles of Culture

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) in Kangas (2007, p. 45) – Cultural Materialism and Behavior Analysis, An Introduction to Harris
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.

Categories
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

Categories
Leftist thought Radical behaviorism Reviews

Why behaviorology must be informed by leftist/socialist theory

Recently I have finished reading a very fine book by Stephen Ledoux published in 2014 – Running Out Of Time – Introducing Behaviorology To Help Solve Global Problems. The book is written in very much the same spirit as this blog – the emerging science of behavior (Behaviorology) and the philosophy informing it (Radical Behaviorism) are needed to understand and effectively tackle issues in our world.

Some of the ideas mentioned in the book evoked my behavior of writing this post. My personal history includes some leftist/socialist theory and some takes in the book struck me as inadequate. It seems to me that the science of behavior must be supplemented by leftist thought and I shall explain why.

Overpopulation

One of the problems discussed in the book is overpopulation. The sentiment echoes Malthusian thought:

Consider simply that the current level of procreative sex among humans on this planet is leading to the demise of planetary life, including humanity. As we mentioned in an earlier chapter, our human population is currently already at over 150 percent of the planet’s carrying capacity.

Ledoux (2014, p. 434)

While there is truth to this – there are almost 8 billion people in the world and Earth is not limitless but we shouldn’t focus only on the raw number of people but also on how many resources do people require. Here we will see a stark discrepancy between regions of the world. Most of the population growth on earth is concentrated in Africa and Asia and it must be attended to as a high birth rate is inextricably intertwined with atrocious women rights. Nevertheless, most resources are consumed elsewhere. In an article entitled “Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds” (BBC, Reddit) it is argued:

The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.

Even the poorest fifth of Britons consumes over five times as much energy per person as the bottom billion in India.

Roger Harrabin (2020-03-16) – Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds

So, only focusing on the population number is misleading as even a lifestyle of a relatively small quantity of people can be unsustainable. Not every person consumes the same amount of resources and we need both attending to the population growth and finding a sustainable lifestyle for everyone. Without this point, behaviorological analyses run the risk (in traditional terms) of western-centrism, eurocentrism and even xenophobia. We cannot frame the problem in terms of a lecherous third world that engages in procreative sex and that they need “solutions” from us “enlightened behaviorists”. We need solutions for the unsustainable lifestyle in the western world as well, for overpopulation and overconsumption.

Progressive Neural Emotional Therapy (PNET)

Another topic discussed in the book is this area of Applied Behaviorological Research:

We can define Progressive Neural Emotional Therapy (PNET) as the refined and standardized practice of what people once inadequately described as a kind of relaxation training and which we now might better describe as successive muscular–emotional re–conditioning. This practice reduces the negative effects of anxiety and stress, which are emotional and physical factors that we have long associated with numerous neuro–emotional maladaptive behaviors. (p. 380)

From examples like these, think about the extensive, health–related, preventative–medicine possibilities that PNET could provide if everyone routinely received half a dozen PNET training sessions before they finished high school, including the transfer training to continue PNET on their own regularly or as needed. (p. 384)

Ledoux (2014)

Such declarations about anxiety and stress reduction therapies that “really work” remind me of promotions regarding relaxation, mindfulness training, yoga or other spiritual activities. While scientific practice of PNET may have its uses, the danger here and a word of caution is that these procedures inevitably lead to solutions inside a person – the problem morphs from external contingencies to an individual, to internalized stress. Fortunately, we have a book that does this topic justice – it is called “McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality”:

I am skeptical. Anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary — it just helps people cope. However, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, it says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids. (p. 6)

Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status quo. Rather than discussing how attention is monetized and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. (p. 7)

The discourse of stress has ideological components, and the mindfulness movement adopts these to build a whole industry around the stressed subject. (p. 23)

In other words, there is nothing inherently wrong with our modern age. It’s just our maladaptive responses that make us unhappy. Having inherited this flawed biology, it is up to us to compensate and self-correct. (p. 27)

Ronald Purser (2019) – McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

Let’s be careful in instructing people to “fix themselves” when the environment is the problem. It does not seem beneficial to ignore structural causes, to disarm people from trying to better the world around them.

