Behaviorist critique

CSGnet Archive CSG1992
1

From Greg Williams (920826)

Rick Marken Says:

Does anyone know of any written critique of Behaviorism which explicitly
cites the following problem (that Gary mentioned some time ago) :if
human behavior is controlled by the environment (as claimed by Behaviorists)
then Behaviorists themselves should not be able to exert control over people
(as they say that they can -- and should) because they are under control?
What I want is a critique that points out that control cannot be exerted
by agents that are controlled. I have never seen any detailed critique
of Behaviorism from this perspective.

I've not seen any either -- and I've spent a lot of time investigating
behaviorist philosophy -- probably because the critics are wise enough to
realize that the behaviorists can wheedle out of the charge. When backed
against the wall, they are perfectly willing to admit that their own
environmental and genetic histories have determined their own present-time
"control" of other organisms, where "control" simply means making
certain types of rearrangements of the environment of the other "controlled"
organisms. And they would even admit that (sometimes) the organisms being
"controlled" rearrange aspects of their (the behaviorists') environments,
resulting in a modicum of mutual simultaneous control. They realize that an
organism's environment can be altered by other organisms -- but they claim
that ultimate "control" of any organism is exercised by its entire
environmental and genetic history, so that, for example, an experimenter's
life history "made" him/her starve rats and then "control" what their actions
to get food. Any ability to alter another organism's environment can result,
potentially, in "control" of that organism. So the behaviorist's college
professors helped to "make" him/her (later) starve rats, etc. And the
professors' families helped to "make" them (later) "make" behaviorists (later)
starve rats, etc., etc., etc.

The real problems in this self-consistent scheme are (1) not having
sufficiently detailed (generative) models which can predict the LIMITS of
"control" (i.e., starving THOSE rats results in WHAT DEGREE OF "control"?) and
(2) invoking "history" as a catch-all explanatory notion (and then concocting
"just-so" Whiggish stories, as do some evolutionary theorists). But the
behaviorists say that (1) their models are good enough for their purposes and
(2) that invoking history is as good as we can do right now, given the state-
of-the-art in neurophysiology. (Sometimes when I read speculative musings on
the net, I'm rather sympathetic to the latter claim!)

Greg

2

[Martin Taylor 920826 1900]
Rick Marken (Quoted by Greg Williams 920826, initial date not immediately
accessible)

Does anyone know of any written critique of Behaviorism which explicitly
cites the following problem (that Gary mentioned some time ago) :if
human behavior is controlled by the environment (as claimed by Behaviorists)
then Behaviorists themselves should not be able to exert control over people
(as they say that they can -- and should) because they are under control?
What I want is a critique that points out that control cannot be exerted
by agents that are controlled. I have never seen any detailed critique
of Behaviorism from this perspective.

I'm afraid I don't see the paradox. What is the problem with controlled
agents themselves controlling others? Let us take the S-R position
that some pattern in the environment determines the behaviour of an agent
(I assume this is what "control" means in that context). Then why should
the actions of that agent not create a pattern in the environment that
determines the behaviour of another (sub)agent?

It seems to me analogous to the situation of a high-level ECS controlling its
percept by way of (unknown to it, of course) setting references that lower
ECSs use in controlling their percepts. Setting a reference level is the
closest behavioural thing in PCT to the S-R idea of control, I think. Anyway,
whether you buy this analogy or not, I can't see the paradox when the
controlled controller is seen strictly from an S-R viewpoint.

(Incidentally, I'm still very uncomfortable with the conflation of "behaviorist"
and "S-R viewpoint." As I like to use the word, any psychologist who is not
a behaviourist should be considered a mystic. PCTers are not mystics. They
observe what happens in the world and model it using plausible, possible
mechanisms that are as similar as possible to what is known from real
observations of real people and physically described machines. PCT is a
thoroughgoing behavioural theory, in my view. And I think you know by now
that I do have a slight inkling of what PCT is all about.)

Martin