Looking ahead

Looking ahead from 1984, Skinner wrote:
"Whatever current usefulness this volume may have, it should at least be of interest to the future historian as a sample of the style of discussion among behavioral scientists near the end of the 20th. century."
"Why have I not been more readily understood?"
He had expected fruitful dialogue on "environmental determination" of behavior; but instead there was misunderstanding: "I have been unable to avoid spending time and space on the simple correction of
misstatements of fact and of my position, where I would have welcomed the opportunity for a more productive exchange."

One cause for misunderstanding is 'reifying' a process or an activity or a procedure, into a thing.
" Her ego" or " his memory", for instance, can mislead us into searching for an inner entity with size, weight, shape or Gestalt.
Yet in reality individuals tell - write - or show they recollect their experiences - or else cannot remember the details.  Scientists - my mentors - clarified such points for me decades ago.
Woe betide those who use too many abstract nouns, too many times, in too many places!
They're doomed, sentenced to splendid isolation, in ivory towers with weak socialisation.

The good news is, Skinner supplied substitutional cures that work like magic.
Happy are those who - when in doubt - can turn an abstract noun into a verb.
For example, instead of 'behavior' again and again, we can say 'they behave' and also mention
'behaving organisms'. Naturally abstraction per se isn't bad or unhealthy; neither in intellectual
circles where I sometimes like to fancy myself, nor in everyday conversation.

I'm no researcher, yet I do welcome feedback ... comments and questions ... from readers; and in particular from operant conditioners, my target audience. I don't want to blow my own horn but my graphs are great eye-openers which could be replicated within extended laboratories, where subjects move freely and the reasons for halting and starting are recorded and observed and discussed.

My graphic material is a manuscript with two titles:
- CUMULATIVE RECORDS FROM 7 HYPOTHETICAL EXPERIMENTS WITH AN IMAGINARY RAT
- THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MOVEMENT AS A DEPENDENT VARIABLE IN THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMANKIND
In 2000, I dedicated the material to Murray Sidman:
"For Murray Sidman, with deep respect; he didn't worry about these records being hypothetical, yet I couldn't explain them to him either - for which I'm sorry. However, I believe I've made up for it now."

Today I talk with The Man in The Street, hoping that researchers will soon join the club.
As for 'environmental determination': the biggest emphasis might go something like this:

Stimuli and reinforcers influence individuals from a distance.  Lights and sounds control
the rate and the pattern of body-part responses when the subject is at standstill; plus the
direction of a person's or an animal's locomotion, as may be seen beyond the laboratory
wherever one goes.
Changing illumination and temperature may also slow or hasten organic activities, and
the function of an entire neuro-physiological system.
Like any other life-form, we too, depend on the quality and the quantity of light rays and
sound waves unobserved in our surrounding habitat.

July 27, 2012