What killed behavior analysis in the 1960s and 70s? Confluence of four factors. Everyone has thoughts and feelings, and Skinner was never going to convince anyone otherwise. Skinner tried to make Science and Human Behavior (1953) into his version of tne Maos Little Red Book, chock full with phrases to memorize and to recite back to mentalists when they asked embarrassing questions. That didnt work for Skinner either. No amount of radical purging of our language of mentalisms would convince scientists or non-scientist alike that Radical Behaviorism was right. Skinner and his followers were demanding that very bright, well educated people accept an assumption tnat was counterfactual and contrary to virtually all intellectual traditions, namely tnat people dont really love, fear and or become enraged, leading us to do things. We were called upon to assume all of that was silly and illusory. Try tellng that to Homer, Shakespeare, Hemingway or Toni Morrison..or Francis Crick, Stephen Hawking, or Miguel Nicollelus. It doesnt pass the sniff test. Everyone knows that even if tney wont admit it. We had required people to accept ideas that werent believable. Second, many thousands of mentalistic psychologists trained in epistemological theoretical psycholgy of Piaget and Freud, who made their livings spewing mentalistic fantasies, were chomping at the bit to give Skinner and his ilk their comeuppance. Behavior Modification had made a significant dent in the claims that Skinners psychology was for rats only. For the first time in history, huge numbers of people were benefitting from behavior analysis. If something wasnt done to stop Skinners band of behavioral bandits, there was risk of tneir absconding with a big chunk of academic psychology. Psychology needed a new rallying cry and a way of counterattacking the Skinnerian insurgents. There were oodles of angry people in main stream psychology wanting blood. That cry was, Viva la Cognitive Psychology, and the General leading the charge was Noam Chomsky. The ploy was very clever and extremely effective. By choice, behavior anslysts had almost no track record in studying language, thinking and memory, which meant attacking Skinner where he had no empirical rebuttal was likely to severely damage Behaviorism. And it was. Claiming such fundamentally important topics were unimportant wasnt going to work. It didn t. By focusing his critique mainly on Verbal Behavior, Skinners one entirely theoretical substantive book, Chomsky backed Skinner into very unfamiliar territory, theory. He raised important points about weakness in Skinners theoretical formulation and made numerous absurd attacks that misrepresented Skinners theory. Heres tne clincher. Skinner sat on his hands and did not rebut Chomsky. Skinner may have thought tnat he was not reinforcing Chomskys aggression, but no one else saw it that way. Everyone else (but a few of us) thought Skinner had no compelling responses to make to Chomsky s critique. It wasvery widely believed Skinner had been vanquished fromthe intellectual playing field. It was a death blow to Skinner and behavior analysis. From the moment Chomskys1959 article appeared in tne journal Language, behavior analysis began plummetting in academic popularity. Skinner made a fatal mistake by failing to powerfully reply to Chomsky. And only he could credibly do so. Behaviorism is Dead, became a broad cultural meme among people who had never heard of Behaviorism. Next problem. Watson and Crick, genomics and proteomics have made it clear everything in bioscience involves genes... creating them, activating or inactivating, changing where they are expressed in tne brain,modifying their signals, messing with them, and on and on. Moreover, our friends in molecular neuroscience have shown operant learning DOES SOME OF THOSE EXACT THINGS to genes, Reinforced experience modifies genes, whch modifies tne brain. When we reinforce operants we build new synapses. When we build synapses, we lay the foundation for subsequent learning. So what did we in behavior analysis do when presented with this golden opportunuty? We said the effects of genes have been exaggerated. We said we dont care about genes, we care about stimulus control and consequences. Ouch, I feel a stick poking me diectly in tne eye. Why would we exclude one of the most powerful areas of science from behavior analysis when its unnecessary? Thats what we did and continue to do. Brain imaging seemed to tranform mentalistic hocus pocus into pictures of the mind at work. Functional Magnetic Imaging created the illusion that cognitive scientists could present three dimensional colored pictures of tne human mind thinking or emoting. Huge philosophical error, but it served their nefarious purposes. Instead of cognitive psychologists being in league with phrenologists and alchemists, they created the illusion they were REAL BONAFIDE scientists taking color polarids of Grandpa thinking dirty tnoughts... how cool is that? Compared with colored computer generated brain images, cumulative response records of key pcking were akin to 19th century kymograph tracings. AND, what did Radical Behaviorists do? They (we) stupidly said the fMRI pictures of tne brain performing psychological tasks were NOT part of behavioral science. We held up our behaviorist crucifixes and while sheilding our eyes from the diabolical blinding light of an illuminated amygdala, while screaming In requiem tuam, et non erit (thou shalt not be a reductionist). Behavior Analysis ENTIRELY GAVE AWAY those captivating brain imaging technologies to tne very people who were intent on excluding us from tne academic club. It was like bending over and pointing to tne precise place on their buttt at which to request a good solid, swift boot in tne ass. My mother always told me not to run with a scissors. Maybe Its time I put down tne scissors and stop stabbing myself. Questions?
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 21:40:35 +0000
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