SOULMATES

At times I am engulfed by a feeling of lost opportunities.
However, people know late can be than 'never' and what shouldn't be done over 'spilt milk'.
No need to reiterate so I shall come straight to the point.

The other day I was surprised by a description of mistakes made by behavior analysts. 
And once more I wondered why I still hesitate so much about showing our oversights.
And again I thought of the answer which - to my mind - is understandable:
I am not a researcher, it is not I who should justify and propose expanded experimentation.
Citing their words, stressing their influence, saying they're right and that I agree with them,
I hoped this would attract scientists' interest, arouse curiosity, prepare them for amending
our concepts. Yet error or credit, why should my opinion matter to them?

On the other hand, I can't just sit and say nothing. Something important did happen with me.
So now I search for soulmates - behaviorists and others - who resonate to the mind-boggling
insights which overcame my resistance - while simulating cumulative records for one mobile rat.
By any standard: practical, conceptual, philosophical, Skinner's invention is fantastic for science.

And alone I am not; scientists too, ask questions about the state of behavior analysis:
Why only autistic?
Why is our science not spreading to mainstream classrooms?
Why don't people accept our discipline as valid beyond special education?
Why are behavior principles not taught throughout universities on an international scale? 

'Soulmates' is perhaps a bit strong.
'Skinnerians' may suffice to describe the kind of allegiance I seek.
I know there are those who delight in the clarity of Skinner's writing as much as myself.
Therefore, I shall go on presenting an excerpt at every opportunity which comes along.

"Progress in a scientific field usually waits upon the discovery of a satisfactory dependent variable." (1950)
Having found a way to record - and assess - 'response rate', Skinner knew what he was talking about:
after all, 'free-operant conditioning' can serve as a scientific foundation for any school in psychology.

I forget when this was, but imagine how I felt on reading Pavlov's first tabulated data on p.30.
However, later [*] I put it like this :
     Pavlov called these data a "remarkable" phenomenon, but I think this is an understatement.
How can it be that a live, healthy, conscious animal contacts "an electric current of great strength"
(Pavlov's words) and simply doesn't feel it?  No reflex movements away from it, no effect on
heart rate or respiration. For the time being at least, I think the phenomenon deserves to be called "unimaginable" or "unthinkable"; just like, for example, the idea that the world was neither flat nor
stationary was once unthinkable - and is still hard to imagine or believe - despite visible evidence;
the signs from which this can be inferred in retrospect.
    To my mind, it is remarkable that these data are not discussed in the behavior-analytic literature
and other educational textbooks for that matter. Why is this?
I think it is because of the language in which Pavlov describes them: there are too many abstract
words; it isn't easy to understand what he is talking about. Therefore, the significance of the data
was not recognized. I am reminded of George Orwell's warning in "1984" :
"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten,
a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least in so far as thought is dependent on words."  
Scientific terminology need not be like Orwell's Newspeak. Professional language can be coined
deliberately to introduce coherent chronological order ... render Oldspeak more valid and lucid,
generally and specifically. In other words, to facilitate communicating with Oldspeak.
Not to replace it altogether or make it unspeakable. (June, 1995) (Reworded again: June, 2012)
__________________

[*] December 11, 1999: Behaviorism In Other Words (BIOW) Part IV
Skinner mentions them but adds that they were found to be unreliable, i.e.: could not be replicated.
Yet Dr. Escudero's work in Spain shows that they are applicable for medical purposes with humans.

WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST - Complete Document

Here is a link to the complete document:

WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST

I hope you enjoy it.

Comments and questions are always welcome.

Leah

Psychology and Behavior Science

Behavior analysts need popularity; being complacent about isolation doesn't become us.
We know of reification among psychologists. But behaviorists can also stop reifying behavior.
There's nothing to lose; merely old fallacies such as:
fictions and omissions. concerning brain-functions;
false inferences regarding cause-and-effect from findings in surveys on correlations.

And what shall we gain from conceptual revision?
We can regain self-esteem, hope for mankind and belief in humanity.
It may sound outrageous now ... later this could seem quite ordinary;
Brains don't think. They may function like photo-electro-magnetic batteries - but in every case:
the brain is an organ; never the individual, always a part in the skull.

Besides the brain, one's head contains organs for sensing ... and for making sense of the world:
a nose to smell trouble or perfume; the tongue for tasting and talking aloud; eyes to see objects
near and far away; ears to hear calling voices, as well as for keeping one's balance. 
Individuals do think, can see, hear, look, listen, imply and infer, remind, recollect.
People may judge, search and research. give information, comment, ask questions.

