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Replies to Should We Celebrate Skinner's 100th Birthday at ABA?

  • I agree that it would be an oversight of significant proportion if ABA doesn't commemorate Skinner's 100th. Come on, let's try to exhibit good taste, if nothing else.
    -- Pam Osnes.

  • Are we voting? I want to observe Skinner's 100th!!!
    --Corrine Donley.

  • The Roman Senate would deify "good" Emperors, and condemn the "bad" ones, after the Emperors' deaths, of course. I suppose it's ok to deify Skinner, just so long as we don't reify him! ... Gould et al had a healthy outlook. Of course, with Gould himself gone now, one wonders if a monstrous to do will be made on the occasion of Gould's 100th birthday (which is still many years off, of course). Most all my science heroes that inspired me in my youth are gone now: Skinner, Gould, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, to name a few. Alas! ... Just memories of the old Skinner-Keller routines! I remember several of them. One of them was even transcribed, replete with photos, in an early edition of The Behavior Analyst (that was before TBA "went professional" and when it was still a cross between a journal and a fun newsletter. [Indeed, the earliest issues of TBA were 8 1/2 x 11 sized pages, not the size the journal eventually became]). It'd be sad if a significant minority won't know who Keller is, but possibly not surprising. ... Sounds like a great idea (celebrating Skinner)! What the Hell, why not do it??!! ... Oh, (Dick Malott) you're a Minor Deity all right! In the Pantheon of world-famous behaviorists, You're in there. The key point is that You _are_ in the Pantheon, not on the outside looking in. Your pedestal is a few removed from the Almighty Skinner's, but it's up there alongside Og Lindsley's, Jack Michael's, Don Baer's, Fred Keller's, Hank Pennypacker's, Charlie Catania's, Don Hake's, Sigrid Glenn's, Don Whaley's, Murray Sidman's, and many more (too many to list here). . . . Tell us when your birthday is (year, month, day), and I'll make sure that there's at least a second person to celebrate its 100th anniversary! And shucks, isn't Captain Contingency Management going to star in the 3rd X-Men movie, Captain? :-) Deify, but don't reify! ;-)
    --- John Eshleman

  • Hi Dick. As usual, I enjoyed your email recently sent about Skinner. I agree with you - ABA should have a big bash celebrating Skinner. I agree with you that we are ALL Skinnerians, if we are behaviorists. We can't take the Man out of what we do. ALthough I'm not a "big wig" in ABA, I promise to do what I can to work a celebration of Skinner into our presentations at ABA - and would be glad to help out anyone else setting up such a bash. Hey, how about a continually running "film festival" of Skinner? Sort of a behavioral SUndance/Skinner Film Festival?
    --- Tom Zane

    Great, do it, man!---Dick Malott

  • I've never known any behavior analyst to really NEED a reason to jump head first into an all-out, throw-down fiesta! But if we needed a reason, Skinner's 100th birthday is a good one. I'll relay this to the Clinical SIG and some other groups. ...
    Good idea,
    --- DJ Moran

  • Pencil me in. I would love to do a follow up to Skinner's writings on self-reinforcement from SCIENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR, or celebrate his unknown articles from the early 1970's in THE HUMANIST.
    --- Bobby Newman

    Great, do it, man! Dick Malott

  • Hello from Dublin from a former Bostonian who recalls Dr. Skinner being snuck into the back door of our building at UMass-Boson for a lecture in a classroom sized for about 30 people. Of course we must have a party! I am much more a proponent of the party than the symposiums as a way of celebrating BF's contribution. Let me know, and I'll bring some edible reinforcers!
    --- Rita Honan, Ph.D.

    Great, do it, woman! Suprise us with some edibles. Dick Malott

  • I so strongly agree with you that we are "Skinnerians" and should really celebrate his 100'th.
    ---Joe Morrow

  • HI Dick, ABSOLUTELY WE SHOULD CELEBRATE HIS BIRTHDAY!!!
    --- Jon Bailey

  • Dick: Why not? We could picket Noam Chomsky’s office at MIT.
    --- Jim Todd

    New Thought: How about some tutorials on Skinner as part of his birthday bash? -- Dick

  • I share your concern for a Skinner birthday celebration.
    I got this message via another person. Please add me to your email list.
    --- Martin Ivancic

    GREAT. I HAVE NO SKINNER'S BIRTHDAY MAILING LIST, BUT ANYTHING I KNOW WILL GO ON old.dickmalott.com. FEEL FREE TO EMAIL IDEAS. BUT, MORE IMPORTANTLY, FEEL FREE TO GET SOMETHING GOING.

  • From: Martin Ivancic
    I hear what you are saying about getting something going, but I think in matters of such reverence, most people would have a tendency to defer to a higher authority-- ABA. But of course, I wouldn't have any idea of how that would actually work.

    YES, AND I’M ENCOURAGING THE HIGHER AUTHORITY, ABA’S PROGRAM COMMITTEE, TO GO WITH IT, BUT I’M PRETTY SURE IT’S GOING TO TAKE A LOT OF GRASS-ROOTS INPUT TO REALLY PULL THIS OFF.

