Selectionism – Radical behaviorist leftist

Dialectical materialism and natural science (Kolbe, 1978)

I would like to highlight a fascinating account on the evolution of natural science by William Kolbe (1978) in “B.F. Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism”: Logical Positivism or Dialectical Materialism?” The article can be found in three parts: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.

I can recommend reading the whole article, but the chapter that particularly caught my attention is The Paradigmatic Revolution in Science (starting from p. 42). The author argues that in the evolution of science our understanding of the world improves, therefore more and more phenomena can be explained by uncovered relations between events in the physical world. This in turn entrenches the materialistic point of view, as idealistic notions are not needed. Examples of idealistic explanations include teleology (final cause), God, also, much of cognitive psychology which is plagued with idealism where internal states/motivations/purposes/cognitions are provided as explanations for behavior. B.F. Skinner calls these “explanatory fictions” as the alleged explanations have to be explained themselves – we still have to refer to the environmental history of the organism.

Kolbe likens 4 authors that have played a major part in the evolution of modern thought:

If one reflects upon the history of the thinking of our species, as it has been outlined thus far in the article, the dialectic process is dearly in effect.We have been in the process of learning more and more effective ways of describing the world we inhabit. <…> The ignored seeds occurred early in our history, (before Plato) but the effective growth of the movement, in modern times, began with Darwin in the science of biology. Quickly, Karl Marx followed with this thought in economics, sociology and “culturology.” In physics, the move was decisively made by Albert Einstein. Finally, this somewhat unorchestrated revolution in thinking erupted in our own back yard – psychology. Though the real effects of his work have taken decades to develop, B.F. Skinner carried this paradigmatic revolution into psychology in the late 30’s.

The author points out 3 main changes of outlook that these authors championed:

1. Commitment to “rigorous materialism”.

Darwin excised the possibility of Divine action within the evolution of a natural world. Marx violently bridled at any hint of idealism, claiming it was a device of the privileged class aimed at preventing scientific progress, which might threaten their stations and free all people from economic oppression. Einstein redefined “matter”,
”energy”, “space”, and “time”, in order to prevent the Newtonian notions of particle, force, absolute space and time as a one-way river divorced from material processes and the space they define. And, of course, there is Skinner’s complete ban on any form of mentalistic descriptions of behavioral events .

2. Abandonment of Newtonian (not to deny his achievements) “point-center’s of action” explanation in favor of a “field interpretation”. As I understand, this point states that events are to be explained not by innate properties of the object, but by its relations with the environment.

For Darwin, changes in a species involved the selective actions of the environment, For Marx, individual consciousness which might lead to revolutionary action is to be explained by the cultural conditions, which give rise to changes of – or states of – consciousness in individuals. For Einstein, the physical processes which lead us to infer the existence of particles are more directly approached as related series of events occurring within a region of the space-time continuum . For Skinner, obviously, the behavior of individuals must be explained in terms of the effects of the physical and social environments.

3. The importance of history in describing the material process. At least in cases of Darwin and Skinner I like to call this selectionism, elsewhere I found the name “Pragmatic selectionism”.

Darwin stated that a species is, at any moment, a result of a long evolutionary history, preserved in the genetic code, which is passed from generation to generation. Marx founded his descriptions of the development of society squarely upon a history of progression from slavery to feudalism to capitalism (via industrial revolution), then through social revolution to socialism, which finally culminates in a true communism. <..> For Einstein, this sense of history is a bit more obscure, but it is present, none the less. <..> Einstein’s point was that what we infer to be particulate bodies is nothing more than a series of ”events” that have been observed to occur in measurements we make . <..> So, for Einstein, “particulate-ness” is simply replaced by a ” history of observed events”. For Skinner, it is quite obvious that he places great emphasis upon history. His emphasis of the ontogenetic history of reinforcement and the phylogenetic history of survival requires no further remark.

What fascinates me about this article, is the logical and coherent point of view that is propounded, where seemingly unrelated branches of science can be interpreted under the same materialistic/selectionist theoretical framework. In the mainstream however, only two of the authors are universally accepted – Darwin and Einstein, while Marx and Skinner are presented as irrelevant.

