B. F. Skinner - Philosophy of Behaviorism (1988)

Professor Skinner we're here today to talk about verbal Behavior the book by that name and the behavior of that name your book verbal behavior in which you set forth a behavioral account of language strikes me as one of the great theoretical works of 20th century science certainly the most important Treatise on mind since the Great British empirical philosophers Lo and the rest had their say on the topic do you object to my in verbal Behavior A Treatise on mind and human understanding terms borrowed from philosophy I don't think so it certainly is a book about

how we talk about behavior and our own behavior and the concept of mind could never have Arisen until we reached the point at which we talked about what we were doing as I I can't imagine that preverbal human organisms or any other species in the world ever ask itself why did I do that you uh you do things and if successful you do them again if not you don't do them again and so on but under what conditions could you ever say to yourself why did I do that it's got to be verbal you've got

to start talking about yourself and others now the first answer to that question I think must have come from noticing something inside your body as you were behaving oh I must have done that because of the way I felt I think it was only my guess is it would be when histories began to be written that you began to see sequences of events in which something else might explain the behavior namely something that already happened and that would explain the feelings that you have what you're feeling in your body and hence the behavior but I

think it's only it's only because we do talk about behavior that we understand what we call our mind and that means that verbal Behavior must have come before we had a mind if there is such a thing before we spoke about how we feel why we did things what what what what our states of Mind were what our thoughts were and so on those are verbal constructs MH but behavior is quite something else it's what we do in the world as a result of genetic and personal history what has happened to the species and what

has happened to us as individuals well near the end of verbal Behavior you have the statement which I found startling the first dozen times I read it um I'm paraphrasing but it goes something like think thinking is behaving as though they were really just two names for the same process what do you mean by that well I I am what the philosophers would call a monist in the sense that I believe that I am nothing but a member of a particular particular evolved species and U nothing of any other kind thing exists in me I've

got to explain everything I do in terms of what would eventually come down to biochemical changes and people in the nervous system will will we'll get on to those better but up to beyond that I can only suppose that I do things in the sense of acting upon the world and only when that world has certain features at given time because of what has happened to me now if I see you simp I just I'm just seeing you but not doing anything more I just stopped talking for a bit and I just sit there seeing

you well what is that except what is happening in my head when you are stimulating my eyes in a particular way now if I were studying you as a pure sensation the spot of red or something like that I would probably trace it to genetics what is going on in the in the eye that leads me to see red but since you very much more than that I would have to explain what I now see in terms of what has happened to me in the past many hundreds of times as I've talked with you that

is the difference between perception and and a sensation but it's all still what I am doing because of my genetic endowment my eyes and nerve systems and so on and my past history now I can close my eyes and I'm still seeing you I'm not doing it very well I do it much better with my eyes open but I still do it and what I am doing is what I am doing with my eyes open it's the same activity my nervous system I have no information about that and a long time in the future uh

the physiologist will have a very clear picture of what it is but it is something that I do and I've have done it because it was very important for a member of a species in the past to see things and get out of the way or eat them up whatever whatever the case was and therefore for individuals to do the same things thanks to a different process of selection namely oper and conditioning uh it's part of my activity and in the very broadest sense that is what behaving is doing what I am doing well um

a common view in Psychology not not our view I think is that the true subject matter of psychology is some inner process of thought that lies behind behavior and behavior is often thought of as um a mere symptom almost a trivial byproduct of this inner thinking process what do you what do you make then of that inner outer distinction well I think the reason that we now question the inner the reason has been a behavioristic revolution is that we now know more about the behavior up until 1913 at least no one seriously said that you

can forget about these internal things and look at the behavior but that was only possible because people had begun to study behavior now behaviorism didn't amount to much for 25 years because we didn't know much about it about what people do rats ran through mazes and uh dogs salivated the bells and whatnot but that was there was no real science of the behavioral antecedence of behavior of the environmental antecedence of behavior once they had been discovered and very carefully worked out there was something else to explain what we do in addition to what we're feeling

and then you realize that once you have a science of behavior which establishes the role of the environment two be two Sciences really ethology the role of natural selection and experimental analysis of behavior is the role of the environment of the individual through oper and conditioning once you have that science then there's less need to look inside for a cause and eventually you can simply say there's no need at all because what is inside is the product of the history so what happens is I grew up as a as a baby in child and an

