Noam Chomsky on Behaviorism

Source: • Professor Noam Chomsky...

[@michaeldebellis4202]

For anyone interested in more detail I highly recommend the book Memory and the Computational Brain by Gallistal and King. Chomsky mentions Gallistal briefly here. In that book Gallistal and King show overwhelming evidence that conditioning is not about learned associations (which is still the standard dogma) but rather information theory. The amount of learning is not really a factor of associations but of information theory. For example, in traditional behaviorism if the experimenter flashes a light before giving the animal a shock the animal learns to be afraid of the light. But if the experimenter sounds a tone at the same time according to classic conditioning the animal should become afraid of the tone as well. But they don't because the light already provides all the information about the pending shock, the tone adds no additional information and is ignored. Gallistal and King have much more detailed examples and results along these lines.

[@rillloudmother]

Thank you for the recommendation, Michael!

[@circe1657]

Thanks

[@michaeldebellis4202]

EvanEnterprises Good question. I don't remember for sure but I'm pretty confident the answer is that either tone or light alone would work and it was only when one was already present (i.e., the second stimulus added no new information) that the second stimulus (regardless of what it was) was ignored. I think I know what you are getting at: in other research certain stimuli simply can't be learned when associated with certain rewards or punishments. For example, rats can quickly learn to pair a specific odor with food that has a toxin (but otherwise can't be distinguished from normal food) but they can't learn to associate a tone with the toxin. It could be something similar is going on here but Gallistal and King also talked about the smell-toxin research so I'm pretty confident that if the experiment about pairing tones and lights hadn't controlled for that they would have mentioned it.

[@duxnihilo]

When Chomsky says pigs are "rooting at the coin", what does he mean? What is "root"? I'm finding it very hard to get an unambiguous definition for this word (English isn't my 1st language).

[@michaeldebellis4202]

I think it refers to the way pigs will use their snouts (noses) to dig up dirt and find things to eat that way. I think the name comes from digging for roots as in the roots of various vegetables that are edible. The point being that using their snouts is a very natural behavior for pigs but for other animals it isn't and that unlike what classical reinforcement theory predicts whether or not a behavior is something that comes natural to an organism is very important as to whether or not it can be reinforced and trained based on other kinds of stimuli and reinforcement.

[@robertwilsoniii2048]

Dogs can communicate with people easoly. So can cats. Fish display emotion and interact with keepers as well, and communicate with other fish. I don't doubt genetics and intelligence play a role, but I think mouth anatomy also plays a role. Animals have limmited degrees of freedom for sounds they can make and hear. Their vision differs as well. But there are still ways to communicate. Perhaps rather than the pig being too stupid to know to put a coin in a machine for food, pethaps the pig was screaming profanities for inhumane treatment during the experiement and was just really pissed off. Food for thought.

[@nicholastrice8750]

Interesting, as always. I don't think behaviorism has been refuted so much as it has been shown to be overly narrow in its purview. Like many dogmas- political, economic, philosophical or religious- it begins from solid foundations and employs innovative ideas and techniques, but then proceeds to become overly confident that it has created a hermetically sealed, perfect view of reality and human nature. Any information or evidence that does not conform to its preconceptions is marginalized and dismissed. Literally every ideology does this, particularly when it gains institutional status and the power and prestige that comes with that status. No ideology is complete, and dangerous things happen when adherents of an ideology believe that it is. Fanaticism in all its forms arises when groups of people think they have articulated a system of ideas that is the final word. We see this throughout history with religion and politics easily enough, but science is not immune either. Behaviorism's attempt to reduce all human behavior to a completely mechanical and materialistic level, denigrating and disregarding all emergent or metaphysical phenomena (consciousness being the major one) is seriously misguided. Reducing humans completely to biological machines, meat puppets whose internal experiences are deemed completely illusory and irrelevant to scientific consideration- is a powerful tool in the hands of political tyrants. Both the Nazis and Communists took a very instrumental, mechanical view of human nature, and behaviorism's rhetoric provides ample opportunities for similar movements to justify themselves in the future. If man is not greater than the sum of his parts, if the outer life is all that matters and the inner life can be safely ignored, then all we are is computers to be programmed, puppets to be played with, animals to be conditioned. We see these tendencies throughout the tech world and in particular the transhumanist movement, which is worrying, since it invalidates free will and the concept of personal sovereignty. Behaviorism is a useful and powerful tool, but in the wrong hands behaviorist orthodoxy plus ubiquitous high technology will inexorably lead us all by the nose into a frighteningly potent kind of dictatorship. Many of the pieces are already in place. Open-mindedness and tolerance of opposing views is indispensable for humans to retain their freedom. Beware any one person or group who presents their ideas as the last word on nature and what social policy must be. Science is awesome, but as a political tool it can be devastating, and behaviorist dogma is particularly susceptible to being used as a rationalization for technological domination of others.

[@testCCAtest]

@Devin Harp Society has never been built off of truth, we have no example of what this would look like, or even if it will work. I don't think we will ever see a perfectly rationnal human being or even machine. In the meantime, empathy and tolerance is the best way to respect our (and others) irrational selves while trying to figure out a way.

[@ItsMEE-bz9fp]

Wow, reading your comment in Oct '20 and I'm blown away by your brilliance. Have you written any books? Everything you wrote a year ago is bubbling to the surface and most are seemingly unaware. You basically outlined the global silent war we're in the midst of right now under the cover of this mostly over hyped, easily curable cold/virus. In basic terms it's about who controls AI, the Communists or Western free world. Exactly as Julian Assange has been warning the world about and few average citizens of the world can fully grasp, myself included to some degree. If you haven't written a book, you definitely should consider writing one :)

[@noahhanser-young5077]

Couldn't have said it much better myself man.

[@naveed210]

I hope you see this. Where does this explanation from Chomsky fit in with his politics? If I’m not mistaken, does he not speak implicitly of voters being conditioned in their behaviours/views of parties and politicians?

[@marcosnobuhara1126]

I am a behaviorist and an anarchist, so it is a mistake to infer from the behaviorism's ontology its contribution to politics. And bakunin was materialistic...

