Word: skinnerians
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...THIS IS NOT the case with Kinkade and her friends. Despite their avowed intention to fashion a utopia according to behaviorist principles, there are only a few examples in the book of attempts at conditioning behavior or even defining problems in Skinnerian terms. And these few are, invariably, embarrassing to the cause...
These examples, and numerous others, point to a conceptual fallacy, not just a problem of implementation. Skinnerian terms may have relevance in an animal laboratory, but when used to describe or comprehend human situations they are not only incorrect, but actually distort the meaning of those situations. For example, the community decided against children after problems involving disputes over ultimate responsibility for existing children, and lack of community interest in devoting its time to child care. From this experience Kinkade concludes that a "controlled environment" is necessary to "arrange" the proper type of child. But this solution, which deals with...
...that most men are the world's worst cooks. Teaching a husband to cook, laudable though that feminist goal may be, can create frightening strains in a marriage-not to mention the gastrointestinal system. However, Suzanne Prescott, 29, a Chicago rock musician, has suggested a painless and sinisterly Skinnerian strategy for transforming husbands into expert meatloaf makers...
Underlying the method is the Skinnerian conviction that behavior is determined not from within but from without. "Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person inside," Skinner explains. Mistakenly, we believe that man "initiates, originates and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous." But Skinner insists that autonomy is a myth, and that belief in an "inner man" is a superstition that originated, like belief in God, in man's inability to understand...
...there are no children at Twin Oaks. There is not enough "surplus labor" to care for infants, and there is no space for a separate Skinnerian nursery. Besides that, the reasoning goes, it is better not to bring children into the equation until all the adults have developed "appropriate" behavior; otherwise, bad habits would simply be reproduced in the young...