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There is a much more important reason why we have been so slow in discarding mentalistic explanations: it has been hard to find alternatives. Presuma… - B. F. Skinner
" "There is a much more important reason why we have been so slow in discarding mentalistic explanations: it has been hard to find alternatives. Presumably we must look for them in the external environment, but the role of the environment is by no means clear. The history of the theory of evolution illustrates the problem. Before the nineteenth century, the environment was thought of simply as a passive setting in which many different kinds of organisms were born, reproduced themselves, and died. No one saw that the environment was responsible for the fact that there were many different kinds (and that fact, significantly enough, was attributed to a creative Mind). The trouble was that the environment acts in an inconspicuous way: it does not push or pull, it selects. For thousands of years in the history of human thought the process of natural selection went unseen in spite of its extraordinary importance. When it was eventually discovered, it became, of course, the key to evolutionary theory.
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About B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (20 March 1904 – 18 August 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, baseball enthusiast, social philosopher and poet.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Birth Name:
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Alternative Names:
Skinner BF
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Burrhus F. Skinner
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B.F. Skinner
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Additional quotes by B. F. Skinner
Science not only describes, it predicts. It deals not only with the past but with the future. Nor is prediction the last word: to the extent that relevant conditions can be altered, or otherwise controlled, the future can be controlled. If we are to use the methods of science in the field of human affairs, we must assume that behavior is lawful and determined. We must expect to discover that what a man does is the result of specifiable conditions and that once these conditions have been discovered, we can anticipate and to some extent determine his actions.
Theories — whether neural, mental, or conceptual — talk about intervening steps in these relationships. But instead of prompting us to search for and explore relevant variables, they frequently have quite the opposite effect. When we attribute behavior to a neural or mental event, real or conceptual, we are likely to forget that we still have the task of accounting for the neural or mental event. ...Research designed with respect to theory is also likely to be wasteful. That a theory generates research does not prove its value unless the research is valuable. Much useless experimentation results from theories, and much energy and skill is absorbed by them. Most theories are eventually overthrown, and the greater part of the associated research is discarded.
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One person manages another in the sense that he manages himself. He does not do so by changing feelings or states of mind. The Greek gods were said to change behavior by giving men mental states such as pride, mental confusion, or courage, but no one has been successful in doing so since. One person changes the behavior of another by changing the world in which he lives. In doing so, he no doubt changes what the other person feels or introspectively observes.
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