[@GummBo3]

I wish Chomsky elaborated, when he said "behaviorism has been overwhelmingly refuted" In what regard? In the regard that pigs start rooting if you make them put coins in a slot for long enough? I don't think "instinctual drift" -> refutes behaviorism. Is he referring to his debate's with Skinner? In which he mischaracterizes Skinner as a methodological behaviorist (instead of a radical behaviorist) by way of strawmaning his position to mean that language is only acquired through reinforcement with no help from the brain. When Skinner never said that? I wish I didn't have to guess what he means when he says behaviorism has been overwhelmingly refuted. Where? How? when?

[@chochoproductions5720]

Chomsky's sophistry at work

[@dieterbohm9700]

What do you expect? Chomsky is a Marxist, according to Marxism men (Homo Sapiens/Mankind) don't have an intrinsic nature and they are just ideas.

[@jwkelley]

Honestly think his review (was never a debate) holds up quite well. Skinner is pretty silly in how he just overextends his experiment metaphorically to anything someone can imagine. Its that weird way he does that which lets him get away with "never said that" excuse given how vapidly interpretable his statements are.

[@stefanogissi7340]

In 2019 King’s College London published a statement noting that 26 papers published by famous British behaviorist psychologist Hans Eysenck and sociologist Ronald Grossarth-Maticek in 11 journals have questionable content. According to King’s College London, Eysenck's work is “incompatible with modern clinical science” (King’s College London, 2019). In 2020 journals such as the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and others issued 64 statements of concern, and 14 retractions on articles by Eysenck and Grossarth-Maticek published by them (Marks & Buchanan, 2020; O’Grady, 2020). The disputed research by Eysenck and Grossarth-Maticek say they have found that cancer and coronary heart disease are caused by psychosocial factors such as personality and stress. Such factors would be 6 times more predictive than other well established ones such as smoking. Smoking would be a relatively irrelevant factor (Grossarth-Maticek & Eysenck, 1989; Eysenck, 1991, 1994). Furthermore, Eysenck and Grossarth-Maticek published controlled studies comparing people treated by Grossarth-Maticek using “creative novation behavior therapy” (Eysenck & Grossarth-Maticek, 1991) with untreated people. In some cases, only one face-to-face therapy session was carried out, and the rest was bibliotherapy, giving the client brochures to read at home (Eysenck & Grossarth-Maticek, 1991). According to their publications, this psychological treatment reduced mortality from cancer, coronary heart disease and other medical diseases by 50% in the years after treatment. David Marks argues about Eysenck's claims: “There are multiple aspects of these claims that are impossible to believe. For example, the claim that bibliotherapy consisting of homespun woo can reduce human disease-related mortality by 50 per cent is totally impossible to believe. The data are so far off the end of a normal distribution of effect sizes, they certainly could never have happened without error. H.J.E. and R.G.-M rightfully could be canonised as ‘Saint Hans’ and ‘Saint Ronald’ for working such miracles if only their claims could ever be proven, which will never happen. To his eternal shame, the attempts by Hans Eysenck to discredit the wellestablished causal links between tobacco smoking and cancer while in receipt of large sums from the tobacco industry is one of the most shameful deceits committed by any scientist in the 20th century. ” (Marks, 2019, p. 3) As early as 1993, Van Der Ploeg and Vetter (1993) analyzed the Grossarth-Maticek and Eysenck patient interview databases. They found that in 110 subjects, the pattern of responses to the first 58 questions was twice. Exactly the same responses were found in interviews with subjects with different names and addresses. In contrast, the mortality information for these subjects was different (Pelosi, 2019). Eysenck, H. J. (1994). Cancer, personality and stress: Prediction and prevention. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 16, 167-215. Eysenck, H. J. (1991). Smoking, personality, and stress. Psychosocial factors in the prevention of cancer and coronary heart disease. Springer. Eysenck, H. J. & Grossarth-Maticek, R. (1991). Creative novation behaviour therapy as a prophylactic treatment for cancer and coronary heart disease: II. Effects of treatment. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 1, 17-31. doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(09)80003-X Grossarth-Maticek, R. & Eysenck, H. J. (1989). Is media information that smoking causes illness a self-fulfilling prophecy? Psychological Reports, 65, 1, 177-178. King’s College London (May of 2019). King’s College London enquiry into publications authored by Professor Hans Eysenck with Professor Ronald Grossarth-Maticek. retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/HE-Enquiry.pdf Marks, D. F. (2019). The Hans Eysenck affair: Time to correct the scientific record. Journal of Health Psychology, 1-12. DOI: 10.1177/1359105318820931 Marks, D. F. & Buchanan, R. D. (2020). King’s College London’s enquiry into Hans J. Eysenck’s ‘unsafe’ publications must be properly completed. Journal of Health Psychology, 25, 1, 3-6. DOI: 10.1177/1359105319887791 O’Grady, C. (July 15 of 2020). Misconduct allegations push psychology hero off his pedestal. Science Mag. www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/misconduct-allegations-push-psychology-hero-his-pedestal Pelosi, A. J. (2019). Personality and fatal deseases: Revisiting a scientific scandal. Journal of Health Psychology, 24, 4, 421-439. DOI: 10.1177/1359105318822045 Van Der Ploeg, H. M. y Vetter, H. (1993). Two for the price of one: The empirical basis of the Grossarth-Maticek interviews. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 65-69.

[@stefanogissi7340]

In "Beyond liberty and dignity" Skinner says that there is no freedom, that "freedom" is a pre-scientific idea and that people must be conditioned. Eysenck did that with gays, and said they went straight. Now it is known that Eysenck lied, they did not go straight. In fact, they were left with post-traumatic stress disorder. Peter Tatchell, a gay activist, protested Eysenck's "aversion therapy" as early as the 1970s

[@lunarcowboy]

While it's awful that gays where conditioned like that, I wonder if that if a reflection on behaviourism as a concept, or how it's ideas can be misused. I personally don't see why gayness could not be interpreted through a broader behaviourist lens, where there may be genetic influences and personal experiences which create and validate that behaviour

[@HelmetBlissta]

This is a great Chomsky video, for once it's relatively easy to hear him, so many of his videos the volume is so low.

