Skinner's Radical Alternative - GEOCITIES.ws

Radical Behaviorism and Cognitive Science:
Contrasting Psychologies of the Twentieth Century? Questions to be Answered in Chapter 17
1. What is the myth of cognitive psychology?
2. Why did Skinner advocate the intensive study of simple organisms
like rats and pigeons?
3. Where do real explanations lie?
4. How did Leahy show that the so-called "cognitive revolution" never
took place?
5. What distinguishes Skinner's radical behaviorism from
methodological behaviorism?
6. How is the reflex a Gelstatist concept?
7. What is the Empirical Law of Effect?
8. What did Allyon and Azrin's 1968 token economy study demonstrate
about the effects of behavioral therapy on previously "hopeless
case" psychotics?
9. What are the various schedules of reinforcement and how do they
produce reliable behavior patterns?
10. How does etymology create an "inner world"?
11. How are variation and selection of behaviors the key to explanation?
12. What importance does history play in understanding actions and their
causes?
13. Why are people not indifferent spectators in life?
14. How do visual media stifle the imagination?
15. What is meaning in verbal communication?
16. In Baum's view, how did Skinner mishandle the mind?
17. What does Skinner say about freedom, blame, praise, and the design
of cultures?
18. What two errors did Staddon find in Skinner's work concering
punishment?
19. Skinner's great contribution to the study of behavior was what?
Munsterberg and The Two Psychologies The psychology of the late 20th Century was fragmented, but there was
one fairly clear main division - that between radical behaviorism and
cognitive psychology. Radical Behaviorism was far less popular - it did
not use the language of ordinary life and so it and seemed strange and
difficult to understand. Cognitive Psychology used ordinary language - the
vocabulary of folk psychology - and so was more congenial to the general
public. The situation was roughly the same at the turn of the century, as
we can see by examining the works of Hugo Munsterberg.
Hugo Munsterberg had a "sense for the perspective and proportion of
things," according to William James, who invited him to Harvard, where he
spent the remainder of his life (1892-1895 and 1897-1916).[1] When
Munsterberg arrived, James changed his own title from "Professor of
Psychology" to "Professor of Philosophy," implying that he had found a
successor as a psychologist. Munsterberg was indeed a psychologist, as
well as a physician, and a philosopher. He could also be considered a
founder of applied psychology, because of his research in psychotherapy,
advertising, the psychology of law, and industrial psychology. And he
certainly had "perspective."
He published twenty books in English and six in German, the best of
which may be the 1914 Psychology: General and Applied, published by
Appleton. The book is divided into two parts: Causal Psychology and
Purposive Psychology. He believed that these two viewpoints must be kept
separate, since he argued that they were as different as physics and
religion. "Causal Psychology" is concerned with scientific explanation.
"Purposive psychology" is wholly different - it is concerned with a freely
willing self with a personality and all kinds of stuff "inside" us, as he
put it.
In 284 pages Munsterberg presented Causal Psychology as
associationism, but in the first thirty-two he was careful to make clear
that there is no unconscious store of memories, no images and words "lying
somewhere at the bottom of my mind."[2] Earlier[3] he had written that
"the story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words - there is
none." In his view the unconscious was often employed to supply causes
where there seemed to be gaps and, in fact, that was one of Freud's main
reasons for postulating the unconscious.
But no "utterly fantastic" causes are needed, since our mental life
does indeed show regularity in its operations. But it never features
anything that resembles causal necessity in the first place. If there is
no necessity, there need be no causes. Arguing against the cognitive
psychology of his day, he wrote that it is childish to insist that ideas
come, go to a storage place, and return as "remembered!" Those who do so
insist must feel constantly aware of their "lap" as they walk around. They
must be reassured when next they sit, just as the believer in the
unconscious depository of ideas "recognizes" an old idea, come back again.
