Beyond freedom and dignity
In this controversial work, a landmark of 20th-century thought, Skinner makes his definitive statement about humans & society. Insisting world problems can be solved only by dealing more effectively with behavior, he claims traditional concepts of freedom & dignity must be sharply revised. They've played an important historical role in struggles against many kinds of tyranny, but they're now responsible for the futile defense of a presumed free & autonomous individual. They're perpetuating the use of punishment & blocking the development of more effective cultural practices. Basing his arguments on the results of the experimental analyses of behavior he pioneered, he rejects traditional explanations of behavior in terms of states of mind, feelings & other mental attributes in favor of explanations to be sought in the interaction between genetic endowment & personal history. He argues that instead of promoting freedom & dignity as personal attributes, we should direct attention to the physical & social environments in which people live. It's the environment rather than humankind itself that must be changed if the traditional goals of the struggle for freedom & dignity are to be reached.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
8mentions
8people
2010–2022years
25% recommend63% neutral13% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner is probably the best nonfiction book I've ever read. It not only contains profound philosophical insights, but presents them in a concise and approachable manner. Every chapter ends with a recapitulation of the chapter's contents (why isn't this standard?). The book is short and deals with a single topic. It gets to the point rather than beating around the bush, and completely avoids invoking metaphysical explanations or political implications. I truly cannot praise it enough.
- No offence (I like most of your post), but BF Skinner was not a psycho. He was an amazing scientist and researcher. You should really read some of his books before you judge him (Beyond Freedom and Dignity is very good, and short). Skinner was totally wrong on language, yes, but he was right on a lot of other things. He essentially invented operant conditioning, which is the basis for slot machines and much of modern gamification. In addition, he's responisble for such signs as "thank you for not smoking" (that was in Beyond Freedom).
To summate, he was an extremely interesting thinker and a fine researcher (and really loved pigeons). His theories were wrong, but all theories tend towards wrong in the limit.
- This article made me think of Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner. I haven't read it, yet. Has anyone?
- Before I even got through the first paragraph I was reminded of B.F. Skinner and his book 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity', which I read in high school. So it's pretty funny that they named their AI after him. Dopamine labs may be evil, but at least they're self aware.
- The concept of positive reinforcement to shape the behavior of children and animals comes from the work of B. F. Skinner [1], the world's most widely known and influential behaviorist psychologist.
Key Works
* 1938 The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis
* 1948 Walden Two
* 1953 Science and Human Behavior
* 1957 Verbal Behavior
* 1971 Beyond Freedom and Dignity
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
As an aside, this is the reason that it's important to have some understanding of the liberal arts along with formal training in math and computer science.
- Well, I'm not a fountain of knowledge here, but here's what I know. Skinner is a psychologist, founder of the behaviorism approach in psychology. The chief idea if behaviorism is that it refuses to build any imaginary psychology models and sticks to what's really observable and measurable. For example, a behaviorist won't talk about Id or Ego, introverts or extroverts, inner child and such because these concepts are just that: imaginary concepts we have no proof of.
I'd say that behaviorism was very successful and came up with very useful results, such as teaching machines (note that it it was around 50s). Skinner even went further and wrote about cultural engineering, that is a way to change our culture to build a better future. You can read more about this in his books "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and "Walden Two". The latter is a utopia; it describes an imaginary community built on these principles. What's interesting is that this took off somewhat and there were a few attempts to actually built such communities and some of them appear to still function; they started in 70s, so it's a very good result for an endeavor like that.
Now, Chomsky is a linguist and I don't know much about his works, except formal grammars and such and I know that he has some strong political views, although I cannot really describe them. When Skinner published his book "Verbal Behavior", Chomsky wrote a very critical review of it. The review became very popular, more than the book itself. Skinner never replied (he rarely did). My understanding is that this was one of major blows against behaviorism; nowadays many of its achievements are forgotten; the psychologists know about this, of course, but do you see any teaching machines around? Cultural engineering, anyone? (Also, check Skinner's air crib.)
Now this is a reply to Chomsky's review by MacCorquodale. Wikipedia says that it was endorsed by Skinner, so it probably summarizes Skinner's position on things. So yes, it must be an interesting piece. I think it's best to read Chomsky first. I myself haven't read neither "Verbal Behavior" nor Chomsky's review, but now I just might :)