[@627R]

HelmetBlissta honestly

[@BLAB-it5un]

Great to see such a blunt repudiation paired with a reminder of how often this sort of error happens. Once something has been determined to be fact it is very hard to unlearn when it later comes to light that no fact ever actually existed. A similar example is the belief that hormones cause teenage behavior despite there being no science in support of this claim (nor any that can refute it either by the way). And that addictions are genetic. Here too there is no science at all to support this but it would seem most people consider this a demonstrated and unchallengeable fact. Interestingly enough, it would appear that behavior oriented mental health professionals are most susceptible to these data errors. Would be an interesting line of inquiry to see to what degree the helping professions are basing their help on invalid claims. My hypothesis is that it would be a very high percentage.

[@jamesforgington3315]

I'm not a student, scholar, or anything of the sort, so these questions are from a place of curiosity, combined with the knowledge of verifiable publications/discussions from credible people (that likely are no longer living among us) and my belief that we are literally just another generation of apes on this rock. What happens if you gather a group of pigs who have accepted a conditioned behavior and introduce fresh pigs of different genetics? What happens if you change the number of pigs who do/don't do the behavior/have different genetics? If you simply televised the behavior to the unconditioned pig, would they learn it? Would they learn faster in a group of unconditioned pigs? Or maybe unconditioned pigs with ONE conditioned pig...? If the 'Alpha' or 'Leader' of the Pack' is removed to be conditioned to a behavior, then reinserted, would he ditch it for his old ways? Or would he retain the the behavior? Would others learn from the leader? Or would they maybe not even notice? Perhaps, it is depending on social structure of the creature So then, if we took a group of creatures with a social structure like humans, perhaps a primate of some sort, could we replicate similar behaviors seen in modern society through thorough experimentation? Once again, I'm not a student, scholar, or anything of the sort, so take my curious words lightly, however it would be very much appreciated if one we're to share thoughts and opinions on the matter, I'm overwhelmingly curious with what patterns in life caused people to only view their lives from eyes of tradition, rather than ones that can see the world every time it changes a lil bit more.

[@kristerrs]

Chomsky also always says you have to "be empirical". There are very few sciences that are more empirical than radical behaviorism. The object is to 1) Observe behavior, 2) Control behavior and 3) describe behavior. And in the effort to describe behavior, the least amount of functions are used. Only functions that are very usable in explaining behavior, and probably necessary, are used. For example operants as reinforcement, punishment, motivational operation are the most important ones. Behaviorisms progresses has been used in teaching kids with autism (that has language problems) language, it has been used to stop people from doing self harm, and more notable; it has been used in teaching animals complex behaviors. The more you know about behaviorism, the more you understand both human and other animal behaviors. Lastly, I should say that behaviorism of course has its limitations. It explains BEHAVIOR, and it is not a mentalistic psychology. If you want to understand gravity, you study physics. If you want to understand behavior, you study behavior analysis

[@senecanzallanute4066]

I have to disagree, Renatus, animals are not automata as your namesake maintained. To you, and your namesake, I would like to quote Linnaeus (Systema naturae): Cartesius certe non vidit simias...

[@dolam]

Yep, well said.

[@barnardow]

@@senecanzallanute4066 Hey, Im really interested in this quote about descartes, could you tell me about its context?

[@senecanzallanute4066]

@@barnardow I did not see the original context, it's quoted in Giorgio Agamben's book "The open" as written by Carolus Linnaeus (Karl Linné, the Swedish naturalist who created the binomial genus/species nomenclature) in a section on non-human primates. Agamben's book is available in English, I only have the French edition.

[@senecanzallanute4066]

@@barnardow I see that I did not translate it. In case it should be a problem, in English it reads: Descartes surely never saw a monkey.

[@RickDirt11]

I will always love Noam🙏🏽

[@psicologiajoseh]

As a socialist and psychologist, this channel is an absolute gem. Thanks a lot for creating this archives!

[@tylerdeskins7715]

I use the Verbal Behavior Approach to teach children with autism to acquire language, have read extensively about the empirical background of behavior analysis and its intersection with neuroscience (see Behavior Analysis a Biobehavioral Approach by Pierce and Cheney) while earning degrees in psych and BA, and have done experiments with both rats and dogs. I can confidently say that current research does not refute behavior analysis (the science arm of behaviorism -- a philosophy) but instead refines it. The issues Chompsky brought up here have been addressed but he chooses to ignore behavioral explanations for them, so I won't (because the literature is out there and it is negligent to allow this type of misinformation to exist unopposed). The Breland and Breland (1961 as cited in Pierce and Cheney, 2013) study is the one I believe he is referring to first. While he mentions pigs, I believe he was referring to the raccoons as they provide the most famous example of instinctive drift. The raccoons were reinforced with food for putting coins in a slot but eventually began to rub them together for longer and longer durations. This occurred because the coins had become associated with food and rubbing food is a species-specific behavior for raccoons. Continued pairings of food and coins had led the coin to elicit the same response the food normally would. This type of behavior is called respondent and is exemplified by Pavlov's dogs, and in the previously explained situation, it interacted and competed with the operant behavior (behaving to access rewards for example). For more information on operant and respondent interactions, see Pierce and Cheney (2016, p. 326-376). In terms of "information transmission", this has been refuted so thoroughly as a behavior analytic explanation. Information is not required to explain why animals behave only when they can contact the salient features of their environment. Roughly speaking, this is because animals must learn to discriminate when they will be reinforced for a response and when they won't be (and make many more discriminations beyond that). Erroneous learning (the superstitious pigeon, for example) can occur under such conditions though. I could not find a 'Bill Bruers' work, but after looking at the information transmission research that has been done in behavior analysis, I feel that Chompksy is likely mischaracterizing it. This is because most of the research I can find about information has to do with animal and human preferences for no news, good news, and bad news. Most research indicates that good news is preferred, and other findings are less consistent, but nowhere does it indicate the information is required to explain the conditioning process. Other uses of information (that I have heard) involve things like social learning in the explanation of imitation VS generalized imitation, but I have never heard anyone, in my time in psychology or BA, discredit conditioning as a process. In fact, researchers believe that associative learning (conditioning) evolved in many species at some time during the Cambrian period (Ginsburg & Jablonka, 2010). However, relational frames (specific ever-expanding verbal relationships which alter the function of how we respond to stimuli) could be seen to operate like information, but because "information" is a hypothetical construct - something unobservable that was created to explain a phenomenon - it does not have (scientific) explanatory utility. In addition, this creation is unnecessary because only the relations between stimuli, which are observable via verbal behavior, are necessary to explain human language and thought from an empirical standpoint. Hopefully, it should be clear that the behaviorism Chompsky criticizes is only a strawman to make behaviorists seem weak and a red herring to draw attention away from the empirical ocean that is behavioral analysis (and his critique of VB -- he misunderstood most of it). I am not claiming that the BA of Skinner was perfect or that every prediction has been correct, but Chompskys continued slander of the field that contributes greatly to behavioral understanding and the amelioration of human suffering within our most disadvantaged populations (the developmentally delayed for example) is simply bullshit. Behavior Analysis keeps coming back because its theories lead to practices that work consistently, as do the practices of any other hard science. However, unlike most other hard sciences, behavior analysis talks about things that people are attached to (their own behavior), and those among us so attached to this behavior, like Chompsky himself, tend to take offense. A couple videos on ACT, RFT,ect. (please watch, they've helped me greatly): kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJWcomSKmrWHf9k kzbin.info/www/bejne/pWickJqjhJqjpsk Link to the article I cited: www.researchgate.net/publication/44682927_The_evolution_of_associative_learning_A_factor_in_the_Cambrian_explosion Link to buy the book I cited: www.amazon.com/Behavior-Analysis-Learning-David-Pierce/dp/1848726155 Edits: 1. Grammar 2. added RFT and sources

