Beyond Freedom and Dignity

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

He points out that we try to solve our problems with science but neglect the science most suited for man-made problems → the science of human behaviour.

Skinner points out that about 2500 years ago we understood our selfs as good as our surrounding, but now no physicist or biologist would take advise from Aristotle, but in questions of human behaviour it still seems relevant to read Plato. He states that this is because we made little progress in that field.

He laments that the study of human behaviour is not scientific in the physical sense. No behaviour is really explained. William James said that we don’t run away because we are afraid, but that we are afraid, because we run away. The thing we experience is our action, not a feeling. Skinner agrees, but points out that running away is still not explained.

Skinner describes human agency as a cheap excuse to not examine further. Like saying something was caused by god, it is intellectually lazy. This reminds me a little of Robert Sapolsky.

He describes how the stimulus-response model, which was based on Pavlov’s findings was unconvincing, as it presupposes an “internal agent” which translates input into output. Instead he advocates for a model where the environment does not influence behaviour but selects it; just like in evolution just with a shorter time scale.

His stance on economics is that the concept of free will is far to prevalent and he would probably sympathise with behavioural economics (duh) → Kahneman, Tversky, Ariely, Thaler

The question becomes: Do incentives allow for freedom? He makes the example of prisoners who are allowed to offer themselfs for experimentation in order to gain better living conditions. Are they free to do so? When do incentives become coercion? Is a slave free because he has the choice to run away or end his life? Is it desirable to be a conscious slave?

Control does not seem to be all bad (in our intuition), as it is a necessary part of living. one had to reject life as such to argue that all control is bad.

Although technology has freed men from certain aversive features of the environment, it has not freed them from the environment. We accept the fact that we depend upon the world around us, and we simply change the nature of the dependency.

He proposes the same for control.