adult was that my body was slowly Changed by contingency to reinforcement it remained a body produced by natural selection and as soon as we understand the environmental sources of what I do all the way along we don't need to bother about how it how it feels when I'm doing it but what is what philosophers have done for 2 and a half thousand years at least is to try to look more more more and more close loely at what they feel or what they see introspectively and of course they never have got anywhere and they Plato

is still taught today in Departments of philosophy you see 2500 years later and more over they U they cognitive psychology has given up on introspection psychology in general as do you do you find a psychologist sitting around observing mental life anymore no the cognitive processes are inferences which you establish by hypotheses and uh inferences and so on I don't know of a single psychologist sits around watches a stream of Consciousness or is a trained observer in the v introdiction though the behavioristic attack on introspection has been totally successful introspection is now out as a process

of science it's still there with philosophy and there they can have it and they will but the good philosophers I would say someone like Burton Russell I think realizes that you can't get much out of introspection although it's interesting to look at yourself when you're thinking but you've got eventually to get back to physical explanation you say look at yourself when you're thinking I mean you I think of all people in Psychology have been uh a Paragon of what can be accomplished what one can accomplish with themsel when they look at themselves I mean you

you are always it seems to me analyzing your own behavior and trying to uh plan your environment to get maximum production and enjoyment out of your life well yes because it's not that I want to find out how to think better I find out under what conditions do I think better and that's very different I what is left to me at 84 is very little uh I except to go on with what I've done I the thing I enjoy most is thinking when I'm at my desk when I'm not eating too much or too tired

talking to people and so on at my desk I that is I'm I'm I'm never never happier uh it is just a wonderful state to be in especially when the sentences do come out and so on and so on now I don't do that by screwing up my courage at the sticking place and think I arranged my personal history for the preceding 24 hours to get that state and of course I have to look at the state I watch myself I see myself saying things this is uh what I learn to do as a member

of a species which specializes in self-observation and I don't question the import of this I would advise therapist to be Behavior therapist not psychotherapist to change the world people in which people live not their minds or their feelings but I would say For Heaven's Sake ask people how they feel ask people what they're going to do or what their their intentions are that's the best way you can get information about their history but you're not getting at the initial cause and I am not changing the initial causes in my behavior I'm changing the external causes

which caus me to be in a state when I am most productive as a thinker well okay what do you mean then by thinking let's come back to that question when of thinking and behaving what is the kind of th what do you mean by the thinking that you do well it's a whole difference between the cognitive idea that I when I am there I'm retrieving something retrieving thoughts like remembering a name do you retrieve a name from memory I don't think so at all when you go through the alphabet to prompt yourself you work

to get the name to come but you don't go like in a filing cabinet and pull it out or go dial a computer and have it appear on the screen you don't retrieve the whole idea that of retrieving information that the cognitive psychologist talks much ridiculous we don't retrieve we we try to create conditions in which something happens and when I'm writing a paper I have an outline a topic I have a lot of other things all arranged in a useful file and so on I do everything I can to get that next sentence out

I don't compose it I don't search for it I don't re retrieve it from some mess of memories or anything like that then then do you not are you not responsible for your own thinking no of course not no are we not responsible for anything we do except in the ethical sense that we we have been taught by our culture to take steps so that we don't do certain kinds of things and if we haven't taken those steps we are held responsible I would hold them responsible we not teaching us to take them but that's

another matter uh in the long run uh I think behavior is simply what various complicated biochemical systems do under certain circumstances and um I don't think u a biochemical system acts in order to achieve a goal it acts in certain ways and with a given result well that brings me to another question I I wanted to ask you about uh about Midway through verbal Behavior there is a statement uh that for me has always summed up one of the book's Chief lessons I'm paraphrasing again but it but it roughly goes the speaker is a Locus

where variables come together to produce their effect I don't think anybody else in the world has ever talked about a speaker um as a locust what do you mean by that odd turn of phrase well precisely what I've just said um when I say something I'm saying it right now I wouldn't be saying it if I were a chimpanzee though my the history of the human species is all here helping me do this that's not me though I am the product of that and if anything starts because because of my genetics it starts because of

