B. F. Skinner

Overview

B. F. Skinner built the apparatus that defines the second half of behaviourism: an enclosed chamber in which an animal could respond thousands of times while a device recorded every response against time. With it he separated operant behaviour, which acts on the environment and is shaped by its consequences, from the reflexive conditioning Pavlov had studied, and worked out how schedules of reinforcement produce different patterns of persistence. His radical behaviourism went beyond method to metaphysics: he held that inner states are themselves behaviour to be explained rather than causes that explain, and in Beyond Freedom and Dignity he argued that autonomy is an illusion produced by ignorance of the contingencies acting on us. That book drew heavy criticism, and Noam Chomsky's 1959 review of Verbal Behavior is usually named as the point at which behaviourism lost the argument about language. The applied techniques, however, remain in wide use. Start with the 1950 paper Are Theories of Learning Necessary?, which states his position in a few pages.

Where to start reading

• The Behavior of Organisms 1938

  The technical foundation: the operant chamber, the cumulative record, and the distinction between operant and respondent behaviour.

• Science and Human Behavior 1953

  The extension of the laboratory findings to everyday life, government, education, and religion, written for a general reader.

• Beyond Freedom and Dignity 1971

  The argument that free will and personal credit are pre-scientific ideas that obstruct the design of better environments; his most attacked book.

Part of

• Behaviourism

Sources

1. Are Theories of Learning Necessary? Classics in the History of Psychology, York University
2. B. F. Skinner Wikipedia
3. Behaviorism Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyExplains radical behaviourism and the standard objections to it, including Chomsky's.