Foreword to B.F. Skinner's 2024 Edition of Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, 2024
Before exploring some of the contents of this book, I would like to invite you to read the follow... more Before exploring some of the contents of this book, I would like to invite you to read the following concepts and consider their relevance to many of the issues we face in today's society: love…compassion…empathy…suffering…peace…care…freedom…humanity…leadership… government…religion…science…education…conflict…friendship…humor. From a scientific perspective, what can the behavior of Skinner's rats or Pavlov's dogs possibly teach us about this range of complex and uniquely human phenomena? In a sense, answering that question is what this book is about. Pavlov paved the way for Skinner by demonstrating that orderliness between behavior and the environment exists and that by controlling one's environmental conditions, order can be scientifically observed and measured. The orderliness captured by Pavlov's dogs led to the distinction between two fundamental units for analyzing stimulus control: the unconditioned reflex and the conditioned reflex. These units laid the groundwork for scientists to answer many important questions about behavior. Like other behaviorists at the time of his earliest research, Skinner was primarily interested in understanding how the reflex could explain complex activities of human beings. However, when he set out to discover orderly relationships for such behavior, his rats eventually unveiled to him something new and revolutionary: the operant as a third unit of stimulus control. Consider each of the three units of analysis as lenses through which we can observe and understand various kinds of behavior. For instance, when the early behavioral scientists looked through the lens of the conditioned reflex, they were able to see more clearly the explanations for acquired behavior we tend to describe as "involuntary," which includes enjoyable or unpleasant
T he 2018 first quarterly issue of Operants magazine introduced a call for discussion within the ... more T he 2018 first quarterly issue of Operants magazine introduced a call for discussion within the field of behavior analysis about the foundational principles of our field and how they can be plausibly extended to our explanations of complex behavior. Recently re-published on the B. F. Skinner Foundation's website Skinner's 1935 paper, On the Generic Nature of the Concepts of Stimulus and Response, serves as a central focus for the present discussion. Since the published works of David C. Palmer show how these principles can be extrapolated to interpretations of complex behavior, we are including excerpts from his publications that illustrate the importance of Skinner's original experimental discoveries.
Foreword to B.F. Skinner's 2024 Edition of Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, 2024
Before exploring some of the contents of this book, I would like to invite you to read the follow... more Before exploring some of the contents of this book, I would like to invite you to read the following concepts and consider their relevance to many of the issues we face in today's society: love…compassion…empathy…suffering…peace…care…freedom…humanity…leadership… government…religion…science…education…conflict…friendship…humor. From a scientific perspective, what can the behavior of Skinner's rats or Pavlov's dogs possibly teach us about this range of complex and uniquely human phenomena? In a sense, answering that question is what this book is about. Pavlov paved the way for Skinner by demonstrating that orderliness between behavior and the environment exists and that by controlling one's environmental conditions, order can be scientifically observed and measured. The orderliness captured by Pavlov's dogs led to the distinction between two fundamental units for analyzing stimulus control: the unconditioned reflex and the conditioned reflex. These units laid the groundwork for scientists to answer many important questions about behavior. Like other behaviorists at the time of his earliest research, Skinner was primarily interested in understanding how the reflex could explain complex activities of human beings. However, when he set out to discover orderly relationships for such behavior, his rats eventually unveiled to him something new and revolutionary: the operant as a third unit of stimulus control. Consider each of the three units of analysis as lenses through which we can observe and understand various kinds of behavior. For instance, when the early behavioral scientists looked through the lens of the conditioned reflex, they were able to see more clearly the explanations for acquired behavior we tend to describe as "involuntary," which includes enjoyable or unpleasant
T he 2018 first quarterly issue of Operants magazine introduced a call for discussion within the ... more T he 2018 first quarterly issue of Operants magazine introduced a call for discussion within the field of behavior analysis about the foundational principles of our field and how they can be plausibly extended to our explanations of complex behavior. Recently re-published on the B. F. Skinner Foundation's website Skinner's 1935 paper, On the Generic Nature of the Concepts of Stimulus and Response, serves as a central focus for the present discussion. Since the published works of David C. Palmer show how these principles can be extrapolated to interpretations of complex behavior, we are including excerpts from his publications that illustrate the importance of Skinner's original experimental discoveries.
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