Radical Behaviorism
Neo-Behaviorism and Hermeneutics
Problems
with Philosophical Behaviorism
and
the emergence of Social Constructionism
Paradox of the
verifiability principle - rejecting its own foundation
Sigmund
Koch (1951): Problems with
Logical Positivism and Operationism
Psychology is "in an
era of total disorientation" with
numerous "grand systems" with elaborate
auxiliary hypotheses using unobserved
"intervening variables" and "hypothetical constructs"
Bridgman
(1954): "I feel
as if I have created a Frankenstein
. . . I abhor the word operationalism or operationism"
The use of Operational definition has come to create this confusion by becoming a method for making concepts(constructs) scientific by simply defining how they will be observed (eg. AALS).
It also creates a situation where there are potentially infinite definitions for a given concept, each tied to a different behaviour or observation.
So what is the ontological status of the construct then?
Gilbert
Ryle (1949): The concept of Mind
Rejected Descartes'
"dogma of the ghost in the machine"
as well as the representational (copy) theory of knowledge
"Mind"
is not an ontological category (an actual thing);
to think of "Mind" as such is to make a "Category Mistake"
Other
mistakes: Confusing "Oxford University"
for an object
or a building and confusing "pain" with behaviour
G.E. Moore
(1873-1958): Common Sense
and Ordinary Language
Defended Common Sense by
suggesting others
"paradoxically" contradict themselves in doubting
"banally obvious truths" (eg. material things,
space & time, other minds, ...)
Moore's
follower, Norman Malcolm, suggests that:
People
learn the meaning of expressions through
standard cases or "exemplars" or paradigms
Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951):
Language games and traditions
1922 - Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus:
The "picture
theory" of knowledge
1953 - Philosophical
Investigations:
Criticized
representational theories suggesting that statements
about internal perceptions (eg. "I'm in pain") are expressions of such states rather than descriptions
of objects
Reminiscent
of Peter Abellard's resolution
to the medieval "nominalism vs. realism debate",
Wittgenstein offers a perspective of neo-conceptualism
He
suggests that the categorical terms we use
in science represent real things (like realism)
however they are not objects or things (like nominalism)
but rather the creative expressions of human
experience (like conceptualism)
There
is not a limited set of defining or
"essential features" (list of propositions or
statements) that describe such concepts (as the nominalists declare)
nor some etherial essence as the realists declare.
Conceptual
confusion arises from
failing to recognize
our concepts as part of a loose cluster of expressions
which are characterized by a having "family
resemblance"
Terminal
explanations are accepted when we decide
to stop asking "why?" and stop our investigation.
We can never fully explain human action,
however,
we can understand it!
We learn to use concepts
paradigmatically
(by example) through various "language games"
While
language games involve specific persons,
they are part of longer standing traditions
All knowledge is bound to
the dialectics of language
games where there are no "private languages" and
no trans-historical or trans-cultural
"universals"
Social Constructionist Movement Arose against this backdrop . . . .
He offers discourse on the categories and language of psychology, including: the
Ancient Greek categories, Putting Intelligence on the Map, Behaviour and
Learning, Motivation and Personality, Attitudes, and Meta-Language: The
technological Framework and the methodolotry of psychology.
The final Chapter considers "The Nature of Psychological Kinds" with discussion of the historical roots of psychological categories, the politics of psychological language, the reference of psychological categories and Natural kinds vs. Human Kinds.
