B. F. Skinner - Behavior Control, Freedom, and Morality (1972)

this program is about Free Will and determinism but with a difference because one of the people in program hasn't just an academic interest in determinism it is so to speak his job he's a psychologist with a worldwide reputation for devising a technique of controlling Behavior known as operant conditioning though he has reservations about the word conditioning he is BF Skinner professor of psychology at Harvard and to talk to him about the presuppositions and morality of behavior control is Jeffrey waro who is an Oxford philosopher in fact the principal of Hartford College Oxford now I'd like

to start things off by putting a question to both of you it's this suppose that somebody's way of Behaving can be explained in terms of what you would call the contingencies of environmental reinforcement but which is what I stand by rewards and punishments suppose you could explain his behavior in that way what about the explanation which the chap himself might give in terms of his ideas and his purposes and his thoughts and so on would the causal explanation show that other explanation to be a bogus one yes well could we could we take a specific

example last evening I went to the theater now why well I could tell you that I felt like going it occurred to me the idea of going to theater occurred to me and I went went I could also tell you that um looking at it from my professional point of view that when I have gone to the theater in London I've always been richly reinforced that is to say things have happened which have increased the likelihood that I will go to the theater when I'm in London and uh this would be the explanation that I

would give and I would say that that explanation would also explain why the idea of going to the theater occurred to me and why I felt like going that suggests to me that you're less sharply and unqualifiedly critical of the sort of everyday terms in which we habitually explain human behavior than perhaps some of your readers might suppose um if perhaps I might put the point like this one's familiar from the history of science or possibly pre- science as one might call it with the practice at one time of talking as if organisms such as

say plants did things for purposes that they grew in a certain way in order to seek the sunlight and um you say in your book and um I'm sure most people would agree that that way of talking really is wholly non-explanatory and it involves talking as if plants had thoughts and intentions now which they just don't and one is genuinely explaining nothing now I get the impression from what you were saying just now that you don't want to say exactly that anyway about the ordinary sort of story we would tell conversationally about why someone goes

to the theater it isn't that this is a totally valueless absolutely inapplicable kind of explanation but you think just not a complete one or doesn't tell one the whole story well there are two kinds of selection here the the plant turning to the light is a characteristic of plants which which evolved because those plants gained an advantage in survival there were contingencies of survival which selected those plants which turn most effectively to the light the purpose which used to be put ahead of the Turning is now put afterward it is the adaptation achieved by the

plant in turning and the same thing is true in Opera Behavior the what used to be thought of as a creative intentional act leading to behavior is now SE to be due to the selective effect of the consequences in strengthening behavior and making it more probable so that the purpose of going to the theater turns out to be the consequences of having gone to the theater in the past rather than something which leads me to go in this particular instance yes but I there's clearly no tendency in that um towards the position that um really

intentions don't occur or there are no such things I uh one could reasonably say in the case of the sunflower that it this just doesn't have any purposes at all whereas of course I nothing in what you say I think would lead one to want to say that um people don't actually have intentions in doing things or don't intend to do something and then go ahead and do it I it isn't that there's anything illusory in this but the difference between the sunflower and the person is that the person has also had a long experience

in which he has learned to observe himself particularly that private world within his skin to which no one else has access which we are likely then to think of as being non-physical or something of that kind but we have all learned from childhood to tell people what we are feeling and what we are feeling is I suppose always a state of our body or what we intend to do what we're going to do and we have good evidence about this from the actual states of our bodies and by reporting on our purpose we seem to

indicate a prior purpose but what we report on is the disposition to act which again is the product of an earlier set of consequences so that we do not act because of a felt purpose we act and beforehand feel a purpose both for the same reasons which are to be found in the in the past history this is impossible for the sunflower it has not learned to observe itself or to report on it what it is doing it has no capacity for analyzing Its Behavior where we have we and we I think I think actually

by the experimental analysis of the role of the environment we are discovering new kinds of self-observation new kinds of self- knowledge I think the thing which where we the point where we differ is that um you I believe want to give some kinds of of Dimensions to these purposes intentions and so on that I want to avoid when I say the idea of going to the theater occurred to me what I should say I believe it that the the behavior of going to the theater occurred to me and I went well that occurred yes but

why do you want to get away from saying the thought of going to the theater occurred to you because I worried about the dimensions of the thought no doubt I could tell you in advance that I was going to go in fact I bought tickets and so on so that I was aware of the probability that I would go and uh I was aware of the Preparatory behaviors in which I engaged but I want those to remain Behavior or at least visible States or probabilities of behavior which I can being an introspective person report but

