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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"What has come to be called the “experimental analysis of behavior” has already given rise to an effective technology of teaching, although it is not yet widely known or used."…
"I am, of course, a radical rather than a methodological behaviorist. I do not believe that there is a world of mentation or subjective experience that is being, or must…
"My thesis was a sort of declaration of independence from the nervous system, and I restated the position in The Behavior of Organisms. It is not, I think, anti-physiological." (p.…
"In Verbal Behavior verbal operants are classified by reference to the contingencies of reinforcement maintained by a verbal community." (p. 123)
" [Verbal Behavior] will, I believe, prove to be my most important work." (p. 122)
"The lack of an identifiable eliciting stimulus in operant behavior raises a practical problem: we must wait for behavior to appear before we can reinforce it." (p. 120)
"We choose the wrong path at the very start when we suppose that our goal is to change the “minds and hearts of men and women” rather than the world…
"The cognitive constructs give physiologists a misleading account of what they will find inside." (p. 111)
"Those who see themselves thinking see little more than their perceptual and motor behavior, overt and covert." (p. 111)
"No one doubts that behavior involves internal processes: the question is how well they can be known through introspection." (p. 111)
"The very speed with which cognitive processes are invented to explain behavior should arose our suspicions." (p. 110)
"The mental apparatus studied by cognitive psychology is simply a rather crude version of contingencies of reinforcement and their effects." (p. 110)
"The body responds to the world, at the point of contact; making copies would be a waste of time." (p. 105)
"All operant behavior “stretches toward” a future even though the only consequences responsible for its strength have already occurred." (p. 103)
"Because controlling circumstances which lie in an organism’s history of reinforcement are obscure, the mental surrogate gets its chance." (p. 102)
"Suppose animals simply do what they feel like doing? What is the next step in explaining their behavior? Clearly, a science of animal behavior must be replaced by a science…
"Behavior changes because the contingencies change, not because a mental entity called a concept develops." (p. 100)
"In Pavlov’s experiment a hungry dog hears a bell and is then fed. If this happens many times, the dog begins to salivate when it hears the bell. The standard…
"Cognitive psychologists study [the] relations between organism and environment, but they seldom deal with them directly. Instead they invent internal surrogates which become the subject matter of their science." (p.…
"The variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment." (p. 97)
"It is clear that the behavioral sciences have not yet fulfilled their promise . . . The fault lies, I am arguing, with the surviving mentalism. The sooner we abandon…
"Such a [behaviorist] program does not rob people of their feelings. It simply puts feelings in their proper place, and in doing so moves more rapidly to the kind of…
"It is safe to call for changes in feelings and states of mind precisely because nothing will ever happen for which one can be held responsible." (p. 92)
"Call it [behavior analysis] a superficial analysis if you will, but to turn instead to the minds of men, no matter how deeply implanted they may be, is to abandon…
"A research document published by the International Peace Research Association elaborates upon a famous statement issued by UNESCO many years ago: “Wars begin in the minds of men: hence it…
"Confidence is only one of hundreds of terms referring to feelings or states of mind which come to us naturally and conveniently in daily discussions of human behavior but which…
"The democratic process works when it makes a difference whether people participate or not." (p. 89)
"As a behaviorist, I do not blush to say that I am at this moment possessed by a number of different feelings of confidence... But I hasten to point out…
"Evidence of the powerful control exerted by the environment is obtained only through rather subtle scientific practices and is by no means as immediate or as obvious as the evidence…
"A science of behavior . . . turns to the environment—the environment that has produced the genetic endowment . . . and that now shapes and maintains the repertoire of…
"It is not so much the complexity of human behavior that causes trouble as the traditional practice of looking for explanations inside the behaving person." (p. 85)
"... those who make the decisions to spend money—for example, in education—are most often unaware of what can be done." (p. 85)
"It is easy to understand why the question should be asked: “When shall we have the behavioral science and technology we need to solve our problems?” I believe that that…
"With the technologies of physics and biology the species has solved problems of fantastic difficulty. Yet with respect to its own behavior something always seems to go wrong." (pp. 83-84)
"I wish to testify that, once you are used to it, the way [to a science of behavior] is not so steep or thorny after all." (p. 82)
"Much remains to be done, and it will be done more rapidly when the role of the environment takes its proper place in competition with the apparent evidences of an…
"The role of the environment has become clearer in the present century. Its selective action in evolution has been examined by the ethologists, and a similar selective action during the…
"We are not yet ready to accept the fact that the task is to change, not people, but rather the world in which they live." (p. 81)
"The science I am discussing is the investigation of the relation between behavior and the environment—on the one hand, the environment in which the species evolved and which is responsible…
"In the long run, the aggrandizement of the individual jeopardizes the future of the species and the culture." (p. 80)
"The practical problem in continuing the struggle for freedom and dignity is not to destroy controlling forces but to change them ..." (p. 80)
"... Louis Pasteur, was responsible for a dramatic test of the theory of spontaneous generation, and I suggest that the spontaneous generation of behavior in the guise of ideas and…
"The success of [the struggle for freedom], though it is not yet complete, is one of man’s great achievements, and no sensible person would challenge it. Unfortunately, one of its…
"... if the credit due a person is infringed by evidence of the conditions of which his behavior is a function, then a scientific analysis appears to be an attack…
"Plato would have made far more progress toward the good life if he could have forgotten those shadows on the wall of his cave." (pp. 77-78)
"Many years ago I suggested that the letters CNS could be said to stand, not for the central nervous system, but for the conceptual nervous system." (p. 74)
"Even when helpful, an observed or hypothetical inner determiner is no explanation of behavior until it has itself been explained, and the fascination with an inner life has allayed curiosity…
"To put it crudely, introspection cannot be very relevant or comprehensive because the human organism does not have nerves going to the right places." (pp. 72-73)
"The verbal community which teaches us to make distinctions among things in the world around us lacks the information it needs to teach us to distinguish events in our private…