Sorry, missed this before. I will only comment on a couple of things...
Call it a spontaneous recovery from your extinction stimulis. A phrase like that ought to baffle just about everybody.
When you use technical terms incorrectly, don't be surprised when people are baffled. This is not the fault of the vocabulary, but the speaker. The vocabulary of quantum mechanics is well understood by some, but used as a smokescreen by others. Same here.
Who else here is arguing the dogma of radical behaviorism, anyhow?
You seem to think (damn those "mentalistic" terms) that this - the validity of radical behaviorism, the very point at issue (between you and I, at least) - has been conceded. You seem entirely unaware that any argument assuming a controversial point not agreed to by the other side constitutes a fallacy, Mercutio.
"Think" is not a mentalistic term. Thinking is a behavior, albeit a private one.
As far as I can see, I am not engaged in a debate with you. When you misrepresent behaviorism, I try to point it out.
Do you actually believe that all practice must be in accord with Skinner's theories? Guess I should be grateful you're not quoting the Bible to justify religious superstition.
Skinner is dead; Radical Behaviorism is still a living science. So far, your statements are still getting the basics wrong; if you would like to move on to post-Skinner topics, you will have to master the basics first.
Why are you arguing for radical behaviorism on a Religion and Philosophy thread, anyhow? This belief system seems just awful philosophically. No freedom or creative innovation, no dignity, a lack of respect for the autonomy of others... here's a line of Skinner's I neglected to bold from a couple posts back:
You cite it, you quote it, but you show no signs of understanding it. In a nutshell, he basically comments on your paragraph above: You reject this view out of hand, and have blinkered yourself from the evidence that threatens your world-view.
Or this, concerning his concept of reinforcement (from BF Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis):
Thanks for that! That is very early Skinner, of course; since then, other researchers have greatly expanded our knowledge about reinforcement. Food deprivation (despite your complaint below, lab pigeons on deprivation schedules are at equivalent weights to wild pigeons; the "free-feeding weight" is the uncommon state) is still used, but not always, and Premack's principle does not rely on deprivation at all.
Ah, who really cares about partially starving pigeons until they learn to
play ping-pong?
Took a quick look at your link; you have used it before, and I complained about it then, too. It was written in 1975, updated in 1981...does not even have a death date for Skinner. The first paragraph contains one glaring error ("behaviorism, a branch of psychology that likens human (sic) to machines"-- Cognitive psych does that, of course...but behaviorism likens humans to...other animals), and the last paragraph (only 4 paragraphs? And they choose these examples to represent his whole career?) misrepresents the Aircrib as a modified operant chamber. It was not. It was closer to a modified crib. Tremendously practical, but misrepresented horribly.
Hmmm... a trend. In order to dismiss Behaviorist claims, opponents have consistently misrepresented them. (
"Case histories in the great power of steady misrepresentation."