[@dolam]

Thank you for your comment. I am currently in an ABA graduate program and you gave a very thorough explanation.

[@tylerdeskins7715]

@@dolam thanks, man. I just graduated and am glad my ramblings hold up when observed by someone in the field haha.

[@Oliver_BN]

Thanks for a enlightening rebuttal of this video! While I like Chomsky, one man can't be an expert on every field and be right about everything.

[@detrockcity3]

I think you're in a cult.

[@detrockcity3]

He certainly isn't right about everything, but definitely this.

[@DalcoXY]

2:20 Chomsky: ".Behaviorists...They're the ones who TRAINED ALL THE FAMOUS ANIMALS with principles that CLEARLY DON'T WORK (for humans 5:18)...just an odd way of providing the animal with information (6:00) " Great.

[@TimeBinder13]

NOAM IS MY HERO ON THE POLITICAL FRONT ,BUT BEHAVIORISM NEVER COLLAPSED NOAM ITS JUST CALLED APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS . YOU SHOULD KNOW YOUR THE KING OF LINGUISTICS . SKINNER NEVER SAID LANGUAGE WAS 100% LEARNED. THERES NO DEBATE ANYMORE NOAM .

[@iank1234]

I’m reading one of Skinner’s books currently, titled “Beyond Freedom & Dignity”. If you want a disturbing read I would highly recommend it. It’s quite jaw dropping and mildly horrific in my opinion.

[@michaeldebellis4202]

Speaking of horrific, someone compiled a bunch of clips of Skinner and Chomsky talking about each other's theories. It was really eye opening. I always knew I disagreed with Skinner but I never realized how arrogant he was. The clips of Chomsky are reasoned and rational. He calmly and carefully explains why he thinks there are fundamental problems with Skinner's view. The clips of Skinner seem more like something you would expect from a person in the Trump administration rather than a scientist. When Chomsky is mentioned he makes jokes, mocks him, and says things like "I would have written a reply to Chomsky's review of my book (the one I liked to in a previous comment) but that would have required me to read it" as if that was some kind of adequate response.

[@burhanettinkeskin4295]

@@michaeldebellis4202 I totally agree with you. One of the speakers was the voice of reason the other one was the voice of arrogance.

[@AL_THOMAS_777]

Hey Ian, thats cool. I just wanted to buy it, now i´m even MORE curious !!!

[@BruceThomson]

@@AL_THOMAS_777 It's an excellent book. I hope you ended up reading it. - In the above video, Chomsky seems blind to 'yet-unknown' factors of genetic and circumstantial conditions that affect behavior. - The book 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity' had implications so drastic to a raised-Christian me that I literally began to faint pondering them. I thought away from the topic, and recovered. Then I revisited the topic and again began to faint. So I quit for a while. - After a few subsequent nights of sleep, I was delighted I figured out the loss of freedom and dignity very well, greatly changing my life from then on. - Basically the book says all our behavior is entirely a combination of genetics (known and unknown) and prevailing circumstances external and internal (known and unknown). We lose 'freedom of choice' and the 'dignity' we assign ourselves for absolute, magical choice, but in return we gain huge new ability to focus on changing our/others' behavior by changing the circumstances instead of trying to use moral exhortations that are less effective. =) - In other words, we dismiss 'freely-choosing heroism or freely-choosing wickedness' in exchange for 'awake awareness and credible real worth'. =)

[@dieterbohm9700]

​@@michaeldebellis4202Well, Skinner may have been a dick, but he was a scientist. Chomsky is not a scientist, but a philosopher, a Marxist philosopher which is way worse.

[@قتقبتقتقيت]

we have two meaning to this behaviour with mind explain with the quality and étiquel behaviour .

[@bestlook431]

Heiy no one could answer my question...what relates Behaviorism to second lgge learning..I know about audio lingual method ..repetition...sentence patterns ..correcting wrong answers ...praising the right ones ..it centred teacher approach...but I can't link it to L2 ...am.confused

[@erinaltstadt4234]

thank you

[@ben6fingers]

I think chomski is good at media analysis but outside of that I've found him extremely dissmissive of idea's, by often sayings things like "everybody knows it's wrong", or "it doesn't matter" to thing's that I think matter and don't know are wrong. I have been conditioned to think that he is the "world's leading intellectual" and doesn't need to explain, he just wanders of into a story about animal cruelty on flipper, so that we associate skinner with bad ethical standards. Just saying I find more evidence of skinner being on to something it seems obvious and I find exsaples everywhere

[@michaelwright8896]

No he sucks at media analysis too.

