Notes

  1. . Richard Bernstein provides a fascinating account of the relationship of value discourse to the social sciences from the perspectives of the four major philosophical views of the social sciences–empiricist, analytic, phenomenological, and Marxist–in his The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). Unfortunately, Skinner's views are not addressed by Bernstein.
  2. . The writings of Thomas Szasz come to mind immediately: The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: Hoeber‐Harper, 1961) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). See also Perry London, The Modes and Morals of Psychoanalysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964).
  3. . Bruce Wavell has recently claimed this is the case even for the natural sciences: Bruce B. Wavell, “The Rationality of Values,” Zygon 15 (March 1980): 43–56.
  4. . For a very sophisticated and detailed account of the classical neutralist position see Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), pp. 447–546.
  5. . See Bernstein's account of the views of the critics from both the analytic and phenomenological perspectives. The exception in Bernstein's view is the neo‐Marxist approach of Jurgen Habermas. For another exception see Sandra Harding, “Four Contributions Values Can Make to the Objectivity of Social Science,” Proceedings of the 1978 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, ed. Peter D. Asquith and Ian Hacking (East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, 1978), 1:199–209.
  6. . B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Bantam/Vintage Book, 1971), p. 99.
  7. . B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity was published in September 1971. In the two years previous to that time I discovered only one article about Skinner in the Philosopher's Index. Since that date through the Winter 1977 number of Philosopher's Index, approximately a five‐year period, there were 58 articles concerning Skinner listed. Some of this increase is no doubt to be attributed to the beginning of publication in 1972 of the interdisciplinary journal in philosophy and psychology, Behaviorism.
  8. . GilbertFulmer, “Skinner's Values,” The Journal of Value Inquiry  10 (1976): 109–18; MaxHocutt, “Skinner on the Word 'Good': A Naturalistic Semantics for Ethics,” Ethics87 (1977): 319–38; and GeorgeGraham, “On What is Good: A Study of B. F. Skinner's Operant Behaviorist View,” Behaviorism  5 (1977): 97–122. See also William A.Rottschaefer, “Fulmer's Skinner and Skinner's Values,” The Journal of Value Inquiry  14 (1980): 55–63 and idem, “Skinner's Science of Values,“Behaviorism  8 (1980): 99–112 for critiques of these accounts of Skinner's views
  9. . Fulmer, pp. 107, 109–10.
  10. . Hocutt and Graham.
  11. . Skinner, pp. 24–25, 56–57. I shall use the term “thing “in a broad general sense to cover the whole range of reinforcers physical and social.
  12. . Ibid., pp. 100–02.
  13. . Ibid., p. 100.
  14. . B. F. Skinner, “Can We Profit from Our Discovery of Behavioral Science?“Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1978), pp. 92–93. Cf. idem, “Humanism and Behaviorism “in the same work, pp. 52–53, and idem, About Behaviorism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Vintage Books edition, 1976), pp. 52–54, 211.
  15. . Skinner, Beyond Freedom  , p. 102.
  16. . Skinner's radical behaviorism has been challenged by recent advances within the behavioral tradition itself. Cognitive and social learning theories have extended the Skinnerian operant‐learning model to the person's internal cognitive environment. In so doing they have introduced cognitive variables to account for some human behaviors. Edwin Erwin has presented these developments and their philosophical implications in his recent very important volume Behavior Therapy: Scientific, Philosophical, and Moral Foundations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Although Erwin contends that the connections between radical behaviorism and cognitive behaviorism are merely heuristic, I have argued that the latter also involves analogical extensions of operant learning principles. See William A. Rottschaefer, “Operant Learning and the Scientific and Philosophical Foundations of Behavior Therapy” (paper delivered at the seventh annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Chicago, April 3, 1981).
  17. . Skinner (n. 6 above), p. 102.
  18. . In private correspondence Professor Skinner has indicated to me that he thinks the first interpretation is preferable, namely that ethics has its basis in scientific psychology, but only because he is uneasy about the practices of a philosophical discipline.