my genetics and not because of me now what I say also is the product of an enormously long history of things I've read things I've heard things I've said things I've done and so on they have changed me changed that genetic Endowment in such a way that I am answering your questions and in the way I am but that isn't anything starting within me either if if I had not known about the role of contingencies of reinforcement or natural selection I would have had to suppose that things originated in me and that was the case

prior to Darwin and behaviorism but having then seen how selection by consequences will produce the body that I have here when at Birth or slightly before perhaps and how the process of operating condition which is an evolved process has changed that body throughout my lifetime so it behaves this way there's nothing left in there of a BF Skinner saying anything I am that person saying this now but I am not originating I am a place in which a genetic and personal history have come together to produce what I'm saying but I am a Locus and

I I feel no that doesn't seem to threaten me at all I don't feel robbed of any dignity by putting it that way why do you think so many people do feel robbed if if you tell I find with undergraduates if if you try to teach the doctrine that you've just been uh explaining um they resent it and they they feel that their their freedom that their joy in life uh their purpose for being has been taken away from them well all depends on what's taken away a juvenile delinquent is all too happy to have

you say well I feel sorry for you really you shouldn't be punished because you had a bad background you grew up in a in a bad place and so on and your father neglected you and your mother was off on the town or something that's why you're a delinquent and we'll we have to forgive you not your fault but now supposing you're talking to a very good basketball player and said you really are very good but remember you're 6' s tall you got a wonderful coach in high school you got a a scholarship for college

and were able to play you know year after year after year and then you got uh you're getting a huge salary now and can devote your life to playing that's why you're a good player oh no I am a good player you say but you won't say I'm delinquent but by God you're not going to be robbed of of your reputation as a great player I think there's something inconsistent there and I think the way to straighten it out is either to uh hold everyone responsible for what they do and give everyone credit for what

they do and I I don't think we're willing to do that and uh I would prefer the other and I think I I I think it's it's it's good to be proud of what you've done it's good to be ashamed of what you've done these are cultural practices which have got you to do things I I would praise people even though I don't think what I'm praising is anything more than something that will be changed by my praise my I will be um if you if you say great then that's more likely to be done

next time you say if you if you say great then that's more likely to be done next time you you know uh almost any school of psychotherapy or behavior therapy or religion or philosophy that I know of emphasizes they saying to people you have choices today is the beginning of is the first day of the rest of your life you have choices you can choose where you're going to go with your life from here do do you think that there's any sense in which which people do have choices well there are situations in which there

are different things that can be done and one of them will be done and you call it a choice now you can also do something called decision making which is to work on yourself or the setting so that one thing or the other is done you're stuck between two things like balam's ass and you got to do something to do one or the other or you'll die and so you fiddle around this bag this this one over here looks better I like to go I'm right-handed I'll go to the right or you'll do something the

get gets you to respond and you say I'm I decided what to do and I made my choice but these are entirely determined by environmental events the interesting the Corel of what you're saying though is that people don't want to injure a belief in choice and so they turn to ineffective methods teachers don't want to teach because that injures the students Creative Learning this goes way back commenius back 3 or 400 years ago the more the teacher teaches the less the student learns but you want students to learn so you mustn't teach that's Carl Rogers

said as much as that in his own field he said as much as that too you want the individual the the client to be the one who will come up with the solution if you give him the solution you you've robbed him of the ability to to find it for himself this is true of of all claims for creativity and so on if you show an influence oh yes he was influenced by so then you robbed him of of some originality you see we try so hard to keep that imagined inner entity or ego working

in a given way we don't want to take credit away in my book beyond freedom of dignity was a demonstration of how much damage that is done to our cultures um how do you explain the fact that uh people don't do what they're told to do they have to in some sense find their own solution oh well first of all make the distinction between rule government and consy shaped Behavior teachers construct situations in which students do things for irrelevant reasons because later on they will do them and get good reasons to follow so that it's

a matter really of of priming the behavior which is then truly taken over now that can be done in a school and if the school builds up Behavior which does pay off in the World At Large it's a good school and so you teach people to analyze situations describe them extract from them rules to follow then the consequences follow too and from that point on you have originated something in the sense that you have got yourself to do something that did pay off but how many people know how to find rules from the contingencies they

