Physical Sciences, Logical Sciences, and Methodological Dualism

The obvious truth is that reason, man’s most characteristic feature, is also a biological phenomenon. It is neither more nor less natural than any other feature of the species homo sapiens, for instance, the upright gait or the hairless skin.6

The mind can be regarded as a subset of the physical world, or the physical world can be regarded as a subset of the mental world. Philosophical problems arise about the interrelationships between mind and body when neither is regarded as a subset of the other (dualism). It is not necessary to solve the age-old problem of how the mind and body interrelate before we proceed with praxeology, economics, psychology, or any other science dealing with purposeful human action or with other non-empirical subjects such as mathematics. We can let philosophers continue to work on the mind-body problem while we proceed to develop sciences that study both of these aspects of reality. All we need to do is recognize that both the outside physical world and the inner life of the mind that we experience directly are both real, that our minds direct our purposeful actions in the physical world, and that different epistemological approaches (methodological dualism) are required for the logical sciences and the physical sciences.7

Skinner makes the mistake of accepting materialism (which is unproved) and rejecting methodological dualism (which has been shown to be very fruitful). He rejects the obvious fact that ideas can cause actions and adopts epiphenominalism instead. Epiphenominalism assumes that mind and body both function in accordance with physical laws and that a byproduct of this functioning in humans is consciousness. Physical laws determine the experience of consciousness like the speed of a car determines the reading on the speedometer, but consciousness no more determines the actions of man than the speedometer determines the speed of a car. Skinner offers no proof of this counterintuitive philosophy, he simply assumes it is true.

Epiphenominalists like Skinner leave themselves open to ridicule when they assert that consistent materialism denies any role for ideas in the chain of events. What materialists should say instead is that ideas are one of the forms of physical reality and as such they are able to interact with other forms of physical reality and with each other. This allows materialists to acknowledge the reality of ideas and the reality of the role ideas play in the world. By conceding that ideas are physically real, materialists can grant that ideas have physical effects, indeed they must have physical effects.

The feeling that we make decisions is not a deception. Materialists should say that when a person makes a decision his choice is the result of the values (ideas that have physical reality) that he has acquired (somewhere in his brain), knowledge (more ideas that have physical reality) he possesses (somewhere in his brain), and the other circumstances in which he finds himself. Then materialists should recognize that people’s decisions reflect the logic of their values and can be scientifically analyzed best by using logic rather than by empirical methods that as yet have not been able to capture, measure, or explain ideas in a meaningful way. There is no need for us to restrict psychology to the fruitless empirical approach of behaviorism.

Tokens versus Punishment

Skinner is opposed to punishment on the grounds that it is not as effective a means of controlling people as are positive reinforcements such as money, power, prestige, and dignity. He regards punishment as an anachronistic practice fostered by the "literature of freedom." I also oppose punishment, but I don’t blame this age-old practice on the relatively recent "literature of freedom," and I think it is contradictory for Skinner to assert that no practices are cause by ideas and then to blame the "literature of freedom" for propagating the idea of punishment.

Skinner’s technique of controlling people by giving them rewards for good behavior rather than punishment for bad behavior is being practiced in mental hospitals in New York in the form of a token system. The patients are paid tokens for work they do and for social behavior deemed desirable by the psychologists in charge. The inmates can redeem their tokens for commodities, services, and privileges.

Dr. Nathan Arzin of Anna State Hospital in southern Illinois, one of the pioneers of this approach, can go into a ward of severely retarded, incontinent individuals and toilet train them in three days. He does not reason with them (they have IQs of 25) nor does he in any way operate on their emotions. He just works on their behavior.8 This approach may well be the most practical way to supervise idiots. If verbal communication is impossible, then perhaps the best way to get people to behave the way you want them to is to train them the way an animal trainer would. To an outsider, this seems a more humane form of control than using straight jackets or electric shock treatments.