Moreover, their body is covered with skin - not transparent - they can't see within.
Yet with a finger they feel a pulse racing on someone's wrist and muscles contract on the arm.

I needn't be proud, nor apologize, for knowing what millions forget in the heat of the moment.
I did some pretty amazing paperwork, learned from I. P. Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, Murray Sidman.
Can't help but believe researchers could do simulations for training generations of scientists, to
care more about applications for survival and the quality of life on our planet.
It's like one of those things you see and ask: "Why isn't everyone doing this?"

Readers may recall my Blog post where I ask, "Who am I to question the FABBS Mission Statement:
'FABBS promotes human potential and well-being by advancing the sciences of mind, brain and behavior. As a coalition of scientific societies we communicate with policy makers and the public about the importance and contributions of basic and applied research in these sciences.' "
( Footnote 19, WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST, page 4)
I think scientists could agree, organisms and normal behavior, healthy gene and brain functions,
depend on external conditions everywhere, one hundred per cent of the time. The behavior scientists
and the ecological activists would be working together, learning from their respective expertise. 

WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST, page 6

The dogs’ perception is not like a clear-cut case of ‘input’ or ‘intake’:

        Sound waves rebound from a vibrating eardrum, and the same goes for light rays, they refract from the retina in the eyeball. Light and sound surround us and enter only so far - yet complex response networks ripple over the brain, throughout the nervous system, to organ and muscles.
As for ‘output’: sound is generated in a voice box and emerges from there, into the air.

        Physicists sent man into space and back, found properties of light and sound. Physiologists describe the chain of events, occasioned by audio-visual stimulation, in minute detail.

And everyone may agree: light is inaudible, sound is invisible and both are intangible.

No wonder if psychologists find it so hard to connect ‘mind’, and body, and ‘soul’. [25]

And since ‘taxis’ is not analyzed in the lab, it is also understandable if behaviorists have yet to explain individual mobility and why conditioned stimuli can serve as reminders which raise hopes, confidence, recognition, recollections, and suchlike.
Nor do scientists know if conditioning affects the locomotion of microorganisms.[26].

        Notwithstanding, when describing experiments in defense of radical behaviorism I find consensus; persons resonate to the suggestion: ‘conditioning’ is ‘psychosomatic.’

'A psychological reason’, does not necessarily insinuate faking, nor some fictional cause:

the term may refer to equality of socialization involving individuals and their physiology.

        One thing is for sure, cumulative recording is an unprecedented research device:
subjects and scientists communicate; ‘give-and-take’ is printed out plainly, on paper.

I daresay philosophers ought to credit ‘dumb’ creatures with mental faculties.

Pavlov’s data - 2 graphs and all the tables - also reflect meaningful dialogue. [27]

And in day-to-day life we can certainly infer glands are affected from outside.

Just the sight or the sound of words, make people weep, activating their tear glands.[28]

In operant settings, nerves and muscles must be affected as well - otherwise, even Homo sapiens could not stand erect or raise his head: operant and respondent conditioning sustain physiology. [29]
Not to mention, allow and maintain the development of sane and normal and healthy individuals, who deplore victimization and are naturally able to move towards basic necessities for social survival.

---

[25] “Pavlov passionately combated idealism, which maintained that the immortal soul and the mortal soma (body) are disunited….” [11, p.40] Skinner too argued against “psycho-physical dualism”, suggesting ‘word substitution’ to resolve The Mind-Body Problem. “When in doubt, turn the noun into a verb”. A good idea, since verbs need subjects, people who talk and behave. Or: “Take any sentence in which ‘the mind’ is said to do something and see if the meaning is substantially changed if you substitute ’person’”. (New York Times, Sept.3^rd, 1987) Thus: ‘not a soul to be seen‘ when no one’s around; and persons are known as The Life and the Soul of the Party. Also, folks know what soul-searching means. Dictionaries too are informative and especially Roget’s Thesaurus, a gift for mankind.

