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Replies
to Clinton,
Bush, Skinner and Social Determinism
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Dear Dr. Malott,
Let me take this opportunity to congratulate you on your hilarious
2004 BSI article on Clinton, Bush, and Skinner. I have been
sending copies of that paper to friends and family members to
entertain them with its political incorrectness and to educate
them with its insights into the genesis of genius and achievement.
I was also relieved to see the political orientation of your
article. Many years ago, after you cut your hair and starting
wearing those three-piece suits, I feared we had lost you to
Corporate America.
Best regards,
Steve
Stephen E. Wong, Ph.D., BCBA
Associate Professor
School of Social Work
Florida International University
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I enjoyed the article enormously; moreover, I'd say I pretty much agree with 'im (excepting for the last bit on molecular analysis). ...a couple of observations. The drive towards a radical, "molecular" behaviorism seems motivated by these claims (I could be wrong, but probably not): (1) the science of behavior tells us that our actions, and ipso facto our accomplishments, are entirely determined by S -> R loops of various degrees of complexity; (2) empirical study of many of these loops has yielded certain laws of operant conditioning; (3) these laws, plus some facts about how entrepreneurial cultures distribute power, predict social deterministic outcomes in any given case (i.e., social class strongly determines behavioral repertoire and behavioral repertoire strongly determines access to power); but (4) Clinton, Bush, and Skinner are counterinstances; so (5) something is amiss; and (6) what's amiss is psychology's failure to apply behaviorist analysis at the "molecular" level.
Now, I think there's a mistake in (3)--I don't think the evidence justifies universal generalizations on any particular set of reinforcers (not at the level we're talking here--social determinism, rather than, say, neural determinism, where there are some pretty universal generalizations about
training motor neurons, etc.). We can predict for ensembles only (that's what makes sociology ultimately distinct from mass psychology, no?). This is not an appeal to ignorance; I think it's a deep-seated fact about human intelligence overall: all alone, untutored and naked in the jungle, we're each about as stupid an animal as the planet will permit; but together, with the vast stores of mind tools our species has evolved over the millennia, we're each pretty damn smart. So there's this constant interplay between micro- and macro evolutionary forces behind the rise or fall of a Clinton or a Bush.
But I don't think the micro evolutionary forces I'm talking about are "molecular"--they're just the usual, mid-sized stuff of behavioral analysis at the level of individual people. In my view, it's the larger, macro level, where ideas and their proponents evolve into theories and movements, that needs behavioral analysis. Skinner didn't work in a vacuum; if he'd stayed in PA, it's unlikely we'd be calling behaviorism Skinner's baby; and this is true for the whole Harvard bunch: Skinner was smarter than most other investigators at the time because his circle was smarter than most other intellectual circles at the time. From Pythagoras to last week's news: no individual invents a science--the very phenomenon is social through and through (unlike, say, pain).
Ron Bombardi,
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Middle Tennessee State University
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I just finished reading your article that you wrote about Clinton, Bush, Skinner, and Social Determinism and I though it was well written. I did have some problems with it though. It appears that you would like to believe that everyone would like to be like Skinner or Bill, but I would like to believe not. I can say this by observing people in my evironment who make no effort to better themselves. They just make an effort to go to the Beer store and back to the couch. They would not care to do anything else with the life since it is not reinforcing to them. For this is the same reason why people don't want to leave the town that they are from. In my whole time of going to school I never wanted to go to Harvard or Yale. For goodness sake there football teams suck. You say that everything positive is correlated with wealth but i think not. There is a lot that is positive that can be correlated with poorness, well as long as your not homeless. Just recently someone asked me a hypothetical question: If I would move to Seattle for a job that pays 200,000 a year and I said no, I would rather stay where I am an make what I make. These are just a few of my thoughts on the situation
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