Recycling

Yet another call for action regarding recycling seems to be unnecessarily individualistic:

This success could begin with the practice of providing reinforcers for recycling, rather than charging people money for recycling, or increasing the response effort for recycling, or merely coercing people to recycle by just punishing them when they throw recyclables in the trash. (p. 375)

For example, let’s analyze and adjust our routine cultural contingencies so that they better condition the effectiveness of green values like the reinforcers of lifestyle sustainability at a lower population level. (p. 438)

Ledoux (2014)

One cannot oppose the practice of saving and reusing materials and this really is a behavior problem, but is the issue only at the lower population level? A point that this Story of Stuff video makes clear, there are multiple processes in the consumption cycle – resource extraction, production, transportation, consumption, dealing with the waste etc. Even recycling requires resources and it is not possible to recycle everything. Even if everyone would recycle it would not achieve much in a system based on endless consumption and growth. We have to be careful altering individual behavior without looking at and revamping the capitalistic neoliberal economic structure that causes an unsustainable lifestyle.

Gun violence

A peculiar point is raised in the book:

All citizens benefit when criminal activity decreases as a result of, or at least in the presence of, laws that recognize the right of responsible armed self defense, as in the right–to–carry–concealed–arms laws of most states. In such states, any potential victim could be a law–abiding citizen legally carrying a concealed self–defense firearm thereby making, through processes like generalization, all such potential victims—whether carrying or not—less evocative of the illegal behaviors of criminals or would–be criminals.

Ledoux (2014, 425-426)

While there seems to be truth in a statistic the author states that violent crime in the US has reduced since the 1990s, this issue needs a word of caution. As is stated in the quote, there is a positive sentiment regarding right-to-carry-concealed-arms laws combating violent crime. I see two problems with this view:

  1. In recent years both violent crime and gun violence in the US seem to have stopped falling and either plateaued or even increased somewhat (Wikipedia; BBC). Furthermore, when compared with other high-income countries, US statistics look quite grim – both homicide and suicide rates by guns are much higher than elsewhere.
  2. We may inadvertently demonize and put the blame on one of the most vulnerable group of society – so called criminals – whose behavior, let’s not forget, is also the result of their socio-economic conditions and contingencies. Studies do suggest that there is a relationship between poverty and crime, for example. Benediktas Gelūnas expresses the point better than I could:

Even the slightest knowledge of sociology does not allow to consider one’s social status and crime purely as a matter of individual choice (rather the opposite), and any pursuit of justice must take this into account.

Benediktas Gelūnas (2018-10-22) – “Kaip angelai sargai politikos nematė, arba Ką daryti, jei ko išsigandai” – in “Gyvenimas per brangus”

So we should not do the work of the national rifle association (NRA) in promoting “gun rights” when it already spends hefty amounts in lobbying.

Measures to stop smoking

The final topic I would like to discuss is stopping smoking. The author goes a great length in detailing a behavioristically based treatment program to help people stop smoking. The procedure includes multiple techniques addressing most aspects of having a smoke including “Satiation smoking”, “Difficult to obtain”, “Alternative behaviors”, “Pure activity”, “Anti-social chair”, “Quitter’s procedure” and others. Now what bothered me is not the procedure but another aspect regarding reducing smoking:

Presumably one or another as yet unaddressed smoking–evoking variable has momentarily raised the probability of smoking. Some of these variables are essentially unaddressable. For example, only a rare client, such as the president of a college campus, would have the authority to ban, say, cigarette vending machines from the work place. Yet such a measure would be required to minimize the smoking–evoking stimulus–control effects of these machines in this environment. Nevertheless, such measures are simply beyond normal reach.

