Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Skinner’s Quote of the Day is the project of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, copyright holder for Skinner’s works. On January 4, 2016, we started with Science and Human Behavior, followed by About Behaviorism, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, Upon Further Reflection, and Cumulative Record. Quotes are selected by renowned scientists and published every workday (Monday through Friday). The daily quote is also posted on the Facebook forum. RSS feed for “Skinner’s Quote of the Day” is available here: http://www.bfskinner.org/category/quotes/feed/. Please use the Archives function below to access previous quotes, or to search by a keyword.

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Recent Quotes:

• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 9
  A biologist has no difficulty in describing the role of the mother. She is a place, a locus in which a very important biological process takes place . . . The poet is also a locus, a place in which certain genetic and environmental causes come together to have a common effect. (p. 481)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 8
  Something does seem to be taken away from the poet when his behavior is traced to his genetic and personal histories. Only a person who truly initiates his behavior can claim that he is free to do so and that he deserves credit for any achievement. If the environment is the initiating force, he is… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 8
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 7
  Does the poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? (p. 479)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 6
  Verbal Behavior was criticized in a different way by an old friend, I. A. Richards, whose interest in the field goes back, of course to the Meaning of Meaning . . . He once asked me to lecture to his freshman course in General Education . . . he said, “I now present the Devil,”… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 6
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 5
  … I agreed to participate [in a BBC television discussion with Chomsky] only if the moderator could guarantee equal time. I suggested that we use chess clocks. My clock would be running when I was talking, and Chomsky’s when he was talking, and in that way I planned to have the last fifteen or twenty… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 5
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 4
  Eventually the question was asked, why had I not answered Chomsky? … No doubt I was shirking a responsibility in not replying to Chomsky, and I am glad an answer has now been supplied by Kenneth MacCorquodale in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. (p. 474)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 3
  . . . Chomsky’s review began to be widely cited and reprinted and became, in fact, much better known than my book. (p. 474)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 2.
  Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky. I read half a dozen pages, saw that it missed the point of my book, and went no further. (p. 473)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 1.
  … I intend to raise the question of whether I am responsible for what I am saying, whether I am actually originating anything, and to what extent I deserve credit or blame. (p. 473)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 13
  The study of the verbal behavior of speaker and listener, as well as of the practices of the verbal environment which generates such behavior, may not contribute directly to historical or descriptive linguistics, but it is enough for our present purposes to be able to say that a verbal environment could have arisen from nonverbal… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 13
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 12
  The origins of most forms of response will probably always remain obscure, but if we can explain the beginnings of even the most rudimentary verbal environment, the well-established processes of linguistic change will explain the multiplication of verbal forms and the creation of new controlling relationships. (p. 469)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 11
  Where the baby first cried as a reflex response to painful stimulation, it may now cry as an operant. (p. 465)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 10
  The relatively undifferentiated babbling of the human infant from which vocal verbal behavior develops is undoubtedly an evolutionary product, but it is not the sort of behavior which is evoked (or “released”) in specific forms on specific occasions. (p. 464)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 9
  It is unlikely, moreover, that verbal behavior in the present sense arose from instinctive cries. Well-defined emotional and other innate responses comprise reflex systems which are difficult, if not impossible, to modify by operant reinforcement. (p. 463)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 8
  The mother bird cries out not “in order to warn her young” but because the young of earlier members of the species who have cried out have survived to perpetuate the behavior. (p. 463)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 7
  Innate and acquired responses both appear to be emitted “in order to achieve effects”—in order to promote the welfare of the species or the individual. (p. 463)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 6
  There is a parallel between natural selection and operant conditioning. The selection of an instinctive response by its effect in promoting the survival of a species resembles, except for enormous differences in time scales, the selection of a response through reinforcement. (p. 462-463)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 5
  To say that [responses] are instinctive is merely to say that each form of behavior is observed in most members of a given species, when there has been no opportunity for individual learning. In such cases we must fall back on an evolutionary explanation. (p. 462)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 4
  A superficial resemblance between verbal behavior and the instinctive signal systems of animals (many of them vocal) has been the source of much confusion. (p. 462)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 3
  Early man was probably not very different from his modern descendants with respect to behavioral processes. If brought into a current verbal community, he would probably develop elaborate verbal behavior. What was lacking was not any special capacity for speech but certain environmental circumstances. (p. 461)

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