The Ghost in the Machine Read Free Page B

purpose of
the box is to enable the Behaviourist to realise his cherished ambition:
the measurement of behaviour by quantitative methods, and the control
of behaviour by the manipulation of stimuli.
     
* Operant strength is usually measured, for technical reasons, by the
    'rate of extinction' -- how long the rat will persist in pressing
     the lever after the supply of pallets has been stopped.
     
The Skinner box did produce some technically interesting results. The
most interesting was that 'intermittent reinforce -- ment' -- when
pressing the bar was only sometimes rewarded by a pellet -- could be
as effective, and even more effective than when it was always rewarded;
the rat, which had been trained not to expect a reward after every try,
is less discouraged, and goes on trying much longer after the supply of
pellets has been stopped, than the rat which had previously been rewarded
after every try. (The words 'expect' and 'discouraged' which I have
used would, of course, be disallowed by the Behaviourist because they
imply mental events.) This proudest achievement of some thirty years of
bar-pressing experiments is a measure of their relevance as a contribution
to psychology. As one eminent critic, Harlow, wrote already in 1953:
'a strong case can be made for the proposition that the importance of
the psychological problems studied during the last fifteen years has
decreased as a negatively accelerated function approaching an asymptote
of complete indifference'. [6] Looking back at the further fifteen years
that have passed since this was written, one would come much to the same
conclusion. The attempt to reduce the complex activities of man to the
hypothetical 'atoms of behaviour' found in lower mammals produced next
to nothing that is relevant -- just as the chemical analysis of bricks
and mortar will tell you next to nothing about the architecture of a
building. Yet throughout the dark ages of psychology most of the work
done in the laboratories consisted of analysing bricks and mortar in
the hope that by patient effort somehow one day it would tell you what
a cathedral looked like.
     
     
     
The De-Humanisation of Man
     
     
However, if the futility of these experiments would be the only reason
for criticism, then one would indeed be flogging indignantly a dead
horse. But, incredible as it may seem, the Skinnerians claim that the
bar-pressing experiments with rats, and the training of pigeons (about
which more presently), provide all the necessary elements to describe,
predict and control human behaviour -- including language ('verbal
behaviour'), science and art. Skinner's two best-known books are called The Behaviour of Organisms and Science and Human Behaviour .
Nothing in their resounding titles indicates that the data in them
are almost exclusively derived from conditioning experiments on rats
and pigeons -- and then converted by crude analogies into confident
assertions about the political, religious and ethical problems of man.
The motivational drive of the rat is measured by the number of hours it has
been deprived of food before being put into the box; human behaviour,
according to Skinner, can be described in the same terms:
     
Behaviour which has been strengthened by a conditioned reinforcer
    varies with the deprivation appropriate to the primary reinforcer. The
    behaviour of going to a restaurant is composed of a sequence of
    responses, early members of which (for example, going along a certain
    street) are reinforced by the appearance of discriminative stimuli
    which control later responses (the appearance of the restaurant,
    which we then enter). The whole sequence is ultimately reinforced by
    food, and the probability varies with food deprivation. We increase
    the chances that someone will go to a restaurant, or even walk along
    a particular street, by making him hungry. [7]
     
Next in importance to Skinner of Harvard in shaping academic psychology
was the late Clark Hull of Yale; his pupils still