face that so that should be taught but it's not teaching creativity it's teaching the manipulation of a world verbally which then leads to action which is Then followed by consequences so you always come out with a behavior followed by consequences or you haven't got anywhere you're just following rules is nothing when you don't like to follow rules I don't like to follow rules but if somebody tells me to do something and I do it and consequences follow I may even say thank you for telling me um I think this is a crucial Topic in current

behavioral thinking and research and and theorizing so I'd like to spend a little more time on it what what do you mean by a rule you you've introduced the distinction between rule govern and contingency shape Behavior once you can talk about Behavior talk about the world you can help other people come into effective contact with the world and with the origin of rebal behavior in the human species only enormous Advan were made because it was no longer up to the individual to learn everything through what happens to him as an individual or her um and

you get then a culture forming which primes Behavior Models Behavior gets the behavior out so that things can happen that have happened in the first place only rarely to one person and now happen to everyone somebody first discovered something about something that would have been the end and would and it might have been a very difficult contingency that taught it if it hadn't been put down and transferred as a rule in in in texts or passed down by rules verbally and so on the what has happened to our what is called a culture is that

there has evolved an enormous source of rules which if you follow will lead you to do things that will be reinforced science does that too uh science is nothing but a complex set of rules for of action governments have rules which get you to do what they won't punish you for doing uh religions have rules of the same kind of things in in business you've got all of the prices and all of these kinds of things which are agreements verbal agreements as to what is going to have what you will get if you pay so

much and so on it's all rules govern behavior and cognitive psych psychologist have taken it over now they study how people follow rules but not the contingency is showing but you only follow rules for good reasons that it would be that you have to be you've have your behavior of following rules it must have been reinforced somehow or other and that gets you into a difference between the behavior which is contingency shaped and that's the real Behavior that's when you're doing things because consequences have followed when you've done it and and following rules which is

temporary you follow the rule and then the consequences follow and you're there you come to the cambri say I like good Italian food and I say well go to Luigi's very good food that's advice that's a rule just a description of what will happen if you go to Luigi you go and get good food and from that point on if you go again it's not because of my of the rule at all it's because of the food you got and that's that's all of science is somebody discovers you do it this way and something will

happen very unusual very rare contingencies but accidental and but after that there's no longer accidental now you do it because of the rules it's it's all all in the in in my book on verbal Behavior but I didn't get it out quite that far I think you you've also talked about it at other times um uh book learning versus practical Behavior yes well there's an old distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by experience that's it knowledge by description is rule govern knowledge you do things because you've been they the consequences have been described and

that's what cognitive people cognitive science the cognition and cognitive science is knowledge by description they describe settings what would you do and so on the knowledge by experience is operant conditioning that's what what changes take place in an organism when contingency have been imposed to produce it produce the behavior we've all seen kids so commonly and I've occasionally seen it in my adult friends as well where you start to show them how to do something they say don't do it for me I'll do it myself yes exactly why well because uh they would prefer uh

it's more fun to be contingency shaped than to follow rules think of think of how much we tell tell kids to do you clean your teeth this morning go clean your teeth sit down don't don't don't don't don't wash your hands and so on we we boss them around where where where no good contingencies do follow teeth wasn't bothering him at the moment or they or the hands weren't weren't interfering with eating and all of this so that uh we have a burden of of just too many rules which are followed with nothing else happening

to reinforce following them and so we attacked those who give us the rules uh I've been supplying you with prompts for your verbal Behavior but there must be things that you would like to share with us that I have failed to prompt so what else would you like to tell us about that has to do with veral behavior well I suppose if you allowed me I would get around to my battle with the cognitive Psych ologist because it is essentially verbal concerning verbal Behavior they have given up on Behavior as a function of the setting

and what has happened in the past to talk about verbal Behavior you describe settings and you ask them to say what they would in would expect to happen what would they would intend to do and so on now I think that is that's moving right into the field of verbal behavior and forget all about what the offering people study which is real situations and real behavior and that reminds me now of they giving me a free reign here of a very another very important Point many people especially the animal activists now are saying you can

