As
mentioned at various times in these blogs, in order to keep my home library of old-fashioned
paper-and-ink books from exceeding my shelf capacity (“add more bookshelves” is
no longer a desirable option), my rule-of-thumb is to keep a book only if in principle I might re-read it. Newly
finished books that I never willingly would read again even if I had boundless
time are not shelved at all. As I acquire new “keepers,” marginal titles on the
shelves are culled out so the total shelved number (some 2500) remains about the
same. In truth, most of the remaining books will not be re-read either simply
because of limited time. However, if I’ve culled properly, any one of them
ought to be re-readable if plucked out at random. I test the matter with some frequency by
making just such random plucks, usually about one per week.
One
recent out-pluck had been sitting on my shelf un-reread since 1972 when I was in
college: Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by BF Skinner. Back then it inspired a 20-page paper (see pic of cover page) that
I wrote for an English class. The class was specifically for honing writing
skills (i.e. it wasn’t a literature or general grammar class), and one of the
assignments was a +-20 page research paper; the topic didn’t matter, since it was
to be judged on form and presentation rather than content per se. The paper (The Conversion of a Reluctant Behaviorist)
was an overview of Behaviorism that mostly cited Skinner’s formal studies but
also referred to Beyond Freedom and
Dignity. I did not know until afterward when she handed me back the graded
paper and discussed it with me that the professor had been a student of BF
Skinner. (What were the odds on that?) Perhaps that helped on the grade despite
the supposed “content doesn’t matter” standard. It probably would not have helped
had I mentioned I was lying… sort of. It simplified my task (hey, I had work to
do in other classes) to explain straightforwardly how I found the tenets of
Behaviorism to be convincing despite my initial misgivings. Adding a “yes, but”
detailing my remaining misgivings required more nuance, more research, and more
plain old work than I really wanted to put into this paper. Yet I had reservations
then and still do.
My
2020 re-read hasn’t changed my opinion much. I was baffled by the book then,
and I’m still at something of a loss today. I’ll say up front that I have a lot
of respect for Skinner, the research scientist. He has more than proved his
case that the Behaviorist school of psychology has a lot of merit. Though best
known for his animal studies (e.g. the classic Superstition in the Pigeon), he argued the results are readily
applicable to humans. In many ways they prove to be so. (Apparent failures in
the technique on any one human are attributed to a lack of full information on
that person’s reinforcement schedules outside the lab.) He turns the usual
approach to psychology on its head (pun intended) by not tending first to the
mind. Change the behavior via the proper reinforcement schedule, he says, and
let the psyche take care of itself. If we like a behavioral change, our general
mental state is likely to improve too. The approach is not without successes.
However, Beyond Freedom and Dignity is not about
treating individuals. It is about treating society, and so it is political philosophy,
not “science” despite the frequency with which he uses the word to dismiss
anyone who disagrees with him as unscientific. Skinner is a strict determinist
who doesn’t believe in free will.
I
think I need to sketch out one personal view, which informs my response to this
book: in my opinion the whole discussion of determinism and free will is
academic. It’s a bit like discussions of whether time is real or if it is just
an illusion created by the perception of entropy: as a practical matter,
tomorrow will arrive for us whether the passage of time is “real” or not, so
we’d better be ready for it and we’d better pay our bills before the end of the
month. As for free will, as a practical matter
we have it, whatever the ultimate underlying cosmic reality might be. We
have to hold people accountable for their choices, which means we have to
assume people make them. We can’t ignore criminal behavior, for example, on the
grounds that the criminal had no choice or culpability because the crime was
already built into the structure of the universe – were that true, Jeffrey Epstein,
for one, ought never have been arrested. I am not about to surrender my freedom
of choice because a determinist says I don’t have any. As a practical
day-to-day matter I do. (Notice that “to surrender” also would be a choice.) It
is notoriously hard to define consciousness – the meta-state of not only
knowing but knowing that one knows – but it is safe to say that human minds are
more complex than those of pigeons. We can consciously choose to alter our
behavior even if the reinforcements remain the same. It’s not always easy, as
any addict will tell you, but we can do it.
Skinner
argues that since there is no such thing as freedom or autonomous beings, we
should chuck the whole idea of personal liberty out the window and organize
society on scientific principles (aka his principles) with a structure of
reinforcements that would maximize human happiness. I’m not quite sure how we
could choose to do that, since by his own argument we don’t really choose
anything – what we do or don’t do is already predetermined. And whose
definition of happiness?
Once
again, I respect the work by Skinner that actually is scientific, but I can’t
help thinking that in this book he has gone seriously wrong somehow. Skinner
personally might have been a kind-hearted soul who genuinely wished for human
happiness, but it’s not hard to see how easily his philosophy can be coopted by
less kindly authoritarians. Besides, kindly authoritarians are often the most
dangerous of all.
Will
Beyond Freedom and Dignity go back on
the shelf? Probably. I keep a lot of books with which I disagree. I’ll let it
sit for a while longer on my desk, though, while I consider it.
My book buying guide now is don't buy another by an author unless I have read all the book I already own by them first (or it's just dirt cheap). I have culled out books in the past and still need to do so. So far that works pretty well, unless I don't have something by someone. New author or topics sometimes slip by that rule. Maybe Skinner is lying too not only to us, but himself as well.
ReplyDeleteIt is all too easy to be overrun with books without some filtering method. Not even the Library of Congress keeps everything.
DeleteWe all are faced with choices every minute of every day – we don’t always have good choices but we always have choices. As a practical matter we have to make them. A central existentialist tenet is that we are acting in bad faith if we fail to embrace this scary freedom and accept responsibility in our own minds for the consequences of our choices. None of that is changed even if Skinner is right about a deterministic universe – the cosmic level is not the level on which we do or can live our lives. If “choice” is a fiction, it’s a fiction that is a condition of existence.