    I felt Don Baer's acknowledgement was weak even when the highest authority responded (his close friends in designated sessions) at ABA this year. Seems like a more general memorial may have been more appropriate.

    THAT WAS EXACTLY MY FEELING TOO. THOUGH, BAER’S FRIENDS DID A FINE JOB, I THOUGHT ABA WAS GOING TO DO AN OFFICIAL DON BAER COMMEMORATION AND WAS QUITE DISAPPOINTED WHEN THEY DIDN’T, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT ABA PRACTICALLY HELD A WAKE FOR HERNSTEIN, AUTHOR OF THE ANTI-BEHAVIOR-ANALYTIC “BELL CURVE” (IMHO) AND WHO RARELY IF EVER CAME TO ABA, THOUGH I THINK THEY WERE MORE SUCCESSFUL WITH THE KELLER MEMORIAL

    My personal responses remained private to most although I did hand out copies of "Some Still Current Dimension.." to visitors to my office for the next few weeks after his death. It seems that a review of these behaviors of the faithful on the historic occasion of Dr. Skinner's birth might be appropriate. By the way, I sent your link to the North Carolina Association for Behavior Analysis to place on their web page.
    --- Martin

    THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

  • I’m very much in agreement about throwing a helluva party for Skinner’s 100th. I’ve always thought the stuff about not making a god out of BFS was bullshit. You put it exactly right, no silly pulling of punches – he IS a god! For Christ’s sake (I chose that expression carefully, as you’ll see), people have been expanding on, interpreting, making sense of, explaining Jesus, himself, for 1000s of years, but believers don’t consider him any less divine because of that. That’s all coming from a confirmed materialist, by the way; I just thought it was a good parallel.
    ---Pat Williams

    GREAT NEWS. ABA'S GOING TO HAVE A BIG 100TH BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR SKINNER.
    ---DICK MALOTT , 11-16-2003.

  • Given the nearly unidimensional nature of the comments so far, I can't resist playing the curmudgeon. Yes, if ABA members want to celebrate Skinner's birthday, then they should do so, because the organization exists to serve its members. BUT note a couple of things. First, it's not clear (from Skinner's writings at least) how Skinner would have felt about this kind of birthday celebration.

    Dick: What we say and how we feel are too different things. It's possible that even Skinner was not able to tact all of his own reinforcers adequately.

    Presumably (e.g., see "On having a poem") behavior is either useful/pleasing or it is not. The biological individual who serves as locus for the behavior deserves neither credit (if it is) or blame (if it is not). A celebration of the PERSON (as a birthday party implies) seems out of keeping with this perspective. A more strictly Skinnerian celebration would focus on specific behaviors of Skinner's that have proven to be useful/pleasing.

    Dick: Absolutely, but logic and renforcement ain't the same thing. None the less a,"Thank you, great job," is (was) a big reinforcer for all of; and a, "That last article you wrote is a piece of crap," is (was) very aversive for us, as is the more to the point, "You're great," vs. "You're a piece of crap," even when those evaluations come from someone for whom we have no respect. Aren't we human beings weird!

    Second, even if we celebrate intellectual accomplishments, from a functional perspective it's not clear what the celebration accomplishes that is of lasting value. If we seek to honor behavior that is useful and pleasing, how better to do so than by emitting more of it? Birthday celebrations look backward, and science is supposed to move forward. As the celebrations take shape, I hope that we keep in sight the essential question: What new things will we do with Skinner's intellectual legacy? Don't get me wrong -- I am sending students to the conference who are looking forward to the Skinner events. But isn't there something more substantive that we could do to propel them along their career trajectories? And doesn't the future of behavior analysis depend on this (and not the decibel level of our celebrations)?

    Dick: Tom, I think you may suffer from logicitis. Haven't you read ABA's mission statement? It says the purpose of the ABA conference is to provide a place where we can admire other people's mud pies and have our mud pies admired in return, which inspires the heck out of us, makes us happy to be among the happy few, and gives us a deadline by which we need to get our acts together. Any skills or knowledge or CE credits we happen to pick up along the way is just icing on the birthday cake. Sending your students to the ABA follies (if ABA manages to pull it off this year) will do more to committing them to a life rigorus, intellectual behavior analysis in Normal, Illinois than sitting through a dozen dry papers that no one understands.

    One more note: We should be careful with our similes. Skinner a god? By definition, a god is to be followed blindly and on faith alone. Are we not empiricists? Some of Skinner's most important ideas have been inadequately tested (e.g., see Verbal Behavior).

    Some may be wrong (e.g. in some places Skinner appears to endorse two-factor theory assumptions about punishment for which there is, at best, equivocal support). There is room (and need!) for healthy skepticism. If everything Skinner is holy scripture, then there is no room to evaluate ideas individually.

    Dick: Tom, there's more of your logicitis. Yes, God is omnipitent and all knowing; and yet her feet are made of clay, and she often screws up as well as off; and I've been skeptically evaluating and challenging her since junior high school. If Skinner were only right about half of what he's written, he'd still be God in book. Tom, what I want you to do is get a life; grab a few oxymorons and live with them.

    Dick: And Tom, one more thing: Thanks much for these great comments; I loved them.

    --THOMAS S. CRITCHFIELD (tscritc@ilstu.edu) Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790

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