[@jeff__w]

My go-to example of just how dismissive Chomsky was of Skinner in particular is this very brief example from a 1971 _NYRB_ review of Skinner’s _Beyond Freedom and Dignity,_ (which one can find in full on Chomsky’s site). Chomsky wrote: “Consider Skinner’s claim that ‘we sample and change verbal behavior, not opinions’ (so a behavioral analysis reveals). Taken literally, this means that if, under a credible threat of torture, I force someone to say, repeatedly, that the Earth stands still, then I have changed his opinion.* Comment is unnecessary…” No. Skinner says *explicitly* you’re _not_ changing opinions. So, according to Skinner (and “taken literally”), if someone says repeatedly, under credible threat of torture, that the Earth stands still, you _haven’t_ “changed his opinion,” you’ve changed his verbal behavior (and you _have_ - that’s exactly what Chomsky’s example, meant to discredit Skinner’s statement, shows). Chomsky can’t even make a legitimate, coherent argument in the space of two sentences. (And his smug, dismissive “Comment is unnecessary…” just adds to the absurd cluelessness. It is classic Chomsky and not in a good way.) *We’ll leave aside the question of whether purely factual statements as to the Earth “standing still” or not even _are_ “opinions.”

[@kamranjanjua7692]

Can someone please link the paper he talks about that contains pigs experiment? Thanks.

[@stuckinamomentt]

We forget cus we don’t have your memory 🤷‍♂️

[@circe1657]

"Behaviorism can' die" ..... nice, professor Chomsky :)

[@chiraggupta7580]

Is that sarcasm?

[@theheathbar123]

Not that it matters to the content of what he's saying, but he actually said "behaviorism can't die"

[@senecanzallanute4066]

One the most lovely repudiations of behaviorism comes from an experiment carried out in the cephalopod, Octopus vulgaris (yes, just an octopus). Investigators at the Zoological Station of Naples found that when an octopus watches another octopus perform a complex series of movements to access a sardine, it learns the behavior 10 time faster than when the learning occurs by classical conditioning. Look it up, Fiorito et al, Science in 1995 or 96.

[@stefanogissi7340]

@jcorb Yes it does. It was Bandura who studied imitation, and he was a cognitive-behavioral, not a behaviorist. Skinner, Watson, etc. never even raised the question of imitation.

[@tannerhagen774]

Skinner brought up imitation on page 46 in his book “About Behavioralism”.

[@senecanzallanute4066]

@@tannerhagen774 Thank you, I was not aware of this passage. May I ask: does he highlight that imitation of a conspecific is a much more efficient learning strategy than classical conditioning? That was the message of the 1995 Science paper.

[@tannerhagen774]

@@senecanzallanute4066 Skinner did not get into the scientific elements in this book rather the philosophical take on behaviorism. One study you may find interesting is a study on imitation in monkeys where two types of food were dyed different colors and one of them was made disgusting which after some time scientist changed the food so it tasted the same. Monkeys would still only eat the food that others were eating thus imitation limited their food source. You'll have to find the source for that, apologies. Skinner mentioned the ambiguity of instinct as imitation or instinct of the herd which could refer to contingencies of survival or contingencies of reinforcement. A passage that may help elucidate on pages 165-166 "species acquires behavior (instincts) under contingencies of survival while the individual acquires behaviors (habits) under contingencies of reinforcement." Hope that helps! I myself am not a fan of logical positivism which behaviorism is tied to thus my critique of behaviorism is in the philosophical approach not necessarily the science itself which is undeniably useful in providing an element in the holistic view of human behavior. Not that you asked ; )

[@quakers200]

I am in the Skinner camp but my respect for Chomsky is enough for me to take a look at the evidence.

[@willhartington8276]

Does anyone know the provenance of this clip and have the video it was cut from?

[@normankeena]

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbjVM... Carleton University 9. may 2011 Institute of Cognitive Science and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The Andrew Brook Distinguished Lecture Series presents: Language and the Cognitive Science

[@gopeace4797]

Chomsky is so incredibly misinformed. Positive reinforcement, according to Philip Zimbardo, is one of the most important idea from the the 20th century. Behavioral methods permeate forms of clinical psychology and the current treatment of choice in psychotherapy, acceptance and commitment therapy has behavioral roots.

[@laskillen]

Hmmmm, what you have said here isn't quite right. First of all, behavioral methods aren't necessarily behaviorist and positive reinforcement is a description of a specific kind of cause and effect relationship and nothing more. It's not a validation of anything. With the elegance of the scientific method, we can mold existing ideas and reshape them to accommodate newer and more accurate theories and models (aka don't throw the baby out with the bathwater). Darwin had to change and continually modify his theory of evolution to fit his observations and data. Along the way, he may have used some of the same techniques as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but that in no way justifies Lamarkism as a valid scientific construct (This is meant to illustrate a point and is not a statement of historical fact). Similarly, cognitive-behavioral theorists incorporating positive reinforcement into their body of work do not validate behaviorism as a valid scientific construct and neither does the mention of Philip Zimbardo (That was a nice example of an appeal to authority logical fallacy by the way). Scientific principles stand on their own merit and are confirmed by falsifiability, accuracy, and validity. Behaviorism, as an all-explaining scientific theory, failed in these areas and not in some abstract way. The behaviorists unabashedly claimed that all learning and behavior could be deconstructed to a stimulus and response relationship and that free will was an illusion (If you require proof of this, read BF Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity). This is what Chomsky is addressing and not valid and useful scraps. He wasn't misinformed; behaviorism was mostly bogus.

[@TheAPOLLO801]

What Chomsky said was not incorrect.