Though thoughts do not really cause actions, they may accompany actions and
are themselves produced by action. A person's thinking is as much a part
of his actions as those are a product of his thought.[4]
An individual of a particular temperament and character and
intelligence and talent does not stand in an independent outer
world which shapes him, but the outer world which has a chance
to influence him is itself the product of his tendencies to
reaction. Personality and the world are in a complete mutual
relation.
As many readers will note, Munsterberg's "causal psychology" is in many
ways a radical behavioral interpretation of thought and action, but it is
not the only kind of psychology.
"Purpose-oriented" or functional psychology is very different, but
familiar to modern readers. It includes the world of beauty,
understanding, love, faith, learning, and memory, where "our mental life is
free," and immediate practical concerns are what is important. It is
psychology as it is popularly construed. He wrote that we should let
people have free will and memory and faith, but restrict those things to
this viewpoint and see that it stays clear of the causal viewpoint.
We see Munsterberg's perspective exemplified almost a century later
and we will argue that what he called causal, or scientific, psychology is
represented by radical behaviorism, a position that rejects folk psychology
and the language of popular psychology. Most psychologists accept the
traditional beliefs and the language of popular culture and they constitute
cognitive psychology. Cognitive Psychology and Radical Behaviorism Cognitive psychology, or "cognitive science," is not something that
sprang up suddenly in the 1950s when psychologists "once again dared study
the mind." We maintain that "cognitive psychology" really refers to
nothing specific, though nonpsychologists and new students often suppose
that it is a distinct field. An examination of textbooks in the area,
summarized below, shows that cognitive psychology may have as many
definitions as there are textbooks written about it.
Anyone interested in the conventional "faculties of mind" of popular
psychology may be called a cognitive psychologist by default. Hence,
researchers in sensation, perception, memory, attention, problem solving,
imagination, language, and other cognitive-sounding areas may be called
cognitive psychologists.[5] If one follows the computer-induced
"processing" view of cognition, then one is more likely to be called a
"cognitive scientist," particularly if one emphasizes computer simulations
rather than human-produced data. We will refer to this endeavor as a part
of cognitive psychology, an umbrella term for many, many disparate views.
Behaviorism is a clear alternative to cognitive psychology, but only
if the "behaviorism" is the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner or one of
its variants. Radical behaviorism contrasts strongly with all forms of
cognitive psychology, since it rejects the use of mediators, while all
forms of cognitive psychology rely on mediation. But there are many views
called "behavioral," and some of them do advocate the use of mediators,
whether they be called habits, expectancies, S-R connections, associations,
or something else. Those behaviorisms constitute what Skinner (1945)
called "methodological behaviorism" and they are actually cognitive
theories, as cognitive as a theory positing a set of processing stages.
We propose that radical behaviorism is a coherent position that is
very unlike the stereotype described in textbooks and in much of the
literature, while cognitive psychology is amorphous, a catch-all heading
that includes wildly differing points of view. They are unified only by
reliance on mediating constructs and a penchant for the vocabulary of
popular psychology. We will show that radical behaviorism deals
effectively with the topics usually considered "cognitive" through
illustrations drawn from Skinner's About Behaviorism, published in 1974.
We will also show what Skinner did not know, which is the continuity of his
interpretations with those of historical views. Finally, we will describe
current views in legal theory, advertising, social psychology, and even in
memory and awareness that are exemplars of radical behaviorism, though this
is seldom known by the authors involved or by many radical behaviorists.
First, we consider the false history of psychology.
The Mythical History of Psychology
Countless textbooks have described a capsule history of psychology
that has come to be accepted as true, largely since it has been repeated
so many times. Not surprisingly, it appeared in a leading textbook on
cognitive psychology, authored by an acknowledged leader in the field.[6]
According to this widely-cited source, cognitive psychology began with the
ancient Greeks and the conflict between the rationalism of Plato and the
empiricism of Aristotle, which continued through the 18th century, as the
British empiricists battled the continental rationalists.[7] While the
rise of science led to great progress in the