Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
Fakultät für Geistes-, Sozial- und Erziehungswissenschaften
Seminar: The Beautiful and the Sublime
11th semester

Bridging Philosophy and Psychology Using the Example of
Behaviourism and B.F. Skinner’s “
Beyond Freedom and Dignity”

von: Christian Kuhn

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STRUCTURE

1. Introduction 3

2. Behaviourism and the Work of B. F. Skinner

2.1 John B. Watson and Classical Behaviourism – Basic Ideas 4
2.2 B. F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning – his Work and Applied Fields 6
2.3 Misunderstandings and Skinner’s Image of Man – a Philosophical Problem 7

3. The Empirical Origin

3.1 Behaviourism and Locke’s Epistemology 11
3.2 Behaviourism and Hume’s Association Theory 12

4. Beyond Freedom and Dignity – a Summary

4.1 Preface to this Summary 14
4.2 Chapter 1: A Technology of Behaviour 14
4.3 Chapter 2: Freedom 16
4.4 Chapters 3 to 8: Of Dignity, Punishment, Values, and Culture 17
4.5 Chapter 9: What is Man?  19

5. Conclusion 20

LITERATURE 24

1. Introduction

It seems impossible to give a precise definition of the term philosophy and the teachings that are connected with it. Generally, philosophers’ concerns are questions for the reason and the origin of all being. In a way, these questions unite all of today’s arts subjects. As an effect, though, the boundaries between arts often become blurred, all the more since e.g. psychology from the early ancient world until the 19th century has merely been regarded as a philosophical field. With the emancipation of psychology as a scientific discipline on its own, teachings were partly in opposition to the traditional way of thinking, if being based on empirical evidence rather than theoretical considerations. Thus, fundamentals of human psyche happen to become a somewhat delicate matter. With this paper I will touch philosophical a n d psychological problems using the example of B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, trying to show the relationship and the margins of both fields.

The author – Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904-1990) – is regarded one of the most radical ‘scientists’ among all psychologists. Skinner counts for a distinguished representative of a psychological theory that strongly tries to separate psychological findings from anything experimentally unobservable – (American) behaviourism. Nevertheless, Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity of 1971 largely leaves out any details of experimental analysis and therefore approaches the question of ‘What is man?’ in a rather philosophical manner. The book represents a philosophical view on man from a behaviouristic perspective, providing a technology of behaviour to solve the problems of mankind. An approach that seems absurd but that mirrors the distinguished image of man of one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. This particular view on man will be a basis for a first philosophical discussion. In fact, psychological authors rarely refer to Skinner′s Beyond Freedom and Dignity because it does not directly relate to his psychological experiments. Thus, secondary literature concerning this partic ular book is rare. However, it will neither be necessary to go very much into detail of Skinner′s studies, nor do I want to stick to the intense discussions concerning behaviourism among psychologists for too long. The discussion of basic ideas shall be sufficient. This paper principally serves to outline a psychologist’s attitude concerning the study of human behaviour in a philosophical context. That is, bridging philosophy and psychology using the example of behaviourism, moreover sketching the parallels between early empiric ists and early behaviourists, providing a basic understanding for conceptual scientific ways of thinking. This will also contribute to offer an unadulterated understanding of Skinner’s views. In fact, some authors and editors concretely discuss a philosophy of psychology, among other subjects focussing very much on behaviourism. So do for example O’Donohue & Kitchener (1996), Thyer (1999), Todd & Morris (1995), and Botterill & Carruthers (1999). All of them in a wider sense examine the conceptual problems in theoretical psychology; I will not dare to do the same, but I will try to show that behaviourism is prone to be discussed philosophically.

The problem with this is that, on a first glimpse, behaviourism seemed to ideologically establish the separation between psychology and philosophy since the rise of behaviourism in the 1920s ‘professionalized’ psychology. On second view, it becomes more likely to find parallels and conceptual relationships. To show this, I will mainly refer to basic sources that provide general ideas of philosophy and psychology and of course to Skinner′s Beyond Freedom and Dignity itself. As can be drawn from common philosophical encyclopaedias (see for instance “Skinner”, Mittelstaß, 1995), this book finely serves to represent Skinner’s philosophical approaches as it deals with philosophical fundamentals such as freedom, dignity, and values. Summarizing the issues discussed in Skinner’s book, putting across basic concepts, and clarifying basic vocabulary of both fields will help to outline the relations between Skinner′s psychology and the philosophy within Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Obviously, within the scope of this paper it will not be possible to analyse the whole book and explain every single aspect of Skinner’s view in detail. Though, this paper serves to put behaviourism and Skinner’s work in its true light.

2. Behaviourism and the Work of B. F. Skinner

2.1 John B. Watson and Classical Behaviourism – Basic Ideas

Psychology is a field that deals with (human) behaviour and experience, its reasons and effects (see “Psychology”, Mittelstraß, 1995). In fact, intellectual reflections about mind and soul have a tradition that began with Aristotle’s De anima (engl. On the Soul) (see “Aristotle”, Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2000). Since that time, psyche has been regarded as a matter of philosophy and theology. Only in the 19th century, psychology emancipated itself as a discipline of its own, represented by two main currents: a school of scient ific and mathematical approaches (e.g. Herbart, Fechner, Wundt), and a school of phenomenology (e.g. Brentano, Ebbinghaus, Jaspers). With the beginning of the 20th century, especially American psychologists vigorously demanded to take the scientific way. Strongly influenced by Russian physiologists and their experiments on basic neuronal functions and reflexes (Pawlow’s Dog1), John B. Watson was the first who pointed at the possibilities to describe a psychology that manages completely without dealing with concepts such as consciousness, soul, will, or fantasy. Against all subjectivist approaches and against any introspection, he favoured well-controlled experimental conditions. The observable behaviour of individuals should become the object of psychology; significant statistics should replace any metaphysics to emancipate a psychology ‘competitive’ to other sciences. According to this basic idea, Watson developed a theory that describes human behaviour as a function of changing conditions by means of simple stimulus-response mechanisms. This is what became known as stimulus-response theory or today being referred to as classical behaviourism among psychologists and philosophers (see Lück, 2002; see also “Behaviourism in the social sciences”, Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2000). In this theory, even complex behaviour is seen as a reaction to certain stimuli and as a result of habits that were learned (or conditioned, according to Pawlow’s principle of classical conditioning). Furthermore, Watson even felt that thought was explicable as sub-vocalisation and that even speech was simply another behaviour which might be the result of a learning process based on simple stimulusresponse mechanisms only (see Watson, 1919). This position was an extreme one; it would have no place for mentalistic concepts like pleasure or distress in his explanations of behaviour at all. Nonetheless, this approach led to an extraordinary expansion of research concerning animal and human learning. Until the 1950s, extensive data were collected while behaviourism became the leading psychological theory in America and in Europe as well. As a consequence, American psychologists such as Clark L. Hull and Burrhus F. Skinner expanded Watson’s theory.

2.2 B. F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning – his Work and Applied Fields

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1 A famous stimulus-response experiment by the Russian physiologist Pawlow who investigated the reflex of saliva secretion with a dog. He established the terms conditioning, stimulus, and response for the science of behaviour.