I'm not reporting something in a different world a mentalistic world oh well I didn't find that yes I mean I don't want there to be more than one world any more than you do I think no well I think we can agree then if that if that is the case then I believe we ought to look at the kinds of refences which lead us to set up uh the to prop to propose the existence of an idea or an intention or a purpose what are what are our our evidences and I would like to do

it that way because I believe that gives me an advantage I see you're going to be looking at the behavior and the and the prior conditions yes I'm still not absolutely clear about this as to why why it should be that that you want to get away from talking about people's thoughts and intentions because I mean it isn't obviously that one can attempt to deny that these actually occur I one is reporting something I suppose it is that you want to say that the report that we ordinarily give is some kind of rather misleading cover

for the really explanatory thing um which requires a different set of terms for its expression yes it would be be unfair of Jeffrey to attribute to you all of the paraphanalia of mentalism and so on but that did exist at one time and people gave explanations for physical action in terms of events in a non-physical world and my feeling is that where there is more of that left than we want to admit and I am perhaps overdoing it by making it very clear that I I don't want any of it left but I when I

say that the idea of going to the theater occurred to me I I I'm very suspicious of what I have said then because what what has occurred has simply been Behavior the probability of behavior the the strength of which I was aware of before I acted because I am in touch with my own body it's my own body and I'm very happy to to hear you uh say that you don't want to put any other kind of stuff in the body that's that's fine this looks as if we were very very much closer than I

had supposed could I now turn over to the other side of this let say the the morality of controlling Behavior by conditioning now you are are in the business of controlling people's behavior well people as well as animals um to what ends yes that involves a third example of selection as far as I can see the human species has evolved various cultures that is to say social environments in which the individual has an extraordinary Advantage as against life entirely in solitude Solitude produces the feral child the wild boy and that's all but with a culture

human behavior can do fantastic things because the culture stores the past experience of the and and and makes it for a much more favorable environment now I believe the culture evolve the direction is not necessarily predictable in advance but to some extent we can distinguish between cultures which make people effective and those which destroy and I believe that it is always the strength of the culture in its Ultimate Survival which is the value which answers the question of of the moral of the morals lying behind the control of behavior I want to build better contingencies

of reinforcement in the classroom so that students learn more rapidly and effectively and I I the reasons I would give have to do with the the chances that this culture can solve its problems effectively but yes what I I think myself would feel here is that this is going to lead into enormously more controversial territory perhaps than you have recognized you see I'm reminded here of um a former distinguished thinker namely the philosopher Hobbs um who like you I suppose could be described as a materialist you wouldn't mind that was certainly a determinist and certainly

believed he didn't know as much about it as you do but he certainly believed that the way people behave could be controlled by um supplying the appropriate conditions for them but now Hobs in that enormous work of his called Leviathan of course was very conscious that this led him directly into fundamental political problems um if it's the case that we have what you call a technology of behavior if that's to say it is possible effectively to get people to behave in this way or that then surely there arises an enormous range of what are partly

political partly moral questions about um through what institutions this sort of control is to be exercised to what ends ends selected by whom and all these are enormously difficult questions which are bound to get one into I should have thought political argument of a very fundamental kind I I agree it does and I not only recognize I have other people Point them out again and again um this is this is the problem and it is not I think the result of something being wrong in the formulation but rather in the fact that survival is a

very difficult value how can one predict the uh exigencies to be encountered by a culture or a state or or a political organization or an economic system how can one prescribe the behaviors that are most effectively going to contend with these conditions that's where the trouble comes and that's why you have different political philosophies different systems of economics and so on but that is nothing that I can do anything about we are all in the same boat on that we all have difficulties in in deciding what is to be done and but I I if

I have any expertise at all I I CL in the field of how to do it after one decides oh yes yes uh that would mean that you would maintain the distinction which I suppose people would tend to take for granted between possessing a technology and determining how it is to be applied ABS except that I do not believe that the second requires any special wisdom denied to the scientist and available to the philosopher I know but possibly it isn't either solved by any special expertise possessed by the time let go however we ought to

be able to analyze human behavior as it tries to deal with the difficulties in the field of of of of moral judgment value judgments yes I I again I trust you would still go along that that the that the moral is not a different world it is it is the world we are living in it has something to do with practical problems in that world we're not moving into another kind of atmosphere or another spiritual condition or anything of that kind we're solving practical problems somehow or other with whatever is is available yes there is

