Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Beyond Dignity and Freedom

In 1971, Burrhus Frederick Skinner has made his important works and one of his books is Beyond Dignity and Freedom. In this book, he controversially advocated mass conditioning as a means of control.

SUMMARY

Skinner first discussed the technology of behavior. He postulates that we need a technology of behavior; that behavior is not recognized as a subject in its own right. But it is, however, still attributed to human nature, and there is an extensive “psychology of individual differences.” He further argues that we play from strength, and our strength is science and technology. In short, we need to make vast change in human behavior, and we cannot make them with the help of nothing more than physics or biology, no matter how hard we try.

Men are not possessed by demons but human behavior is still commonly attributed to in-dwelling agents. Almost everyone attributes human behavior to intentions, purposes, aims, and goals. Inner man is the center from which behavior emanates. He is autonomous, meaning miraculous. The inner man serves to explain only things we are not yet able to explain. His existence depends upon our ignorance, and he naturally loses status as we come to know more about behavior. The inner man is created in the image of the outer. In contrast, the outer man’s behavior is to be explained and could be very much like the inner man whose behavior is said to explain it.

Skinner also mentioned stimulus-response. Stimulus is the triggering action of the environment while response is the effect on an organism. Hence, stimulus plus response equals reflex. A person is responsible for his behavior, not only in the sense that he may be justly blamed or punished when he behaves badly, but also in the sense that he is given credit and admired for his achievements. Freedom, dignity, and value are major issues and unfortunately they become more crucial as the power of a technology of behavior becomes more nearly commensurate with the problems to be solved.

FREEDOM

Freedom is sometimes defined as a lack of resistance or restraint. A kind of freedom is achieved by the relatively simple forms of behavior called reflexes. The literature of freedom does not impart a philosophy of freedom; it induces people to act. It prescribes modes of action- how controlling power may be weakened or destroyed. Freedom is the absence of aversive control. Those who manipulate human behavior are said to be evil men, bent on exploitation. Control is clearly the opposite of freedom. The problem now is to free men, not from control but from certain kinds of control. For men to be free, we must redesign the environment. Freedom is a possession.

DIGNITY

The literature of dignity is a preserving due credit. We recognize a person’s dignity or worth when we give him credit for what he has done. The amount we give is inversely proportional to the conspicuousness of the causes of his behaviors. If we do not know why a person acts as he does, we attribute his behavior to him.

PUNISHMENTS

Punishment is designed to remove awkward behavior, dangerous, or otherwise unwanted behavior from a repertoire on the assumption that a person who has been punished is less likely to behave in the same way again. Punished behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive contingencies are withdrawn.

ALTERNATIVES TO PUNISHMENT

There are five alternatives to punishment:

1. Permisiveness. It is not a policy, rather it is the abandonment of policy. To refuse to control is to leave control not to the person himself, but to other parts of the social and nonsocial environments.
2. The Controller as Midwife. One person helps another give birth to behavior
3. Guidance. Behavior may be “activated”. It is only effective to the extent that control is exerted.
4. Building Dependence on Things. Contingencies which involve things are more precise and shape more useful behavior than contingencies arranged by other people.
5. Changing Minds. To change a mind is to point to reasons why a person should behave in a given way, and the reasons are almost always consequences which are likely to be contingent on behavior.

VALUES

“Value judgments” are to raise questions not about facts but about how men feel about facts, not about what man can do but about what he ought to do. When we say that a value judgment is a matter not of fact, we are simply distinguishing between a thing and its reinforcing effect. To make a value judgment by calling something good or bad is to classify it in terms of its reinforcing effects.

THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE

The survival of a culture is them emerges as a new value to be taken into account in addition to personal and social goods. A culture corresponds to a species. Culture shapes and maintains the behavior of those who live in it. If there is any purpose or direction in the evolution of a culture, it has to do with bringing people under the control of more and more of the consequences of their behavior.

THE DESIGN OF A CULTURE

The intentional design of a culture and the control of human behavior it implies are essential if the human species is to continue to develop. The technology of behavior emerges is ethically neutral, but when applied to the design of a culture, the survival of the culture functions as a value; but the use of science in designing culture is commonly opposed.

WHAT IS MAN?

Man is not made into a machine by analyzing his behavior in mechanical terms. Man himself may be controlled by his environment, but it is an environment which is almost wholly of his own making. Man is said to differ from the other animals mainly because he is “aware of his own existence.” He knows what he is doing; he knows that he has had a past and will have a future; he “reflects on his own nature;” he alone follows the classical injunction “know thyself.”

Burrhus Frederick Skinner is a behavioral psychologist who became famous for his work with rats using his Skinner Box, and eventually relating the results to humans. He speculates that the subject matter of human psychology is only the behavior of human being. Behaviorism asserts that consciousness is not a definite nor a usable concept. The function of behaviorist psychology is to be able to predict and to control human activity. Skinner uses the idea of global problems to justify research into and the attempt to manipulate people like pollution, food, shortages, depletion of natural resources, overpopulation, war and crime. For him, the question is how to induce man to behave properly. He also postulates that man is incapable of responsibility, self-discipline, self-determined morality and even autonomous achievement because there is no self in the first place (http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/skinner.html).

Beyond Freedom and Dignity leaves out the question: What do we mean when we say we want to be free? If we do not want to be in a society that punishes us for doing what we want to do, then we must let go of aversive stimuli. Instead, we must use reinforcers to control our society and human’s behavior. Simultaneously, if we pick the precise reinforcers, humans will feel free for we can do whatever we feel we want. As for dignity, it is believed that we gain dignity whenever our reinforcement led us to good behavioral patterns. In contrast, I feel that there is no absolute freedom and dignity in our society today. Freedom and dignity is out of control and muddled.