The token system for treating the mentally deficient is sometimes compared to the way the free market economy induces people to work. The tokens are like a worker’s paycheck, but there is a crucial difference. Ninety percent of the people in mental institutions are there involuntarily. As Dr. Thomas Szasz has written, "In my opinion ‘treatment,’ in a free society, can only be that intervention to which a person submits voluntarily. If he’s incarcerated in a hospital that’s punishment, no matter what his benefactors may care to call it."9 That is the difference between freedom and slavery; between treatment and punishment. If Skinner proposes to treat people who are not volunteers, he is not really against punishment.

Political Freedom and Behaviorism

The difference between freedom in the political sense and freedom in the metaphysical sense is crucial. To be metaphysically free means to be free from the constraints of the laws of nature and to not have your actions be determined or even limited by anything other than your own will. To be politically free means to not be coerced by force or threats of force from other people. Metaphysical freedom is inconsistent with the laws of nature and can only be experienced by a supernatural being. Political freedom is possible for human beings.

When a man takes purposeful action it is the result of his conscious decision, his will, and it reflects his values and ideas at the time. To change a man’s deliberate actions you must change his conscious will. His conscious will obeys certain laws and can be changed only in accordance with those laws. To get a person to change his mind you must either (1) persuade him to change or rearrange the priority of his values, (2) convince him that his plan for achieving his values is incorrect, (3) bribe him by offering him something more valuable to him than the value he is currently pursuing, or (4) coerce him by force or by threatening to prevent him from attaining something more valuable to him than the value he is currently pursuing. The first method requires the use of moral or esthetic reasoning. The second uses economic or praxeological reasoning. The third uses economic incentives such as money or goods or services. The fourth uses violence or threats or political power.

If behaviorism is to be regarded as a science, it must be value free and devoid of ethical or esthetic presumptions. So it cannot use the first method. And since behaviorism denies that people make plans and act on those plans, behaviorism cannot use the second method. Consequently, unless behaviorists can bribe us, their only hope for getting us to behave as they would like is to gain political power.

In this age of bureaucracy the individual is coercively prohibited from many activities, and the possibilities for behaviorists getting authority to experimentation on us are greater than in the earlier days of our republic.10

Skinner’s emphasis on external contingencies makes sense in cases where coercion is used to train people to behave in a prescribed way. It makes less and less sense the more political freedom an individual subject is allowed.

Although he is nominally opposed to coercion because of its inefficiency, Skinner is not in favor of political freedom or individual rights.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic rights. But they are rights of the individual and were listed as such at a time when the literature of freedom and dignity were concerned with the aggrandizement of the individual. They have only a minor bearing on the survival of a culture. (p. 180)

That depends, of course, on whether the culture is individualistic or collectivistic. Skinner is a collectivist.

Whether or not the literature of freedom has anything to say about scientific methodology as such, it most definitely is opposed to totalitarian control of society by technocrats with collectivist ideas. In this respect the literature of freedom is opposed to Skinner and his brand of science, and Skinner is correct in identifying the literature of freedom as a major obstacle he needs to overcome.

In his excellent critique of Beyond Freedom and Dignity Noam Chomsky concentrates his criticism on the prematurely of Skinner’s claim that there is a behaviorist technology than can effectively control us and on the unliklihood that there ever will be such a technology because of the arbitrary limitations that behaviorism imposes on its own research. Chomsky does not dispute the argument that if we assume that "what a person wills is fully determined by his genetic endowment and history of ‘reinforcement,’ we should therefore make use of the best behavioral technology to shape and control behavior in the common interest."11 Indeed, Chomsky attempts to argue that there is not enough scientific evidence to justify the hypothesis of determinism, as though determinism requires empirical proof.

Skinner contends, and the libertarian Chomsky sees logic in it, that if we cannot be free anyway, we might as well submit to "scientific control" instead of haphazard control by an unplanned environment. This argument confuses metaphysical freedom and political freedom. Metaphysical determinism does not preclude political freedom. Political freedom might be possible. No one has proven that political freedom is impossible and there is historical evidence to support the possibility of liberty. If political freedom were impossible for some reason it still doesn’t follow that we should allow B. F. Skinner to control our lives. Only if political freedom is impossible and if Skinner’s animal-trainer approach could make our lives better, then we might take Skinner’s proposal seriously. And if we had bacon we could have bacon and eggs if we had eggs.