[26] Yet, see Amir Mitchell et al.: “Adaptive prediction of environmental changes by microorganisms ”

 “In analogy to classical Pavlovian conditioning, microorganisms may have evolved to anticipate environmental stimuli by adapting to their temporal order of appearance.” Nature: published online, 17 June 2009

[27] Subjects react swiftly to changing contingencies. If for instance, instead of meat, dogs are served acid solution, they spit it out, shaking their head in a vigorous ‘no!’ and scattering drops of saliva all over the place. ‎

[28] Though whether they weep for joy or for sorrow - or for sniffing an onion - the glands cannot tell. Sometimes we separate organ and organism verbally, for example, a person is ‘stunned’; the brain is ‘concussed’.

[29] Vindicating Skinner’s vision: “A quantitative science of behavior may be regarded as a sort of thermodynamics of the nervous system. It provides descriptions of the activity of the nervous system of the greatest possible generality. Neurology cannot prove these laws wrong if they are valid at the level of behavior.”‎ Skinner cites E. Mach: “It often happens that the development of two different fields of science goes on side by side for long periods, without either of them exercising an influence on the other. On occasion, again, they may come into closer contact, when it is noticed that unexpected light is thrown on the doctrines of the one by the doctrines of the other. ---- Apart from the positive addition to knowledge, which is not to be despised, the temporary relation between them brings about a transformation of conceptions, clarifying them and permitting of their application over a wider field than that for which they were originally formed." (1914)

THOUGHT-READING

"Helpful words are holier than praying hands." 
That sentiment was my response to reading:
"The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray." 

And then I searched for the speaker in Wikipedia:
Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) a lawyer, an orator, a Civil War veteran, an American political
leader.  In an era known as The Golden Age of Freethought (!) he explained why he doubted
the Word of God.  He gave other reasons, but these impressed me the most:

"I oppose the church because she regards repentance as more important than restitution, and because
she sacrifices the world we have to one we know not of."

I recall B.F. Skinner's report of a conversation with his school-teacher: 
"I had gone to Miss Graves to tell her that I no longer believed in God.
' I know,' she said, 'I have been through that myself.'  But her strategy misfired: I never went through it."

And I remember the explanations he opposed as a radical behaviorist:

"any explanation of an observed fact which appeals to events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms, and measured, if at all, in different dimensions' .  

He argued such explanations perpetuate 'introspection' in psychology that could be abandoned, since behavior and its causes are accessible to our senses.
Skinner insisted such theories had not inspired good research on learning, do not present facts
to be accounted for, and confuse ignorance with knowledge.

Today, Skinner's position might make us pose some pivotal questions: 
What does a 'salivary reflex' imply about the brain and the nerve cells?
What is the difference between a 'mental', and a 'physical' explanation?
How may we go beyond Pavlov's findings to the events seen and heard in day-to-day living?
How do we distinguish a medical diagnosis from a psychological diagnosis?  And prognosis? 

To be continued!  

WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST, pgs. 10-11

A Symphony
BEHAVIOR SCIENCE: MAKING IT SING

Part IV

Applied science

     Renewing my attempts to explain my position, I now take the reader back to a more distant past, before ABA and TEAB drifted apart; when investigators took replication seriously as prerequisite for applications, in the home, in the clinic and in the classroom.

In 1956 for example, regarding Skinner’s ‘operant conditioning’

“ At the level of practical behavior, the most striking results have been obtained in animal training and programed instruction.   These practical demonstrations serve as important empirical supports for certain aspects of the system – a kind of support very much needed for learning theories and notably lacking thus far. No other learning theorist has been able to train an animal before an audience in a prompt and predictable manner, while at the same time epitomizing the principles of his theory.”            “The empirical demonstration that learning is under the experimenter’s control is important and if what happens can be described in terms of the system, so much better for the system. The programed learning work has opened up important avenues of instructional advance in both schools and industry.”  

In 1964:

“For many years Skinner has been working systematically from a highly objective, relatively a- theoretical point of view.” He has obtained “technical achievements” in controlling behavior “especially by means of intermittent reinforcement.”