Ledoux (2014, p. 398)

One could label this as a defeatist attitude – some variables such as a cigarette vending machine in the work place is unaddressable. I would be inclined to say that no variables that are culturally developed should be flagged as beyond reach or beyond discussion. If we follow leftist thought and strive to distribute power in the society, we should encourage and empower people to seek changes and solutions in all areas of the environment, including the workplace.

Summary

All people, including me, anyone reading this, and the author of the book Running Out Of Time – Introducing Behaviorology To Help Solve Global Problems Stephen Ledoux act according to their own personal histories. As detailed in this post, I argue that in addition to behaviorological knowledge we need contingencies including socialist and leftist thought so that we would not be led astray searching for solutions in wrong places.

But in any case, even if the author does not seem to have been influenced by leftist thought, we can see that analyzing contingencies in the real world, inevitably includes discovering bizarre (to put it mildly) practices, for example in the for-profit health care system. As the topic of dignified dying is discussed, problems arise when treating terminally ill patients against their preference statements:

Sometimes this even extends to shipping such patients off to often privately owned, for–profit “hospitals” specializing in procedures specifically designed mainly to keep patients bodily “alive” for as long as possible, regardless of their experience, while milking every possible dollar from the “health” care system.

Ledoux (2014, p. 505)

In conclusion – radical behaviorist and leftist thought complement each other and must be developed and applied having the other in mind.

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Introductory series

Introduction to radical behaviorism (Part 5 – All’s behavior, three types of selection)

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.

In the final part of the introductory series to radical behaviorism some helpful pointers, exercises and logical conclusions are on the menu.

Let’s begin with a simple statement that is exceptionally useful. When discussing human behavior always remember the verse in the amusing poems of Ivor Richards and B.F. Skinner presented in Skinner’s book Cumulative Record (first published in 1959):

All’s behaviour—and the rest is naught.

Ivor Richards (1999, p. 355) in B.F. Skinner – Cumulative Record

This exact quote has been recently reflected upon by Henry Schlinger in the second edition of 2019 of the Operants magazine that is published by B.F. Skinner’s Foundation (President is Julie Vargas – daughter of B.F. Skinner). I would highly recommend subscribing to this free magazine to get quarterly editions – you can do this here.

Best is to quote the author:

So, the brain itself doesn’t do anything. Some like to say that the brain thinks, decides, plans, etc., but these are things that people do; and they are most parsimoniously described as behaviors.

Not only do psychologists describe their subject matter in non-parsimonious—mentalistic—terms, they explain the behavior they do observe as being caused by the very cognitive processes they can never observe or measure. Such explanations are circular (Skinner called them explanatory fictions) in that the only evidence of the cognitive processes is the very behaviors they are trying to explain in the first place. When we are given circular explanations, we are being bamboozled into thinking that the behavior has been explained when it hasn’t.

Consider memory as an example. The definition of memory in the introductory textbook that I use is “the retention of information.” The biggest problems with this definition are the operational definition of information and then how it can be retained. Another problem is that memory is a noun, and like all nouns, it must refer to a person, place, or thing. Obviously, memory refers to none of them. Talking as if memory really exists commits the reification fallacy. Moreover, psychologists have never directly observed memories nor will they ever. So, what exactly are they studying? The answer is behavior (remember that all’s behaviour—and the rest is naught).

But looking in the brain for the causes of behavior before identifying the environmental (or genetic) causes is putting the cart before the horse. And making up imaginary cognitive ghosts in the head to account for the behavior is unnecessary, perpetuates Cartesian dualism, and keeps psychology mired in the philosophical mud from which all sciences sprung.

Schlinger, H. (2019, p. 9-10), Operants

In other words – be careful in concocting and accepting explanations of behavior that need to be themselves explained.