Dialectics in Psychology: Natural and Human Psychology at Harvard
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Burrhus
Frederick Skinner (1904-1990): Radical Behaviorism |
Drawing from Bacon:
the is a heavy emphasis on induction and a simplicity of theory development
Drawing from Mach:
there
is an emphasis on
observation and the functional analysis of behavior
Drawing from Watson:
Behavioral adaptation or
adjustment and the prediction and control of behavior
1938 - The
behavior of organisms: Operant Conditioning is
all that is needed to explain behavior, nothing unobservable
Animals
operate on their environments and have their
behaviors reinforced by the contingencies present there
Following Thorndike's Law of Effect
Positive and negative
reinforcement lead to
the increased frequency of responses given
certain stimuli, however, there is no need to
talk about pleasure or satisfaction
Randomly
occurring behaviors increase in frequency
when associated with the removal of a negative reinforcer
or with the introduction of a positive reinforcer
Discriminative
stimuli enable organisms to distinguish
the contingencies of reinforcement (Schedules
of reinforcement)
Behaviorism
provides a technology for the application
of simple techniques for the manipulation of behavior
in "trying to solve the terrifying
problems that face us
in the world today"
WW
II - Project ORCON:
Missiles can be guided towards
targets with the help of pigeons pecking at control keys
(See I was not a Lab Rat)
1948
- Walden II: Utopian community designed around
the principles of reinforcement and behavioral control
1957 - Verbal
Behavior: Language and thinking are simply
behaviors which have been reinforced in the past
Tact: A reinforceable verbal operant (response) under the stimulus control of some part of the physical environment
1971 - Beyond freedom and dignity: As with mind, feeling and value, mis-attributions of causality are made for freedom and dignity. We attribute will, respect, goodness or choice to persons when causal stimuli are not obviously present
1959 -
Attacked Skinner's account of language
Criticized the "mythology" of verbal behavior
on many grounds, including definitions of
stimulus and reinforcement
Stimulus: Concept is too vague; is it a physical
thing or something that effects the organism?
Too easy to find some property that "controls" behavior.
Also what physical properties do "things in the past"
have in providing "remote stimulus control" of suffix "ed"
Reinforcement: Is defined tautologically and thus
has no meaning. Also it is used vaguely as in "automatic self
reinforcement" or "remote reinforcement" (No response)
Language use
is governed by "rules of grammar"
which provide the deep structure of thinking
and the surface structure of speech
Humans have an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
which enables us to acquire and produce language
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Erik Homberger Erikson (1902-1994): Hermeneutics of Identity
See
Friedman (1999). Identity's Architect.... |
Born in Karlsruhe Germany to Karla Abrahamsen
(Salomonsen).
Adopted by Theordore Homberger and raised as a German,
yet spent his life searching for his mythical Danish father.
As a young man
was caught between worlds, neither German, nor Jew.
Never really fit in.
Influenced by the
concept of Bildung where he developed as a
person
and as an academic throughout his whole life from Wanderschaft to
wandering back and forth across America.
Surrogate father
of friend Peter Blos encouraged him in his travel, woodcuts,
and artistry.
Kierkegaard---
1927 -33 Vienna
Drew heavily from
the developmental model
of Freud, yet was critical of his "backward"
and "downward" looking "fatalism" of this "mythical father".
Studied under Anna Freud (not HIM) after being an artist and teacher for
Dorothy Burlingham's
Heitzing school with his Montessori diploma.
Met Joan Serson, who led him away from the Freuds to America and a new identity.
Lamented August
Aichorn not being his mentor, rejected by this substitute father.
Felt betrayal, doubt & distancing.
Voted a full member of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society (had hoped for associate membership) as well as the International Psycho-Analytical Association.
33-39 Harvard & Yale- Boston's first Child psychoanalyst & influenced by Edward Sapir: description.
Configurational approach indicates that our inner
and outer realities reflect each other.
See in the play strategies of children:
Boys vs. Girls. Influenced by Henry Murray's
TAT
2
cultural expressions begin to shine through
uc berkeley
pushed into a quantitative research lab,
not comfortable and walked away (also not signing the oath)-politics
Birth of Neil guilt and turning away from
the negative to positive human growth
Finding the Erikson Name
Ego-Development and Historical Change - championed the orientation of psycho-history of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson & William James, following the lead of R.G.Collingwood
This is a manifestation of the configuration inner-outer development of ego-identity, subjective personhood and objective society.
Consulted at the Menniger Clinic in Topeka Kansas, came to develop close relationship with David Rappaport.
Worked with Sioux and Yurok on identity crisis
1950 Childhood and Society -
Configurations of the body, mind and society Fig5 BP GP T
Desribes clinical cases as well as cultural identity as a reflection of the environment (geography), economics (hunting, fishing, agriculture, industry...) and thesocial rituals and modes that are refelcted in the modes and behaviours of the people of the culture. (also see Tonks 2017; Tonks 2018)
Examines the Sioux of North Dakota, The Yurok of the Klamath River, as well as the "American" the "German" and the "Russian" as reflected in icons figures and myths.
