(urth) 5HC : Skinner, Turing
Andy Robertson
andywrobertson at clara.co.uk
Thu Feb 3 13:34:09 PST 2005
> I don't like the Copenhagen interpretation in the least bit:
Nor do I
> WIth QM
> you've got multiverse models you can switch to, but what alternatives
> do we have in psychology and philosophy?
Skinner's work pretty much comprised insisting that behaviour was mostly
environment driven **or could only usefully be understood as such** and
studying how this worked out.
I am sure Skinner knew this was untrue: but he attempted to ignore that
fact, perhaps because nothing can be found out without making wild guesses
and testing them (a true and noble attitude).
However, the basic model is not simply wrong; it is so completely wrong that
even as a wild and brave guess it is worse than useless.
Human behaviour is so much more circumscribed and programmed (by evolution)
than learned that the "blank slate" dogma is much, much, worse than useless.
Since the basic model is wrong, Skinner's work can not be use to understand
humanity.
We are chattering about science, and forgetting what is really important in
understanding the human world (even the world of humans in books), which is
politics.
The real emergent utility of Skinner's work - the way it was **used** in the
real world - iwas to provide a shield of intellectual justification to those
who want to reshape human behaviour through social engineering; which aim
is, itself, merely a cloak over their own Inner Party desire for power.
I'm not sure Skinner was guilty of intending this end (I doubt it), but his
work fitted perfectly into the environmentalist dogmas of his age, like the
fraudulent "anthropology" of Margaret Mead and her mentor Franz Boaz.
Wolfe sets his face like granite against this slavery, in book after book.
.
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