An evolutionist admires Skinner the behaviourist
- An evolutionist admires Skinner the behaviourist ››
- David P.Barash wholeheartedly disagrees with Skinner's basic premiss--that humans are blank slates and that behaviour is therefore all about conditioning and reinforcement-- but finds a lot to admire in Skinner's advocacy of using science to study human behaviour (revolutionary at the time) and what the consequences of such study are for special problems of humanity like free will. Another point of agreement is that self-perception is fraught with self-deception:
For completeness's sake, here is a confirmatory visual for the metaphor and some examples of inescapable perceptual inaccuracies. These are all visual--Skinner and Barash's point is that we would be foolish to assume that other perceptions, including imagination, are intrinsically more trustworthy when directed at ourselves. Our minds are always PhotoshoppingThe problem is not simply one of seeing ourselves as others see us, but as we really are. Thus for a long time the best view in the city of Warsaw has been from the top of the Ministry of Culture. Why? Because this is practically the only place in that otherwise appealing city from which it is impossible to see the Ministry of Culture (a thoroughly regrettable example of Stalinist architecture at its worst). By the same token, we all see the world from the ministry of our own perceptions, having only this very limited viewpoint from which to see ourselves.
- [Permalink…30-Mar-05…Deserving memes……Comments (0)]
Comments
Movable Type 4.1 | 
feed (add to Google) (validate it)
| Creative Commons license | xml sitemap | xhtml1.0 | css | File under: none, answer came there
Post a comment
Comments are moderated so please have patience. An email address is required but won't be shown or disclosed to anyone if I can help it because I don't like spam either.