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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Friday, September 7, 2012

BEHAVIORISM


Back in the '50's, when I was a student and then a young Instructor  at Harvard, Sigmund Freud's theories of human personality, which were enjoying a considerable [and, in my opinion, deserved] reputation, were challenged by the school of Psychological Theory known as Behaviorism, of which the Harvard professor B. F. Skinner was the leading exponent.  It was the contention of Skinnerian behaviorists that they could give a completely adequate explanation of even the most complex behaviors without reference to internal thought processes, conscious or unconscious, restricting themselves solely to observable stimuli and responses.  According to Skinner, human behavior, like animal behavior, could be regulated by schedules of positive and negative reinforcement [rewards and punishments], such as pellets of food for chickens or pigeons.  In the laboratory, Skinner's disciples were able to achieve such wonders as conditioning a chicken to play perfect games of tic-tac-toe.  Skinner himself viewed his theories as beneficent, since they taught that desired results could be achieved by properly constructed schedules of positive reinforcement, without the need for punishment at all.  Some readers of this blog may be familiar with the enormous stir created by Noam Chomsky's scathing review, in 1959, of Skinner's attempt in Verbal Behavior to explain language acquisition by Behavioral Theory.

In those days, an urban legend was making the rounds in Cambridge, Mass. about a malicious game devised by some of Skinner's more reprehensible students.  According to the legend, they would go to a student party and spot a shy, anxious, socially awkward young man [of whom, at Cambridge parties in those days there was sure to be an adequate supply], and they would observe him quietly until they spotted some distinctive bit of socially unacceptable behavior that he exhibited, such as picking his nose.  Then they would position themselves around the room, and as soon as he moved his finger to his nose, they would all smile broadly at him for a moment.  [This was the positive reinforcement.]  By the end of the evening, it was said, they would have him touching his nose again and again, like a pigeon pecking a key that released a pellet of food.   The poor young man would be utterly unaware that he had been "conditioned by a schedule of positive reinforcement."

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I have a rather embarrassingly compulsive need for encouragement from my readers in the form of the comments appended to blog posts.  Periodically, I express my dismay with the enterprise of blogging, exhibiting a pathetic desire to be reassured that my efforts are not falling on deaf ears [or, perhaps more accurately, on blind eyes.]  I think I have developed this tic as a consequence of a lifetime in the classroom, where one is constantly rewarded with reactions from one's students -- laughter at a joke, a groan when an exam is announced, the shy smile from the quiet young woman the back row who never speaks in class but seems to understand one's subtlest points and most obscure references.  None of these "positive reinforcements" are available in the blogosphere, where even the identity of one's readers may be concealed behind bizarre web handles.

I shall soldier on, confident that someone out there is reading me.  When I grow anxious and feel unappreciated, I shall consult Google's statistics, which faithfully record every visit to this page.  How strange we humans are.

9 comments:

John S. Wilkins said...

I have been blogging for nearly a decade, and posting online for a quarter century. I still require that positive reinforcement. Proof that even philosophers are organic, I guess.

Jerry Fresia said...

My first teaching job was at UCSB in 1986. I drove across the country from MA to CA and as I approached CA, I picked up this radio station from LA featuring a psychiatrist doing therapy on the radio, which at the time I thought was completely ridiculous. The psychiatrist was David Viscott (since deceased) and I became an avid follower. He argued that everyone was riddled with self-doubt, but that the "doubt is false...the belief is real." He often told the story of Beethoven who, after refusing to write music in honor of Napoleon, was chased out into the rain by a Prince imploring Beethoven to write something. Beethoven turned to the Prince and said (to the effect): "Sir, you are what you are by virtue of your birth. There are and there always will be thousands of princes. I am what I am by virtue of my work. There is and there will always be only one Beethoven." Confident guy, right? And then, as the story goes (apocryphal perhaps), Beethoven, on his death bed, turns to a friend and asks, "I did have a certain talent...didn't I?" "The doubt is false, the belief is real" may be better suited to greeting cards than more serious musings, but, for me, it is a comforting idea nonetheless.

Jeff Binder said...

For what it's worth, I've been enjoying this blog for some time, but my page views are probably not reflected in your stats. I use Google Reader, which, from what I understand, stores its own copies of the posts that it serves to subscribers, making it more-or-less impossible to figure out how many people are reading a site in that way. This seems to be an inherent limitation of RSS, but as usual, convenience tends to win out.

Lounger said...

I have also been following this blog via Google reader and only occasionally click through to the blog site so I can read the comments. That is what I did this time.

English Jerk said...

Folks reading your blog through an RSS feed will definitely not appear in your hit counts. Also, anyone using Firefox with an add-on that blocks Java scripts may not show up in your hit counts. So you can assume that your hit tracker will underestimate, and it's hard to know by how much.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

Boy, am I ever clueless!

Magpie said...

I visit frequently, even if I rarely comment. I'm what they call a "lurker".

It's a good blog and your posts are appreciated.

Nick said...

Just chiming in as another lurker who loves reading and rarely comments. Sometimes blogs have a post dedicated to lurkers introducing themselves, though I don't know if there is a semi-official delurker day or not.

Nelson Goodman said...

I'm a devoted follower of your extremely rich and stimulating artifacts. PLEASE solider on - and do so secure in the knowledge that it is truly valued.