do all of these experiments with human beings why do you have to use animals my answer to that is absolutely the opposite you can't do these experiments with human beings you must do them with animals or with nonverbal human beings of which you don't have many unless you work with very small children or very atypical people the reason is situation in which people find find themselves and what happens then is that they analyze the situations and begin to say something about it MH and they may give themselves rules to follow and then what they do

from that point on is a response to the setting you have created and to the rules they have created for themselves so that there the only research on human subjects that I think feasible is precisely that point of what people do in analyzing situations and giving themselves rules which modify their contingency shaped behavior and I think it's all the basic the basic behavioral processes are all available in the animal laboratory all of them and I let's say I use nothing but those processes in my book on verbal behavior that is where you study it there

is that is where you study how the brain works if you want to put it that way or how the organism is the whole works as I want to put it and given that you can then interpret what's going on in daily life both in terms of the contingencies which Prevail as such or the contingencies which generate verbal behavior and responses to the products of verbal Behavior I think it's a very important Point only the animal laboratory really can get down to the basic processes of behavior that I put that true and I would say

that was true of of perception too I think the work that's been done uh herstein work on pattern discrimination and con what he calls concept formation I wouldn't call it that I think the concepts in the apparatus not in the pigeon but that is a much more precise study of how behavior is brought under the control of stimuli than to bring people into a setting and try to convert them into into as the old vitians did into the skilled Observer who didn't take the stimulus into account that was the stimulus error if you take what

you remember about stimuli you'll spoil the research of course the perception people came along and did that too and what you perceive the way you perceive something is not the way it is but the way it seems to you and all that means is not the way it is but the way it is plus all that has happened to you you in similar situations throughout your life that is why you respond to it as a perception instead of but I think you only can get you get back to the basic processes only with non-verbal organisms

and that's basic in the sense of not contaminated by not being contaminated by talking about it or or having been influenced by what was said to you and so on but you're not but you're not suggesting that it isn't worthwhile once you understand the basic processes or you're studying the basic processes it's worthwhile to also study how people make use of verbal Behavior oh well you teach verbal Behavior yes and you you teach them to follow instructions you teach them to respond to descriptions of contingencies you we do this with children all the time and

we could do it much better than we do in schools if we if we recognize the nature of the problem you call it rules uh in other people might call some of what you've talked about um self-fulfilling prophecy once you've said that something then you then you do it that way because you've said so well that would be an example I don't like the word rules but it's what I really mean is verbal Behavior control Behavior but that's a little awkward and I'm settling for rules just as a as a as a standard term there's

a whole field of uh psychological research on what's called problem solving or concept formation you know people are showing cards with curly lines or straight lines and red Borders or blue borders and so on um and and uh what people do in trying to identify the critical features of the stimuli is often called hypothesis making yes um how would you talk about that well hypothesis is something supposed to be inside and that's I object to that absolutely I think the old word association as a good good example is a very simple example pavlos dogs Associated

the bell with the food not at all pavlof Associated them associate means to put together and it was pavlof who did that the interesting thing is that having Associated the bell with the food the dog begins to respond to the Bell now that is not Association by the dog so my parel the same thing is true of concept formation um the various Einstein's experiment very very fascinating experiment you show a pigeon hundreds of slides in some of which there are people and in others not and in the surprising short time the pigeons will respond in

one way to as slide with a person in it and another way to SL without now it's a mistake to say though I think that the pigeon has acquired the concept of person the concept is in the apparatus the concept was formed when you reinforce responses to slides with people and extinguish responses with to slides without people you you form the concept the remarkable thing is that pigeons can respond in that different way but without having a concept in the head to help them well is that true of people as well then I in what

sense when should we apply the word concept when when can we say if ever that people have Concepts or that a pigeon has a concept well concept is the process is the product of conception and uh that is a metaphor that uh is is rather really relevant here something is supposed to have happened in you for the first time uh and like all mentalistic Concepts there are environmental explanations which take over the origination of something inside with it was the environment it was the contingency the reinforcement which led to the behavior and concept is something

we make up as a name for the change in us which as a result of which we now behave in a different way you see we don't store memories we simply are changed organisms we don't acquire Concepts we are changed organisms the pigeon that will respond to people and not to people is a changed pigeon and we've changed it by differential reinforcement with respect to visual presentations it's uh the the there is of course a change that will eventually be discovered by brain scientists 100 years from now perhaps uh when they get to that finess