1960s ~ Cultural Hero:
Return to Harvard
1964 Insight and Responsibility
His Methodology is revealed here and in this book where he describes his methods as well as ethics.
Explicitly recognized the historical situatedness of the therapist and the "client" in the clinical model for understanding humans
The clinical method makes use of "disciplined subjectivity" for both (all) persons involved where "the two subjectivities join in the kind of disciplined understanding and shared insight which we think are operative in a cure"
Therapy involves the emancipation of a patient (meaning passive) into an agent
The analyst - analysand relationship is also a partnership where
through transference and counter transference a “mutuality of praxis” (1964, p. 236, italics added )emerges
The doctor can “develop as a practitioner, and as a person,
even as the patient is cured as a patient, and as a person” (1964, p. 236, italics added).
The client becomes “a case” and is self-observant. Through this process,
the clinician becomes part of the client’s life history as the client “makes history” (1964, p. 56, italics added).
ethical responsibility of the analyst where “[t]he healer is committed to a highest good,
the preservation of life, and the furtherance of well-being-‘maintenance of life’ …. to a humanistic ethic” (1964, p. 237).
“we cannot afford to live for long with a division of personal, professional and political ethics” (1964, p. 241).
Gandhi's Truth - Satyagraha - "perseverance in truth"
Psuedo-speciation - drawn from Conrad Lorenz, the denial that humankind is "obviously one species" but rather to make arbitrary and imposed classifications on groups of people.
1968 Identity Youth and Crisis is published and he moves into the leading expert on identity crisis.
He introduces the importance of the epigenetic principle where "in each stage of life given strength is added to a widening ensemble and reintegrated at each later stage in order to play its part in a full cycle-if and where fate and society permit." (Erikson, cited in Freedman, 1998, p. 377).
Influenced heavily by Margaret Mead - in developing an anthropology of identity.
1970 - Autobiographical notes where he talk about his own identity within the tradition of psychoanalysis.
Ontologically, humans are comprised of three principle processes of organization or spheres of being: Soma, psyche & ethos (polis)
Mutuality:
psycho-social being where persons are
engaged in the "inter-living" or interdependent
"cogwheeling" of the life-cycles of each other
1982 publishes
The Life Cycle Complete, along with his
wife Joan,
(new edition in 1998 published by Joan giving 9th stage of gerotranscendence) where
they draw from his earlier work inspired by the Freuds as well as Shakespeare's "As you like
it" they develop:
The "Life Cycle" is comprised by eight "age-specific" turning points or "crises" of normative development.
All stages are
active for each person at all ages,
although they emerge as being important through
epigenesis
Each stage has a
dialectic to be confronted between
a ritualization (thesis) and a ritualism
(antithesis)
which when resolved leads the emergence of a virtue
(synthesis)
Trust vs. Mistrust
-> HOPE
Autonomy vs. Shame or Doubt -> WILL
Intitiative vs. Guilt -> PURPOSE
Industry vs Inferiority -> COMPETENCE
Identity vs. Role Confusion -> FIDELITY
Intimacy vs. Isolation -> LOVE
Generativity vs. Stagnation -> CARE
Integrity vs. Despair -> WISDOM
Identity formation involves the acceptance of ideologies and values for organizing one's life, finding one's mythology.
It involves the biological, psychological and social worlds where a sense of "being at one with oneself" and "a sense of affinity with a community's sense of being at one with its future as well as its history"
Erik Erikson was a self-made man, " If the relation of the father and son dominated the last century, then this one is concerned with the self-made man asking him-self what he is making of himself " (1964, cited in Friedman, 1999).
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Major Books and important works: 1950 - Childhood and Society 1958 - Young Man Luther 1964 - Insight and Responsibility 1968 - Identity, Youth and Crisis 1969 - Gandhi's Truth 1970 - Autobiographical Notes on the Identity Crisis 1974 - Dimensions of a New Identity 1982 - The Life Cycle Completed |
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