To conclude this post, I would like to point out Kolbe’s argument for the combination of radical behaviorist and Marxist/socialist thought as that is exactly what I am advancing in this blog:

<..> but, how can we insure ourselves that we will not fall prey to an equally rotten situation under a totalitarian dictatorship? The only hope seems to be a marriage of Marx and Skinner. We must dispose of the tyrants, certainly; but, the change must be over-seen by individuals capable of applying the science of human behavior to insure a just result. Simply, Radical Behaviorists must become Marxists, and Marxists must become Radical Behaviorists – and together they must act.

Introduction to radical behaviorism (Part 1 – Natural science and selectionism)

In this blog I will be addressing questions of human behavior. To be understood, I would like to properly introduce and define the underlying paradigm – therefore in this introductory series I shall explain the most important notions of the philosophy.

Initially, it must be agreed that the behavior of humans, as well as animals, can be discussed in an objective/scientific manner. We can be sure that there are reasons why people act as they do and the reasons can be found out. This means that we need sufficient data about the history of the person and his/her behavior. With this information it is possible to discover meaningful relations between past events and current behavior therefore explaining it, to predict future behavior and furthermore, by understanding the mechanisms, to control behavior in a way we deem suitable. This point of view is naturalistic as well as materialistic monist in the sense that no other data than objective information in the environment that can be recorded is needed to explain the objective facts. This philosophy is amply developed in the B.F. Skinner’s 1953 book “Science and Human Behavior”. The question of control is an important issue in its own right and I will return to it but for now, it will be sufficient to note that we already widely practice control of behavior where the most obvious example is the education of children – we teach our young how they should behave in society.

Radical behaviorism is a selectionist philosophy expanding the Darwinian concept of natural selection. The theory of evolution and natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology and is widely taught in schools (at least in Lithuania’s biology classes) and it should serve as a good foundation to understanding radical behaviorism. Natural selection is the principle that the traits of individuals that manage to survive and have offspring are “selected” and such traits naturally persist in following generations. As a result, the prevalence of the specific trait in the species rises. Conversely, traits of individuals that don’t survive become rarer or extinct. This process is wholly spontaneous as no external forces are needed. The selection is carried out only by the environment where the organisms find themselves in.

Skinner applied the principle of natural selection to the behavioral changes of any single organism in its lifetime – the idea is called selection by consequences. Behavior that is reinforced (has positive consequences, e.g. food, money, affection, safety etc.) persists and has a greater probability to occur in the future while the probability of un-reinforced behavior (has no consequences or negative ones) diminishes. The analogy to natural selection is clear – the process is spontaneous and happens solely in the organisms relation with the environment. The effective behavior is determined (thus “selected”) by the environment. In other words, it is not the organism that “chooses” what action will bring reinforcement but the environmental conditions determine what behavior is effective.

As one can immediately understand this philosophy is deterministic (but with a caveat) – future behavior is wholly determined by the organisms past – (1) by its genetic inheritance as a member of species (natural selection) and (2) by its individual history in relation with its environment (selection by consequences) and its current state (e.g. state of deprivation). It must be noted that an organism cannot acquire an unlimited variety of behavior in its lifetime as there are genetic restraints. For example, I can write this text only because I am a member of the human species with a long history of socialization, reading and other experiences but no matter what the environmental conditions I could never learn to jump 5 meters into the air with my own legs.

The aforementioned caveat in the determinism of the theory can be tricky to grasp. It concerns the probability of behavior. In any given circumstances, many courses of action/behavior are possible with their own certain probabilities. E.g. if I want to eat out today and there are 3 obvious possibilities, the probabilities may be: Chinese food (60%), pizza (20%), burgers (15%), some other action (5%). It is not possible to tell what I am going to do, only the likelihood of any future behavior. The organisms past determines the probability of certain behaviors – sometimes this probability approaches 100% and thus is almost certain. For example, if one wants to leave a room, one must first open the door – opening the door is always reinforcing because it creates possibility for further action/reinforcement. Basically, radical behaviorism is a probabilistic determinist philosophy – the past determines not the exact behavior but behavioral courses and their probabilities.

To sum up, the theory is simple to understand but may be complicated to explain. In this opening post introducing radical behaviorism, I discussed radical behaviorism as a natural science, the link between natural selection and selection by consequences and finally explained the concept of the probability of behavior. I will continue this introduction in another post.

Following parts of the introductory series: Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.