[@bronyatheistfedora]

That could be but the idea is that behaviorism has died as the means of understanding and accounting for the mind

[@appolo08]

@@laskillen Exactly! Chomsky is correct cuz the simple Stimulus-Response model of behaviorism has been extended into a Stimulus-Organism-Response model, which states the organism may choose to respond to the same Stimulus in different ways depending on its state of mind.

[@eric45005]

​@antiironyNo, we are monkeys

[@z0uLess]

And what is Chomskys position, that we have inner structures that flower during the course of our lives?

[@tammyallen1]

I love him

[@REALASUNDER]

Tammy Allen learn from his ideas and philosophy and do not dogmatise the person because thats where ideology starts and begins

[@justinjameson8767]

+gregory graber True

[@chrisschouest8997]

ABA

[@alexandrefreitas2569]

This is what happens when you have superficial knowledge about a subject. You can refute everything you don't understand.

[@BuGGyBoBerl]

what is that supposed to mean?

[@GummBo3]

@@BuGGyBoBerl he disagrees with Chomsky. That's what it means.

[@dieterbohm9700]

Skinner was a scientist, Chomsky was a Marxist philosopher, the worst kind of philosopher you could get.

[@sarah041795]

conditioning only works if the subject is aware of it taking place? I thought magic tricks only work if your unaware of how it's done? O.o

[@paintedhorse6880]

So are you saying I didn't actually train my dog to sit, shake, bark, lay down, roll over, stand and play dead on command by reinforcing her behavior with belly rubs and treats? She did it for 15 years for god sakes.

[@mathias4851]

This apply to humans u moron jesus

[@marbin1069]

He is absolutely wrong about both behaviorism and artificial intelligence, among many other topics.

[@michaelwright8896]

Does anyone know what Skinner said when behaviorism was refuted?

[@docholiday8315]

I'm not sure, he probably stuck to his guns, even though behaviourism was refuted beyond a certain level it worked to a lesser degree, so it wasn't fully refuted.

[@docholiday8315]

@Joe B We're all constantly being manipulated by our environments regardless of somebody trying to manipulate us, that's the nature of determinism. Can you please explain how you think he rejected reality?

[@docholiday8315]

@Joe B The reason Skinner didn't always get the results he wanted was because there are too many deterministic variables to understand within any animal organisms. We're just too complex to understand. He felt strongly that he was right (as do i) , but he couldn't prove it, and we still cannot prove conclusively for or against determinism today, even though most people would agree that there is nothing that happens without cause, do you not agree? We're ultimately strangers to ourselves and your idea of free will is illusory.

[@docholiday8315]

@Joe B Of course humans are more complex than animals. If you trace back any thought that arises in your mind you will see that it just happens, the brain is not a producer it is a converter of sensory information, so the info is fed into the system via the senses and the brain/body make decisions based on that information. This is why Skinner said "we don't run away because we're scared, we're scared because we run away". The behaviour happens naturally by itself. If we observe our automatic behaviours and drives then we will arrive at a position of knowing ourselves as well as we can do. If this is too much of a negative thought for you to handle then your system will automatically throw it out because it creates cognitive dissonance with your current ideas, that's determinism at play. I will do the same. If you look at people with specific personality disorders, mental health problems or brain injuries you will observe that they follow very similar patterns of behaviours that people with the same issues do. Nothing is anybodys fault. Hitler could only have ever been Hitler, unless somebody/something intervened on his pathway through life and changed the recipe for becoming a Hitler. For example Hitler read Schopenhauer and then Nietszche early in his life, if that doesn't make you want to kill everybody and then gain power then I don't know what does ha.

[@docholiday8315]

@Joe B We're not going to come to any common ground here are we. We could go back and forth all day because our experiences are so different. Everything is a mode of thought, your opinions are too, and it has nothing to do with the words, it has more to do with many thousand hours of meditation and contemplation which will lead you to the truth. You should try it..

[@codeagent47]

I have to respectfully DISAGREE with Chomsky, which he underestimated behavior analysis. Behavior analysis is a natural science like physics, chemistry, and biology. Behaviors are observable, measurable, predictable, and controllable. Most importantly it is based on evidence-based intervention. Mental events, such as, consciousness, subconsciousness, mind, and awareness are MADE UP CONSTRUCTS, which have failed to determine the functions and the causes of the behavior. Language acquisition may require a prerequisite, which the healthy and functional brain. However, with a healthy brain, if the environmental variables aren't variable to reinforce the appropriate language, how can language even develop? To develop language, there must be an effective verbal community that encourages the language acquisition to maintain within individuals repertoire. People don't randomly develop language. There is no random or mental process that develop out of blue without environmental variables. Behavior Analysis has been working with animals, individuals with disabilities, school classroom settings, and organizational management of businesses, it has achieved great result than what Chomsky can recall. For instinctual drift, which an animal was taught to engage a certain behavior. However, the argument that the behavior took its natural root, which maybe the case. In addition, there is an explanation that can effectively explain that the cause of that behavior that took its natural root. Natural root itself cannot be operationally defined or pinpointed, which it is a label that have functional relationships with the behavior that was evoked. Natural root is not a good scientific explanation for the behavior. The pig was reinforced with edibles, which are unlearned (primary) reinforcers to reinforce a set of behaviors of picking up coins and drop it in a place. Moreover, the pairing of edibles (unlearned reinforcers) and coins, which resulted that the coins had become the learned (secondary) reinforcers. A property becomes a learned reinforcer, which was the coin that ended up reinforced the pick up the coin. Tossing around the coin may be due to emotional (maybe feeling good) response that just received the coin itself, which at this point is a learned reinforcer. In another explanation of pig tossing the coin was a result of contacting the natural contingency or the natural reinforcement, which it was he activity itself. Finally, the pig was tossing around the coin that was not intentionally reinforced was due the the reinforcer of edibles is no longer a reinforcer that reinforces the behavior of placing the coin down. Edible reinforcer, itself, might have gone through a stage of satiation, which a substantial amount of a reinforcer temporarily decreases relevant learning and performance.