“He has been able to teach animals to perform highly complex acts and to differentiate subtle differences of external stimuli. …… The development of programed instruction is one outcome of these achievements and the Skinnerian methods have been successfully extended to many situations of behavioral study and control. …… Skinner feels that punishment as a form of social control should be shunned” ‎

A Task Force Report from the American Psychiatric Association, concluded:

“ The work of the Task Force has reaffirmed our belief that behavior therapy and behavioral principles employed in the analysis of clinical phenomena have reached a stage of development where they unquestionably have much to offer informed clinicians in the service of modern clinical and social psychiatry.”  1973

Behavior Analysis and Mental Illness:

“We see in the method of free-operant conditioning probably one of the most vigorous techniques yet devised by experimental psychology for the development, maintenance, modification and analysis of acquired motor behavior in an experimental setting …… As we continue to perfect the application of (B.F. Skinner’s) method to the analysis of psychotic behavior, we discover more and more research leads. There seems to be no doubt that the method should be considered … by investigators of chronic schizophrenia. ”  1956

“During the last 60 years experimental psychology has made great progress in objective behavioral measurement. The most sensitive, objective and sophisticated of these methodological developments are those of B.F. Skinner and his associates. These methods are generally described as ‘free-operant conditioning’ … For the first time we have brought a few facts of psychosis into the body of natural science.’ 1960

Behavior Analysis and Education:

“ A small but rapidly growing group of psychologists can now offer education (1) a set of concepts and principles derived entirely from the experimental analysis of behavior, (2) a methodology for the practical application of these concepts and principles, (3) a research method that deals with changes in individual behavior, and (4) a philosophy of science that says: ‘Look carefully…’ To act on this offer from the small minority of psychologists, educators are advised to learn the details of this approach from primary sources…” 1970

Behavior Analysis and its application to human behavior:

“The science of behavioral control …... was born in the laboratory with the discovery of the ‘conditioned reflex’……Over the years behavioral scientists have worked on the premise that human behavior, like other natural phenomena is subject to natural laws. Through a careful experimental analysis laws of behavior have been derived which have increased man’s understanding far in excess of what was once thought possible… laboratory studies, first with animals …… slowly built up a store of knowledge which eventually allowed for the extension of both method and principles to settings beyond the confines of the laboratory … applications of the principles … are reaching out toward every corner of our culture… facts are with us…” 1966.

“From the behaviorist reformulation of psychology, behavior emerged as a directly manipulable datum, and what the behaviorist learned about controlling behavior has recently reached the stage of widespread technological application …… the experimental analysis of behavior is … employed in mental hospitals, institutions for the retarded, day care centers, reading clinics, guidance centers, prisons, educational institutions and outpatient clinics …… if a technology allows effective remedial action, it should equally permit the devising of preventive measures. The time has come for us to begin suggesting new tactics for the prevention of behavioral problems.” 1970

Skinner’s vision and passionate appeal in 1972

“Another practical consequence of basic research remains to be emphasized. Our culture has made us all sensitive to the good of others, and we are generously reinforced when we act for their good, but the display of gratitude which reinforces the teacher or therapist who is in immediate contact with another person is often dangerous. Those who are especially sensitive to the good of others are often induced to go into teaching or therapy rather than basic research. Progress would be more rapid if the same kind of reinforcement could be brought to bear on the researcher, if he could be appropriately affected by the extraordinary extent to which he is also acting for the good of others. The basic researcher has, in fact, a tremendous advantage. Any slight advance in our understanding of human behavior which leads to improved practices in behavior modification will eventually work for the good of billions of people.” (original emphasis)

        As a practitioner in a helping profession, I am a witness: grateful clients have brightened my day. Despite the need for additional data, I proclaim ‘my psychology’ derives from experiments where animals and scientists ‘talk’: Doctor Dolittle is alive! I explain why conditioning is psychosomatic - and no one is startled. [41] 

People seem to care less about being compared with ‘lower’ species.

I am astonished to hear Cesar Millan  assert he trains people and rehabilitates dogs. I remember being warned not to say train in connection with humans. [42]

        Social and geographical climates appear to have changed: researchers from diverse disciplines are attempting to delay - or prevent - the extinction of animals and vegetation: they fight for survival, preserve environments, protect natural resources,

---

[41] Murray Sidman notes: “The pursuit of science is an intensely personal affair.” ‎Yet not a solitary venture: “As a young graduate student …. I felt that my work had to be different, that it had to produce something that would startle the world. Along these lines I once wrote a paper, describing some of my work, in which I emphasized how different my experiments were from anything else that had ever been done. One of my teachers, W.N. Schoenfeld, agreed that the data were very interesting. But he went on to add that I had written the paper from a peculiar point of view. I had emphasized the differences between my work and everyone else’s. But science does not ordinarily advance that way. It is the job of science to find orderly relations among phenomena, not differences. It would have been more useful if I could have pointed out the similarities between my work and previous experiments.” (original emphasis) 

[42] The ‘dog whisperer’, host of Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Television channel