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To: betty boop
The minute you say "I could have hardly done otherwise!," you have sold your freedom in principle. A human being cannot continue to be human if he does that.

You're missing the point: it's not a box I have set up for myself. It's a box I deliberately tried to break free of. Only in retrospect, and through serious introspection, did I discover that I had not.

That's not to say that, if I thought about everything I did yesterday, there wouldn't be many moments about which I'd say, "how the heck did I come up with that?" But it's hard to rule out whether that's just a question of not thinking deeply enough to see the (Skinner) box.

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." --Blaise Pascal

576 posted on 02/16/2005 4:14:14 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Physicist
...just a question of not thinking deeply enough to see the (Skinner) box.

By "Skinner" do you refer to B. F. Skinner, famous behaviorist psychologist? If you do, we can join together and praise the man as the foremost leading expert in rat behavior that has ever graced the planet with his presence.

But might we also acknowledge that he knew absolutely zero, diddle-dee-squat about man? And might we also entertain the hypothesis that he had a particular animus towards a man like you?

I have a story i could tell about how the "Skinnerian methodology" has been made manifest in actual human lives, and what it seemed to lead to in a certain case. Since the story is intimately personal, involving a close family member, i would prefer not to tell it. Unless you think the telling might be useful to you.

659 posted on 02/16/2005 5:49:47 PM PST by betty boop
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