[@batuhankaratas1440]

I have a simple question to your second paragraph. How did language develop in that case ? if you think there is a must need for effective verbal community that encourages the language acquisition ? From my simple understanding of genetics there has to be one individual person that had some sort of mutation or inversion in chromosome or some sort of in order to bring out this LAD. That person probably never needed to speak even though he had the LAD. So how could he ever realised he needed it and how did it ever get to a complex level where we today study Syntax, Morphology etc.?

[@codeagent47]

Batuhan Karataş The behavior analysis is actually an extension of scientific explanation of natural selection, which certain behaviors are reinforced by the survival needs (for example, verbal communication is one of behavior repertoire)for generations that will likely be passed down as phylogenetic behaviors to our children - also it is a species specific behavior. A person doesn't just randomly realize he need to have language, such as syntax or morphology. These language components have functions, which when a verbal communication is demonstrated, a certain consequence may be obtained. The exposure of that consequences will likely to increase that person's verbal repertoire (develop and maintain that verbal repertoire) for a future communication.

[@hippynoize]

I think this is the consistent issue though: Behaviorism works with children, animals, and the mentally disabled. There seems to be a massive limiting factor applying it on a macro scale, or even to healthy adults. We cannot seem to predict the behaviors of healthy, developed adults consistently. Game theory, marketing, behaviorism, sociology, they all have the same issue. there seems to be an issue with controlling and adapting peoples behaviors. I think it works in small scales, but you cannot really control the behavior of a general society, or use behaviorism to constantly predict or control everyone's behavior.

[@codeagent47]

Ahron Balatti Actually there are journal of organizational behavior management is addressing work environment related behavioral issues, which is performance management. Performance management can be implemented with behavioral analytic principles and it have worked. Of course, it is hard to pinpoint the crucial variables that control the behavior at a vast changing environment. However, that does not mean principles of behavior don't work. Principles behavior are like natural laws, and that governs and predicts our behaviors.

[@hippynoize]

I believe it can work in very controlled atmospheres, but I believe that these atmospheres show the frailty of behaviorism. I don't believe that everyday life is a controlled atmosphere to the extent that a office can be, and I don't believe that behaviorism can be used to document things such as rationality and language by a consistent means

[@tomjohn8733]

I agree...

[@yuriarin3237]

why computational cognitive science approaches are behaviorist according to Chomsky?

[@emerkaes5083]

Behaviorism is a kind of model. And every model is inaccurate at some point. What is important about models is their utility. If the model represents something with an error that is small enough so we can we ignore it, then we can use it in such scenario with quite good results. What Noam pointed out is indeed a flaw, but it doesn't mean that the whole theory is useless. Newton's theory of dynamic is less accurate than special relativity theory, but is used much more often than Einstein's theory, because it's accurate enough.

[@yuriarin3237]

@@emerkaes5083 I think that's besides the point. I want to know why Chomsky links CNS to behaviourist models. Could it be the reliance on statistical learning?

[@danpenia219]

@@yuriarin3237 I have no idea but It might be because of algorithms

[@LeandroAlmeida108]

they are congnitive, not behaivorist :)

[@theheathbar123]

I'm far from a professional in this field, but from what I understand, the approach with machine learning (neural networks, deep learning, etc.) is you give the system some input, get some output, and then give it a score on whether the output was correct or how close it was to the target or whatever the particular aim is. You keep repeating this process, tweeking the input as you see fit, while the system tries to maximize its score. This continues until you get the results you want. This method of changing inputs to cause different outputs, without much regard to what’s happening inside the system, is similar to behaviorist methods, which are about changing the conditions to cause different behaviors, without much regard to what's happening inside the brain, to get a desired result.

[@alexnettles5630]

We are all conditioned. We all know what to do and how to act, generally, in any change of situations/conditions. The way we act (behavior) differs in the different environments depending on what we have been exposed to. This is conditioning. I don't understand how that can be refuted. I know that there are some genetic factors that guide how we behave but not as much influence as exposure to conditioning does, imo.

[@shrill_2165]

Having been influenced by the environment, and having been conditioned by the environment in the sense that one can predict all outcomes if they know all inputs, are two different things. He’s talking about conditioning in a very specific way and I think you’re using the word as a synonym for “influence”

[@blues8785]

PARA DISFRUTAR DE UNA MENTE TAN BRILLANTE , NESECITAMOS SUBTITULOS EN CASTELLANO , POR FAVOR . MUCHAS GRACIAS..........

[@pippoespera8902]

Lo podes traducir vos mismo, clic en la ruedita de configuracion, despues traducir automaticamente y elegis español. Listo.

[@raoulduke6371]

Those of us who teach children and adults how to speak understand how ridiculous this is.

[@eric45005]

What is ridiculoud?

[@narancauk]

Hahahahahaah Hello Capitalist's- Marxist .Dr Pavlov was a fool?????

[@rhymes-stories]

If someone asks you guys did chomsky take from behavioursm how are you gonna answer ?

[@mounahamrita498]

Respect 💐

[@weiskl887]