of control uh and that I leave it to them I I I believe in brain science I don't believe in philosophy or or concept formation I guess I I'm still curious to pursue thinking uh a little more I have two questions is there a difference between verbal thinking and non-verbal thinking and is there a difference between human thinking and the thinking of other species well since I have no way of knowing about the thinking of other species as something they observe and I can I can both observe what I do and also what I am

thinking at the time I I'm not quite sure how that could be answered however I would distinguish between the way I am thinking when I am inventing a piece of apparatus as a gadget and I I I do things without actually doing them them in the sense I almost always as visualizing the consequences of doing I see myself putting things together in certain ways and seeing whether that's square and whether this is likely to move without hitting this and so on and all of that is perceptual Behavior which is very hard to make people understand

as Behavior but it is what I would do if I had the pieces there and what I would see if I saw my if if I were doing it with the pieces and of course I can't do it as well without the pieces that's why I would eventually get around to making it making a model to see whether it works or not I invented a very complex machine the teaching machine the middle 50s it's now in the Smith Sony is full of gadgetry of all kinds I drew all of the parts for the constru uction

of that that one summer in Maine was nothing but squared paper available every single part in there Dimensions exact specifications and so on it took uh took a machinist full year to make the parts and put them together with very slight adjustments it worked now that's the thing I I love doing that um if I had had a shop on monhagen a machine shop working with metal and so on I would have would have made it instead of rowing lines and visualizing the parts but uh I was doing things in both cases the fact that

nobody could see me when I was just drawing lines and they couldn't see what I was seeing these these drawings didn't look at all like the the parts when they were finally made neveress I it was a kind of Behavior Behavior I've always enjoyed doing and and done well enough to I get a lot of reinforcement out of it some people might find it impossible to do I dare say but there things I'm I can't do too I I I can't think music as except when I'm hearing it I discovered that I I can if

I used to play uh piano and I had an electric organ too but I couldn't read Mozart Sonata and hear it um I sit down and play it and hear it but I discovered that if I turned off the sound of my electric organ and played it I could hear it oh really that's interesting uh the uh the movement of my hands brought a auditory behavior that that worked very well well you can you can imagine then how in a professional musician the behavior could be shaped of looking at the notes on the printed page

and hearing the music oh yes or how because Beethoven wrote The Ninth Symphony totally deaf he never heard it and he may have heard some deep vibrations of some kind but yet he composed it I'm sure but was hearing it as he composed it but he never heard it through his ears you describe with great Delight uh the way um you're you're enjoyment at working with your hands in a shop um I think there are psychologists who would say that shows up in your particular science of behavior that that it has a kind of mechanical

flavor do you think that your own personal enjoyment at gadgetry and making practical things that work um and that had to have preceded your ever coming into psychology that influenced the way the science of operate Behavior developed well it influenced the way research was carried out because I could throw an apparatus together with very little time if it wasn't working I could change it if I ran into something else I could scrap it and build something else quickly and so on so I didn't have to call in a machinist and have him do something so

I could do some research and uh certainly all of that early stuff was just junk that I put together with an extraordinary number of Lucky accidents as a result and most the most obvious ones I made a dispenser of food pellets for a rat by taking an old disc of food I found in a junk pile wood wood a circular piece of wood and drilled holes and I arranged it so this would step along and drop one piece out every time it just happened there was a spindle on that piece of wood and I left

it on and then it occurred to me after I began to get records of how fast the animal was was working for food was marks like this and it occurred to me if I put a string around that spindle I could have the pen drop and get a curve well now that's just just that is extraordinary luck because it is the curve from which the slope is a measure of probability a rate of responding that proved to be so certainly in my own thinking very important that was that's gadgetry it is due to uh my

building things if I were sitting around like wienstein say playing with words or whatever he's played with it would be a very different thing of course binstein did say at one point you know that it will take some animal research to answer these questions I value that things I saw old W new wh my when when you were saying that um uh there is not much use in teaching all those years of Latin to little kids I was thinking that a that a that a grammar school system that produced Shakespeare can't be all wrong