  19. . Behaviorists in general and Skinner in particular have been thought to attribute little importance to and to pay little attention to the genetic determinants of behavior. Skinner has recently defended himself against such a charge from one of his former students and present colleagues, Richard Herrnstein. See R. J.Herrnstein, “The Evolution of Behaviorism,” American Psychologist  32 (1977): 593–603; Skinner's reply, B. F.Skinner, “Herrnstein and the Evolution of Behaviorism,” American Psychologist  32 (1977): 1006–12; and Herrnstein's reply, “Doing What Comes Naturally: A Reply to Professor Skinner,” American Psychologist 32 (1977): 1013–16.
  20. . Skinner (n. 6 above), p. 165.
  21. . For a different nonreductionistic account of survival see Karl E.Peters, “Evolutionary Naturalism: Survival as a Value,“Zygon  15 (June 1980): 213–22.
  22. . Skinner (n. 6 above), p. 145.
  23. . Skinner's views on the connections between personal good and good for another are developed in among other places Beyond Freedom and Dignity (n. 6 above), pp. 121–74 and About Behaviorism, pp. 184–227.
  24. . Cf. Skinner, “Are We Free to Have a Future?“in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society  (n. 14 above), pp. 16–32.
  25. . JonRingen, “Explanation, Teleology and Operant Behaviorism: A Study of the Experimental Analysis of Purposive Behavior,“Philosophy of Science  43 (1976): 223–54.
  26. . We might characterize this mode as weakly teleological in the sense that a given instance of behavior is not governed by its immediate consequence. Rather the schedule of reinforcement, including past history of reinforcement and the immediate consequence of the given instance of behavior, govern the future rate of responding. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point.
  27. . For Wright's analysis of teleological and functional explanation see his Teleological Explanations: An Etiological Analysis of Goals and Functions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). Douglas Porpora has recently challenged Ringen's analysis in “Operant Conditioning and Teleology,” Philosophy of Science 47 (1980): 568–82. Porpora argues, among other things, that operant behavior is not teleological because it is a function of reinforcement history and not of the immediately following consequences. Porpora is surely correct insofar as reinforcement history is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the operant behavior, but he fails to note that the explanandum in operant laws is the change of rate of behavior over a period of time. This change is governed not only by reinforcement history but also by the future schedule of reinforcement. Consequently, explanations in terms of operant laws necessarily involve consequences and as such are teleological even though weakly so (see n. 26 above).
  28. . Skinner, Beyond Freedom (n. 6 above), pp. 15–16. See also idem, About Behaviorism (n. 14 above), pp. 40–45.
  29. . Many behaviorally oriented psychologists now believe that explanations of some human behaviors must include cognitive variables. Such explanations would be teleological in a stronger sense of the term (see n. 26 and n. 16).
  30. . Circularity must be avoided in the identification of values and of value‐governed behaviors and the formation of the relationships between them. Thus a particular value cannot be identified on the basis of its ability to increase the rate of a certain behavior, if the behavior whose rate is increased is itself identified on the basis of that same particular value. However, such circularity can be avoided. The increase in the rate of a certain behavior can be identified independently of the valued consequence by establishing a base line rate and then observing changes in performance rate in various circumstances. And the valued consequence can be identified independently by the report of subjective states, “good or bad feelings,” which in Skinner's view are cues to the presence of positive or negative reinforcers and the effects of such reinforcers. Valued consequences can also be identified by their connections with biologically based primary reinforcers.
  31. . In a very important sense values are relative to times, places, and individuals. Thus food is not always positively reinforcing in every circumstance. This properly relativistic character of values is captured in the operant analysis by the necessary inclusion, for example, of the state of food deprivation of the organism in any description of the experimental situation. Such relativity must be distinguished from the individualistic or cultural relativism of values that makes all values individually or culturally relative and dependent for their characterization on individual or societal beliefs, wants. or choices.