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).
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"Private problem-solving usually consists of a mixture of discriminative and manipulative responses . . . In mental arithmetic one multiplies, divides, transposes, and so on, seeing the result in each…
"A discriminative [operant] response which can be made when the appropriate stimulus is absent has certain advantages. It does not require the sometimes troublesome precurrent behavior which generates an external…
"The practical task of generating conditioned stimuli of special effectiveness is an important one, as the artist, writer, and composer know. If it is possible to reinforce a man with…
"A man may see or hear "stimuli which are not present" on the pattern of the conditioned reflex: he may see X, not only when X is present, but when…
"Verbal behavior, however, can occur at the covert level because it does not require the presence of a particular physical environment for its execution. Moreover, it may remain effective at…
"Another possibility [than control by private events] is that when an individual appears to describe unemitted behavior, he is actually describing a history of variables which would enable an independent…
"I was on the point of going home" may be regarded as the equivalent of "I observed events in myself which characteristically precede or accompany my going home." (p. 262)…
"Such responses as "I'm strongly inclined to go home" or "I shall go home in half an hour" also describe states of affairs which appear to be accessible only to…
"An important verbal repertoire describes one's own behavior. It is generated by a community which insists upon answers to such questions as "What did you say?" "What are you doing?"…
"Now, self-observation is also the product of discriminative contingencies, and if a discrimination cannot be forced by the community, it may never arise. Strangely enough, it is the community which…
"The environment, whether public or private, appears to remain undistinguished until the organism is forced to make a distinction." (p. 260) Subscribe to RSS feed here
"There is no effective answer to the student who insists, after being corrected, that that was what he "meant to say," but the existence of this private event is not…
"Verbal responses which are acquired with respect to public events may be transferred to private events on the basis of common properties. It has often been pointed out that many…
"The community may resort to public accompaniments of the private event. For example, it may establish a verbal response to an aching tooth by presenting or withholding reinforcement according to…
"The verbal response "red" is established as a discriminative operant by a community which reinforces the response when it is made in the presence of red stimuli and not otherwise.…
"The contribution which a science of behavior can make in suggesting an alternative [to the psychophysical dualism] point of view is perhaps one of its most important achievements. No discussion…
"The picture which emerges is almost always dualistic. The scientist humbly admits that he is describing only half the universe, and he defers to another world—a world of mind or…
"These questions [of private events] may not be of interest to all readers . . . Fortunately, the issue is seldom crucial in the practical control of human behavior. The…
"In studying behavior we may have to deal with the stimulation from a tooth as an inference rather than as a directly observable fact. But if some of the independent…
"We need not suppose that events which take place within an organism's skin have special properties for that reason. A private event may be distinguished by its limited accessibility but…
"When we say that behavior is a function of the environment, the term "environment" presumably means any event in the universe capable of affecting the organism. But part of the…
"The present analysis should lead to an improvement in educational practices. If our account of thinking is essentially correct, there is no reason why we cannot teach a man how…
"So long as originality is identified with spontaneity or an absence of lawfulness in behavior, it appears to be a hopeless task to teach a man to be original or…
"A formulation of creative thinking within the framework of a natural science may be offensive to those who prize their conception of the individual in control of the world about…
"James Watt's invention of the steam engine seems much less miraculous when we have once learned about the earlier forms of the engine upon which his contribution was based." (pp.…
"The question of originality can be disposed of, however, by providing plausible accounts of the way in which a given idea might have occurred." (p. 255) Subscribe to RSS feed…
"Educational agencies established by the group provide for the transmission of the results of environmental contingencies from one individual to another, and it becomes possible for the individual to acquire…
"As time passes men react to more and more subtle features of the world about them and in more and more effective ways. The accumulation of behavior is made possible…
"Reinforcing contingencies shape the behavior of the individual, and novel contingencies generate novel forms of behavior. Here, if anywhere, originality is to be found." (p. 255) Subscribe to RSS feed…
"Man is now in much better control of the world than were his ancestors, and this suggests a progress in discovery and invention in which there appears to be a…
"We may . . . acknowledge the emergence of novel ideas, in the sense of responses never made before under the same circumstances, without implying any element of originality in…
"When a pattern of manipulation has never been applied to a particular case before, the result is, in a sense, new . . . We reserve the term "original" for…
"We saw that self-control rests ultimately with the environmental variables which generate controlling behavior and, therefore, originates outside the organism. There is a parallel issue in the field of ideas.…
"The artistic exploration of a medium may, however, proceed in the absence of any explicit problem . . . The general problem is simply to come up with something new."…
"Instances have been described in which a mathematician abandons a problem after working on it for a long time, only to have the solution "pop into his head" quite unexpectedly…
"It is either meaningless or idle to ask where the response resides until it summons strength enough to spring out into the open. We may also easily represent the activities…
"Until the functional relations in behavior had been analyzed, this could not be clearly understood; and meanwhile a great many fictional processes were invented. Conspicuous examples are the "thought processes"…
"The result of solving a problem is the appearance of a solution in the form of a response. The response alters the situation so that the problem disappears. The relation…
"Simply emitting a solution, however, is not solving a problem. We are concerned here with the process of "finding the solution. Problem-solving may be defined as any behavior which, through…
"Once the solution has occurred, the problem vanishes simply because the essential condition has been eliminated. (The same problem is not likely to recur since the situation will no longer…
"Mathematics is rich in problems, but the motivation of the mathematician is often obscure. The deprivation or aversive stimulation responsible for the strength of writing a formula which always generates…
"It is easy to give an example of a problem, but it is difficult to define the term rigorously . . . In the true "problem situation" the organism has…
"In recalling a name it is assumed that the response exists in some strength and that other information is available as a source of supplementary stimulation. These are the essential…
"The individual manipulates relevant variables in making a decision because the behavior of doing so has certain reinforcing consequences. One of these is simply escape from indecision. Conflicting alternatives lead…
"It must be remembered that formulae expressed in terms of personal responsibility underlie many of our present techniques of control and cannot be abruptly dropped. To arrange a smooth transition…
"A man may spend a great deal of time designing his own life—he may choose the circumstances in which he is to live with great care, and he may manipulate…
"Self-reinforcement of operant behavior presupposes that the individual has it in his power to obtain reinforcement but does not do so until a particular response has been emitted . .…
"The place of operant reinforcement in self-control is not clear. In one sense, all reinforcements are self-administered since a response may be regarded as "producing" its reinforcement, but "reinforcing one's…
"The individual often comes to control part of his own behavior when a response has conflicting consequences—when it leads to both positive and negative reinforcement. . . . The positive…
"When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom . . . Evidently selves are multiple and hence not to be identified with the…