Another minor, but nevertheless important note: when an organism interacts with its environment and is exposed to a certain schedule of reinforcement, it is changed – so when a pigeon is taught to press a lever for food it is a different pigeon than what was before. A point illustrated in Stephen F. Ledoux (2014) – Running Out Of Time – Introducing Behaviorology To Help Solve Global Problems:

Both [respondent and operant conditioning] involve energy transfers between the environment (internal and external) and the body in ways that, as our physiology colleagues can show, trigger cascades of neural firings that variously induce both the greater energy expenditures involved in bodily movements, and the altered neural structures that constitute a different body; that different body mediates (not initiates) behavior differently on future occasions (in a process popularly called “learning,” although no inner agent—no “learner”—is present to “do” the learning, so we seldom use these terms).

Stephen F. Ledoux (2014) – Running Out Of Time – Introducing Behaviorology To Help Solve Global Problems (p. 12)

As is a characteristic of these series (and this part is no exception), let’s continue the exploration of similarities/analogies of natural selection and selection by consequences. A note on the term “selection by consequences” is supplied again by Ledoux (2014) . There are actually three kinds of evolution with their own kind of selection:

  1. Biological evolution (aka phylogenetic) and natural selection
  2. Repertoire evolution (aka ontogenetic) and behavioral selection
  3. Cultural evolution and group-practices selection

All of these types of selection are selections by consequences – in every type the environment (or rather the consequences) “select” what remains (genes, behavior, group-practices or culture). What differs is the timeline, mechanism and vehicle of selection. The third type of selection has not been covered in the introductory series – this is a special case of repertoire evolution where some behavior is transferred from one individual to the other beyond the lifetime of any person. In the introductory series “selection by consequences” refers to the second type – repertoire evolution.

So this time, we can explore the similarities between natural and behavioral selection with an exercise. Jianzhi Zhang (2010) in the chapter Evolutionary Genetics: Progress and Challenges (chapter 4 of the book Evolution since Darwin: The First 150 Years) provides the basic tenets of the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics, also called neo-Darwinism:

“The basic tenets of neo-Darwinism are that:
1. evolution occurs gradually through mutation, selection, and drift, and it is explained by population genetics theories;
2. discontinuities between species are explained as originating gradually through geographical separation, divergence, and extinction, rather than saltation;
3. natural selection is the primary force driving evolutionary change;
4. genetic variation within populations is abundant and is a key contributor to evolution;
5. microevolution can be extrapolated to explain macroevolution.”

Zhang (2010, p. 88) – Evolutionary Genetics: Progress and Challenges

The exercise is to translate these tenets into the Skinnerian selection by consequences. While we have an explanation of the underlying mechanism of natural selection by Mendelian genetics, we still lack an adequate supplement (to my current knowledge) to radical behaviorism by neuro-physiological theories and such synthesis is not available. Nevertheless, the five tenets:

  1. change of behavior (evolution) occurs gradually through new variations, selection, and shaping, and it is explained by operant conditioning (future synthesis with physiology?).
  2. discontinuities between behaviors are explained as originating gradually through environmental differences, evocation (formerly discrimination), and extinction, rather than saltation;
  3. selection by consequences (behavioral selection) is the primary force driving repertoire change;
  4. behavioral variation of an organism is abundant and is a key contributor to evolution;
  5. minor changes in behavior can be extrapolated to explain major changes.

We can see that the tenets can be translated without much trouble. It does not cease to amaze me how neatly natural selection and selection by consequences interrelate. No wonder Daniel Dennett (In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995) has called natural selection “The single best idea anyone has ever had“. Selectionism is a powerful idea and radical behaviorism extends it to individual behavior.

To conclude the series, I would like to highlight an aspect of the theory that made me much more convinced of this philosophy. Simply put – changing the environment is a learned behavior. One can learn that to effectively change other’s or own behavior it is most important to examine and alter the surroundings. This idea “closed the circle” for me – this keeps the philosophy logically consistent and teaches us the principle of behavior change. In solving local or global problems this will be our guide – look at the environment and figure out what is causing current behavior, while tweaking it in order to obtain desirable behavior.

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