Comment on Watts's “B. F. Skinner and the Technological Control of Social Behavior”

I have dealt with many of these issues in my recent book About Behaviorism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) and will confine myself here to two of the issues Professor Watts raises. The first is the use of laboratory data in the interpretation of daily life. When moving in one direction this is called extrapolation, in the other, reductionism. Consider modern astronomy. It observes events occurring in outer space, under conditions beyond any hope of experimental control, and mostly unreproducibleon the earth. The astronomer has available, however, facts about gravity, radiation, pressure, temperature, and so on, obtained under the controlled conditions of the laboratory. He assumes that both terrestrial and celestial events are of the same kind and interprets his observations of outer space in the light of the laboratory results. In other words, he uses what is learned under favorable conditions to talk about facts of which he knows very little. There is room for disagreement, of course, but no serious person complains that the facts in outer space are being reduced to facts of a different kind. They do not so complain because they have no other information about the facts in space. Unfortunately, the situation in the behavioral sciences is believed to be different. In my analysis of verbal behavior, for example, I begin with a formulation derived from an experimental analysis of behavior. I use this formulation to interpret a wealth of facts in which similar relations between behavior and the environment are pointed out. I attribute much of the special character of verbal behavior to the special characteristics of the environment arranged by a verbal community, but this is not reduction; verbal behavior begins and ends as such. What I am accused of "reducing" are concepts such as meanings, propositions, and the communication of ideas and feelings. But I do not convert them into other forms or destroy them; I simply do not use them. To many people I seem to have omitted something important because they believe they have other kinds of information about meanings, ideas, and so on, particularly as derived from introspection. But, as I point out in About Behaviorism, I believe the entire armamentarium of cognitive psychology may be regarded as one vast analogy, in which human thought, in the sense of human behavior, has been fancifully analyzed by internalizing various behavioral processes-the internalization being supported by the unwarranted use of feelings and introspective observations. The issue here is not mentalism but whether I have given an adequate account of the facts of verbal behavior. Similarly, I do not believe that my inierprelalion of processes in government, religion, education, economics, and psychotherapy (as presented, for example, in Science and Human Behavior) is reductionistic. I do not make an "unwarranted use of analogy" or show "ontological pretensions" or remove a "richer view of human functioning" or "legislate what is to be found in the world at large" or "arbitrarily choose only one scientific mode" or "show allegiance to a partial process." I do none of these things to any greater extent than the astronomer in the example above. Whether my interpretation is "egregious" depends upon two things: the extent of the laboratory science and the extent of my use of it. Professor Watts has made a sustained effort (rare among my critics) to present my position correctly; nevertheless, he could not, of course, even in summary, suggest the full scope of the experimental analysis of behavior. There are hundreds of laboratories throughout the world in which organisms are studied in extremely complex and carefully controlled environments. A fairly wide range of species has been covered, including the human species, and it is always an individual organism rather than some average that is being considered. The results show a satisfactory precision and reproducibility. I do not expect everyone to be familiar with this work, but anyone who calls an extrapolation egregious should be so. Professor Watts himself is quite reasonable on this point, though he cites others who are not. As for the use I make of the principles derived from a laboratory analysis, I am as often accused of going too far as of not going far enough. Walden Two is, of course, science fiction. I was not saying, "This is the way it should be." I was simply describing one possible culture designed on behavioral principles. The book does not seem to me to have been too bad a guess. It was written nearly thirty years ago and seems to me more relevant than ever. A way of life in which people consume as little as possible, pollute their environment as little as possible, and somehow enjoy a life of friendship, art, music, science, and leisure is something to be taken seriously. Walden Two