Humanism and Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism

Abstract

"Science" and "humanities" are usually placed in opposition. The contributions of the humanities are in areas that are not usually thought of as scientific, such as morality and values, aesthetics, and an understanding of ultimate purposes. But, like his eminent younger colleague E. O. Wilson, B. E Skinner recognized no dividing line. Science in general, and radical behaviorism in particular, provide all the knowledge needed, he argued, to guide society into a happy and, above all, long-term, future. His confidence is widely shared. Most middle-class parents, most psychotherapists and educators, the majority of political and social theorists, whether behavior analytically inclined or not, all now share Skinner's confident belief that what they do is grounded in science. 1 They acknowledge traditional practices, but doubt they have much to learn from them. They believe that all questions are at bottom scientific questions. Science, in principle, embraces all knowledge. This view, it is not unfair to say, has become the religion of the educated elite. How true is this "scientific imperialism"? How did Skinner's radical behaviorism advance it, and by what means did he bridge the gap between the "why" questions of human existence, not traditionally deemed scientific, and the "how" questions that have always been the accepted province of science? Skinner's conceptual tools for tackling these problems were his philosophical analyses of truth, free will, and value from a point of view that has recently returned to fashion, evolutionary epistemology. In this chapter I examine radical behaviorism's version of evolutionary epistemology to see how successful it is in spanning what used to be considered an unbridgeable gap. I believe that it fails. The gap remains unbridgeable, and for a pretty obvious reason. A reason that implies there will be areas forever closed to science, hence open to whatever other systems of belief-- religious, humanistic, philosophical--people may choose to aid them in making decisions that can never, even in principle, be based on scientific proof (see Galuska, this volume). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved) (from the chapter)