The irrationality of Skinner’s argument can be seen more clearly if we translate it like this: "Since it is impossible for you not to want the things you want, why don’t you do as I say?" The sheer idiocy of this argument is even clearer when put to a libertarian this way: "Since you can’t help wanting political freedom, respect for your rights as an individual, and not being told what to do, why don’t you let me control your life?"

Moral Responsibility and Determinism

Perhaps the reason libertarians like Noam Chomsky believe that metaphysical free will is crucial is that they base their political philosophy on their moral philosophy and they see no way to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism. I see a conflict between spontaneous actions and moral responsibility, but not between determinism and moral responsibility.

The person who has moral responsibility for an act is the person who made the final decision to perform the act. It does not matter what motivates his decision, the actor is inescapably responsible for his deliberate acts. The fact that an individual’s will is determined by the combined factors of his genetics, his unique lifetime of experiences, and his present situation does not make him less responsible, it merely explains why he chose to do what he did. An individual’s decision to act is a true reflection of his character. The individual is the last specific cause that we can identify in the chain of events that results in his actions. An individual cannot relinquish his responsibility or share it with an authority figure. His actions tell us what kind of moral values he possesses. We can use this knowledge to judge his character against our own moral standards.

We can judge a man’s character more confidently by what he does than by what he says. We infer his true beliefs, his true priorities and values, from his actions. We cannot know with certainty what controlling forces in his past history caused him to adopt his values and order them the way he did, but we do know that his actions reflect his priorities, and we can judge him accordingly.

Sometimes people claim that a man is not morally responsible for his actions when there are extenuating circumstances, such as when another man has a gun in his back. The fact is, he is still responsible for his deliberate actions even under duress, because we can still conclude something about his moral character from observing what he chooses to do. If he commits a crime under duress, we cannot conclude that he places no value on right behavior, but we can conclude that he places a higher value on his own life.

Accidental, spontaneous, reflexive, or unconscious actions convey almost no information about the moral values held by the actor. These are the kinds of actions for which the individual as a moral agent is not responsible.

Not only is determinism compatible with fixing credit for demonstrating virtue and fixing blame for demonstrating the lack of virtue, determinism also explains why moral responsibility is associated with purposeful behavior rather than all behavior. According to determinism, purposeful behavior reflects the preestablished personality and moral character of the acting man. Under the alternative view, if man had metaphysical free will his actions would not be the result of his preestablished character. Instead his actions would be spontaneous and unpredictable, and they would tell us nothing about his moral character. Indeed moral character and moral responsibility are incompatible with metaphysical freedom.

Conclusion

Skinner hopes to refute in advance all criticism by calling his libertarian critics neurotic or psychotic and then accusing them of name-calling:

A literature of freedom may inspire a sufficiently fanatical opposition to controlling practices to generate a neurotic if not a psychotic response. There are signs of emotional instability in those who have been deeply affected by the literature. We have no better indication of the plight of the traditional libertarian than the bitterness with which he discusses the possibility of a science and technology of behavior and their use in the intentional design of a culture. Name-calling is common. (p. 165)

Being a libertarian and, therefore, fanatic, neurotic (if not psychotic), unstable, and emotional, I can be excused if I resort to bitter name-calling. We can’t all be as dispassionate and open-minded as Skinner about his plans to control our lives.

Although he takes the correct side on determinism, Skinner is wrong in nearly all of his other conclusions. He is wrong when he says consciousness, memory, volition, and reason are unscientific and can safely be ignored. He is wrong in his belief that behaviorism is more than a trivial science. He is ignorant of the truly important scientific achievements of the Austrian School of economics. He is ignorant of the philosophical assumptions underlying his own narrow field of animal training. He has less than an average child’s understanding of human nature. He is naive in his political prescriptions. He confuses political freedom with metaphysical freedom. He is prone to collectivist fallacies. He is a poor excuse for a scientist or human benefactor. It is a sad commentary on the state of American culture that someone as stupid and confused as Skinner can gain a following.

Go back to "Beyond Freedom and Dignity and Reason Part 1"