Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner

Author:B.F. Skinner [Skinner, B.F.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Published: 2011-02-27T14:00:00+00:00

The struggle for freedom and dignity has been formulated as a defense of autonomous man rather than as a revision of the contingencies of reinforcement under which people live. A technology of behavior is available which would more successfully reduce the aversive consequences of behavior, proximate or deferred, and maximize the achievements of which the human organism is capable, but the defenders of freedom oppose its use. The opposition may raise certain questions concerning “values.” Who is to decide what is good for man? How will a more effective technology be used? By whom and to what end? These are really questions about reinforcers. Some things have become “good” during the evolutionary history of the species, and they may be used to induce people to behave for “the good of others.” When used to excess, they may be challenged, and the individual may turn to things good only to him. The challenge may be answered by intensifying the contingencies which generate behavior for the good of others or by pointing to previously neglected individual gains, such as those conceptualized as security, order, health, wealth, or wisdom. Possibly indirectly, other people bring the individual under the control of some remote consequences of his behavior, and the good of others then redounds to the good of the individual. Another kind of good which makes for human progress remains to be analyzed.

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