some one other point at which I'm not saying that Hobs to go back to him is in a stronger position than you are but I think he is in a clearer position and he was clear that the overriding value which we ought to try and secure was personal survival of the individual that this was the thing should be uh aimed at above all things well at least I understand quite clearly what hob means when he says that whereas I I'm mind to say this may simply be that it needs further explanation but the notion of

the survival of a culture I find very much more difficult to understand I mean how one is to identify a culture what would count as it surviving or not surviving and um because presumably cultures are always undergoing processes of change well when does change amount to not surviving a changes in culture yes uh now I think that raises the question as to what changes in a culture are desirable and how is that question to be settled because you can't answer it in terms of the survival of that culture you can only answer it to the

extent that you can predict some of the contingencies of surviv which are to be met by the culture and that's very difficult thing survival is a very weak sort of value for predictive purposes but we can still make some decisions there are some kinds of things which simply must be changed now if we are to prevent disaster with overpopulation using up of resources pollution of the environment and so on we're not precisely sure how the culture would perish if we did nothing about this we have a pretty good pretty good idea of the kinds of

changes we need to make we need we need to to to change practices which are continuing Trends in certain directions but I don't think does it that that fully answers the the the question that gfre was Raising you see he raised the question what changes in a culture are desirable and I if I understood what you said you were saying that well um changes in the culture are pretty unpredictable or difficult to predict but even if we could predict them we would still have to decide which of them we wanted to try and bring about

Would we not well this a matter of priority you mean which one we should tackle first or something of that kind with available facilities not just priority I think Ian supposing we all would agree that we want to avoid some sort of major collapse and cataclysm I everybody would agree about that but but given that we're all agreed in avoiding that uh there are surely a large number of options and different kinds of culture all of which would count as survivals in one way or another of our culture but I think it's a mistake to

get tangled up on the question of values I don't know I seem to be able to set up values which seem to be perfectly reasonable and I I really don't see any debate for example I think you could say that a culture will be stronger if every person in it capable of working has a job that he likes what he does and he works well and carefully I that seems to me so obvious that a culture is better off if that is the case I think it's terribly important that Educational Systems be available so that

young people acquire what they need to learn as quickly and efficiently as possible now I think there are questions as to what they ought to learn but even that I think is not the kind of thing that one can't say something about I think it's much better if we get along with each other without war and uh I should should but but that first perhaps as as as a value and I really don't want to quibble about whether it might might not in some sense be better if the world were continuously at war ah nobody

is going to disagree with you about that certainly and I if I go further than that I mean I would entirely agree with you that there is an enormous range of extremely important agreement as to what states of Affairs are desirable and if possible to be brought about and not I think perhaps the difference between us would amount to your being more hopeful of procuring General Ascent to um certain propositions about the desirability of a kind of culture than I would I mean I would think that there would be more residual disagreement I pure differences

of taste perhaps well it might be that it might be a temperament or something of that kind but I think also and I I'm I'm not saying this to boast at all but the particular specialy in which I've to which I devoted my life has given me very great reason to believe that changes can be brought about that we used to think impossible now I'm not uh not pulling rank on you on this at all but I I I would attribute my optimism to some rather substantial demonstrations that things can be done that we used

to think impossible yes still going to leave us with the question whether we should do them or not but um yes I think that is a question and if I am convinced it we sure then it is up to me to apply my behavioral engineering to convince you and others and get them done I you tried to persuade supposing that would actually happen that would be a demonstration then that our culture has somehow or other created conditions under which something is done to to move the culture in a given Direction now if the culture then

perishes so much the worse for the culture but at least it was an evolutionary try in One Direction some other culture will come up with something better yes could I bring up a related slightly different point you you talk just now about moving the culture in a given Direction and um of course in your statement of your position you very often use the word control controlling the environment and thereby controlling the behavior of people um now I I'm sure that a great many of um the readers of your books would get the impression from this

that what you envisaged was a kind of Mastermind a master manipulator um occupying somewhat the relation to humanity at large as the man in the white coat occupies to the laboratory pigeon and a great many people I'm sure find this an unattractive picture very much so I do myself now I think that the a person who begins to understand behavior in a more effective way will function as some kind of specialist who will give Vice but will not himself actually put it into effect all I foresee is that teachers will teach more effectively uh people

who arrange incentive conditions will arrange more effective incentive conditions if there's any controlling power it will remain where it is now but I should like to suppose that a culture will evolve in which it is impossible for concentrations of power to to make dictators possible I would suppose that it the future does not lie in any one man benevolent or otherwise but in a culture which is the ultimate determiner of what kind of men emerge in power to make use of available scientific knowledge well I I think these political questions could take a whole another

debate so on that note we'll have to end Fred skner Jeffrey warok thank you