On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
You can leave your comments here (registered users only), or join the discussion on our open Facebook forum. Please keep your comments brief and directly related to the quote.
"There are two unavoidable gaps in any behavioral account: one between the stimulating action of the environment and the response of the organism, and one between consequences and the resulting…
"We can trace a small part of human behavior, and a much larger part of the behavior of other species, to natural selection and the evolution of the species, but…
"No account of what is happening inside the human body, no matter how complete, will explain the origins of human behavior. What happens inside the body is not a beginning."…
"Whether or not the cognitive revolution has restored mind as the proper subject matter of psychology, it has not restored introspection as the proper way of looking at it. The…
"Unfortunately, we cannot report any internal event, physical or metaphysical, accurately. The words we use are words we learned from people who did not know precisely what we were talking…
"To think is to do something that makes other behavior possible. Solving a problem is an example. A problem is a situation that does not evoke an effective response; we…
"In a behavioral analysis, contingencies of reinforcement change the way we respond to stimuli. It is a changed person, not a memory, that has been “stored.” (p. 16) Subscribe…
"Like pre-Darwinian evolution (where to evolve meant to unroll as one unrolled a scroll), developmentalism is a form of creationism." (p. 16) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"Since the observable effects of reinforcement are usually not immediate, we often overlook the connection. Behavior is then often said to grow or develop. Develop originally meant to unfold, as…
"Since behavior analysts deal only with complete instances of behavior, the sensing part is out of reach of their instruments and methods and must . . . be left to…
"The world takes control of behavior when either survival or reinforcement has been contingent upon it." (p. 16) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"We do what we do because of what has happened, not what will happen. Unfortunately, what has happened leaves few observable traces, and why we do what we do and…
"As an experimental analysis has shown, behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences, but only by consequences that lie in the past." (p. 15) Subscribe to RSS feed…
"What is felt when one has a feeling is a condition of one’s body, and the word used to describe it almost always comes from the word for the cause…
"The inspection or introspection of one’s own body is a kind of behavior that needs to be analyzed, but as the source of data for a science it is largely…
"Physiologists, and especially neurologists, look at the same body [as philosophers and psychologists] in a different and potentially successful way, but even when they have seen it more clearly, they…
"For at least 3,000 years . . . philosophers, joined recently by psychologists, have looked within themselves for the causes of their behavior. For reasons which are becoming clear, they…
"On the point of offering a friend a glass of water, we do not ask, “How long has it been since you last drank any water?” or “If I offer…
"Cognitive psychologists are among those who most often criticize behaviorism for neglecting feelings, but they themselves have done very little in the field. The computer is not a helpful model."…
"Psychoanalysis is largely concerned with discovering and changing feelings. An analysis sometimes seems to work by extinguishing the effects of old punishments." (p. 10) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"In his remarkable book, Émile, Rousseau described what is now called desensitization. If a baby is frightened when plunged into cold water (presumably an innate response), begin with warm water…
"Feelings are most easily changed by changing the settings responsible for what is felt . . . When a setting cannot be changed, a new history of reinforcement may change…
"Presumably we are more likely to avoid hurting animals if what they would do resembles what we would do when hurt in the same way . . . It is…
"All words for feelings seem to have begun as metaphors, and it is significant that the transfer has always been from public to private. No word seems to have originated…
"Good behaviorists would say, “You reinforce my behavior” rather than “You reinforce me,” because it is behavior, not the behaving person, that is being reinforced in the sense of being…
"The very privacy which suggests that we ought to know our own bodies especially well is a severe handicap for those who must teach us to know them." (p. 4)…
"Methodological behaviorists, like logical positivists, argued that science must confine itself to events that can be observed by two or more people; truth must be truth by agreement . .…
"Behaviorists are not supposed to have feelings, or at least to admit that they have them. Of the many ways in which behaviorism has been misunderstood for so many years,…
The B. F. Skinner Foundation is bringing back to print the last book by Skinner, Recent Issues In the Analysis of Behavior. This collection of articles, originally published in 1989,…
The Quote of the Day will be back soon with the quotes from another Skinner's classic.
"All human behavior . . . is ultimately to be accounted for in terms of the phylogenic contingencies of survival which have produced man as a species and the ontogenic…
"We do not look for ultimate responsibility in a machine, nor should we look for it in man." (p. 297) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"Only when we know what a man actually does can we be sure that we have simulated his behavior. The Outside Story must be told first." (p. 295) Subscribe to…
"As our understanding of human behavior increases, however, we appeal less and less to explanatory fictions, and we can then accept the fact that the essential differences between machines and…
"If a science of human behavior is impossible because man possesses free will, or if behavior cannot be explained without invoking a miracle-working mind, then indeed man cannot be simulated."…
"Man is a machine, but he is a very complex one. At present he is far beyond the powers of men to construct—except, of course, in the usual biological way."…
"A man learns to respond to himself and his own behavior as he learns to respond to things in the world around him, although it is hard for the verbal…
"As Newell, Shaw, and Simon say, ‘Man can solve problems without knowing how he solves them.” In other words, his behavior can be shaped by contingencies which he has not…
". . . the real question is not whether machines think but whether men do." (p. 288) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"[Machines] are certainly almost human, and since we know why they behave as they do, do we not know what it means to possess a Mind? . . . We…
"The physiological processes which mediate behavior do not, so far as we know, differ from those involved in other functions of a living organism. The activities which testify to the…
"When we can generate or change a state directly, we shall be able to use it to control behavior. Neither the science nor the technology of behavior will then vanish,…
"In a more advanced account of a behaving organism “historical” variables will be replaced by “causal.” When we can observe the momentary state of an organism, we shall be able…
"We can predict and control behavior without knowing how our dependent and independent variables are connected. Physiological discoveries cannot disprove an experimental analysis or invalidate its technological advances." (p. 283)…
"A behavioral analysis is essentially a statement of the facts to be explained by studying the nervous system. It tells the physiologist what to look for. The converse does not…
"It is not for nothing that psychoanalysis is called “depth psychology” or that linguists look for the “deep structure” of a sentence. And it is perhaps inevitable that an analysis…
"Current analyses of verbal contingencies are no doubt still incomplete, but what is gained by appealing to cognitive processes? If new sentences cannot arise in behavior, how can they arise…
"There is no harm in saying that a student gets high marks because of his intelligence or plays the piano well because of his musical ability, or that a politician…
"Teachers and therapists do not change personalities, they change the world in which students and patients live." (p. 273) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"We replace the Superego and Id of Freud as well as the Conscience and Old Adam of Judeo-Christian theology with “good” and “evil” phylogenic and ontogenic contingencies." (p. 273) Subscribe…