Behaviorism will not die has more to do with Government or Those in Power needs to find way to manipulate Public opinion. For example Political science, polling and so on is to find out what the population is thinking and is it what the People in Power wanted them to have those opinions. From there they would use Media as form to affect and shape Public opinion. Cambridge analytica is a Real world example. Political elites with Corporate interest have always been using this since Imperial and colonial times. How to subjugate the Enslaved population to support their Colonial masters. AKA how to change their Behavior. Of course they know that Humans possesses Critical thinking skills but the Advertising or public relations or in their old original name is PROPAGANDA is meant to control, shape and affect Public opinion. Hence Behaviorism is the best way to find ways to manipulate the Public. They needed the Public to accept that we are all products of Training and reinforcement incapable of thinking for ourselves. Once you accept that concept then education system does the job of what the Owners of the Country wanted. It has a lot to do with Cognitive science. Advertising or Propaganda is designed to bring out the emotion they wanted out of People. For example they need people to desire Nike shoes. Just the brand alone would train people watching the advertisement that somehow if you own them it gives you prestige. Its used in Movies in old Nazi Germany to glorify and justify Empire and the War effort so on and so forth. Even the oldest trick in the book of Repetitive lies becomes Truth is still as valid today as it was during Nazi Germany for example the Fake WMD story about sources confirming or evidence presented. As images and words used sounds convincing and look convincing but in fact all Staged. Which explains why Hollywood movies would be able to extract the kind of emotions the Director wanted from the Audience. When you receive information via Media people used to Trust the News. Hence reinforcement. Orwellian is the goal. Turning lies into Truth, Turning fantasies burning that image of it into your brain when its not actually happening in Reality due to the information given to you or received by the Audience. Some methods are like Cognitive dissonance used specifically so that the Public confuses Talking skills and words used creates a mental impact but may not be what is actually happening. Oldest example is Freedom is slavery and War is peace. Today Invasions of countries is Bringing them Freedom and Democracy so the Audience don't understand that its actually an Invasion. The word INVASION has been literally censored out of existence for every Military action the US and West has been engaging in. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, to Iraq, Libya and Syria. Cognitive dissonance confuses the Public that Saddam is this Evil, Megalomaniac that oppresses his People to justify invasion of Iraq. To give them Freedom and Democracy. When in Proper context there are Plenty of brutal Dictators that the US and West supports in Middle East but just because they are the Installed Puppet govt or is very compliant the West and US suddenly does not need to bring Democracy and Freedom to their people through invasion.

[@britneel2008]

Walden 2?

[@dolam]

Beyond Dignity and Freedom : )

[@JKDLIFER]

So behaviorism has been refuted? lol By who exactly? Does Chomsky even realize that behavior analysis is a science and not a theory like some of the theories that he likes to talk about? It is an actual science and formulated by behavior analytic principles that govern our behavior whether we like it or not. That's how science works.

[@hoogmonster]

I find your distinction between science and theory utterly perplexing, and utterly ungrounded in the history of science. Science is the business of proposing theories to account for observed phenomena which are put to test using systematic methods of empirical inquiry. Hence Newtonian Classical Mechanics, a theory of observations of physical phenomena at the level of largely optical resolution, then General Relativity and Special relativity, then Quantum Mechanics, and now things like String Theory where the energies required to provide empirical support for the theory are beyond our present technological capacity to perform the actual observations - yet the mathematics of vibrating open and closed strings permits a potential unification of the key problems in the present Standard Model (hence theory) of Physics (namely the reconciliation of the Cosmic forces of Gravitation with the Quantum Forces). But I guess Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Susskind and Witten are all just quacks, you know, because they all have theories. OK. If science was just an exercise in pure unadulterated observation the Neanderthals would have sorted it all 350,000 years ago.

[@karmveer7543]

@@hoogmonster I agree with you But can you elaborate more about what science is?

[@TheAPOLLO801]

The whole field seems to have collapsed, but has been continued own by their successors in Silicon Valley.

[@micahreyes5987]

There’s several types of behaviorism. Psychological behaviorism is a method of studying humans by looking to their behavior instead of say psychoanalysis. Logical or analytic behaviorism is essentially a theory used by philosophers that there isn’t a deep distinction between the mind and body and our behaviors are an automatic process meaning we all have dispositions to behave it certain ways under various situations. They are very different and logical behaviorism is simply a theory for explaining how the “mind and body” interact that contrasts from dualism.

[@appolo08]

The simple Stimulus-Response model of behaviorism has been extended into a Stimulus-Organism-Response model, which states the organism may choose to respond to the same Stimulus in different ways depending on its state of mind.

[@briankelly4191]

Chomsky is categorically wrong here. For an intelligent man he sure doesn't know the first thing about behaviorism. Claiming that any behavior is 100 percent down to genetic endowment and the environment plays no role is just absolutely foolish. How is it that as an ABA practitioner I can have incredible success teaching individuals communication skills using skinners principles if it's total hogwash. Of course we also have huge developments in behavioral linguistics such as relational frame theory but he is too arrogant to bother looking into that. What a joke.

[@JKDLIFER]

I agree with you 100% and with all due respect, Chomsky is full of crap. He is spewing nonsense about an actual SCIENCE without presenting any actual evidence to back up his claims. Contrary to what he might think or believe behavior analysis is not an opinion or a theory. It is based on real scientific principles that were discovered and not made up. Contrary to what he says, behavior analysis is very much alive and well today and is being recognized by individuals, corporations, and governments all over the world because it is an actual evidence-based science. I can't believe it's 2018 and people like this are spewing this garbage to people. It just proves that we still have a long way to go as a science.

[@Master00788]

I doubt that this is what he's claiming. As far as I understand him (also from other videos) he's incredibly pedantic on these things. He only seems to take issue with people claiming that people are able to learn things from a sort of magical force that exists outside of them (don't ask me who he has met or read that claims this or an equivalent). He believes that the capacity for all human behaviour is ingrained into us. This capacity is so complex that it manifests in so many different and opposing ways based on environmental factors (which are also incredibly complex) that, except for the superficial, we can't even begin to claim to know how it all works and may never be able. His main problems seem to stem more from a semantics issue than anything else. For example he says that language is not acquired from the outside but that it is inherent. What he means by this is that the capacity for language and therefore the reason why we develop it is inherent in humans and not in animals for example, which is why animals cannot learn to speak. They lack this inherent capacity. I would say this is obvious and just semantics but he seems to be quite keen on it. In one interview he said that it is possible that this capacity can be lost if not used (he cites a case where a girl was not exposed to language until she was 12 and after this never learned how to speak no matter what was tried). This would be environmental factors leading to behaviour (or non-behaviour in this case), even though this is a superficial case, so I really doubt he is a strict biological determinist in the sense that you imply. That would be absurd.

[@hoogmonster]

@@Halonics Chomsky doesn't claim that behaviour is 100% genetic, and the clear instance of that is his own theory of psycholinguistics - he posits an innate and hence biological language acquisition device which informs (but is not synonymous with) the deep structure of language (hence context free), but also posits that any specific instance of an actual language is an example of SURFACE STRUCTURE, which is determined by the linguistic environment the speaker resides in. That's a theory that requires an integrated position on the nature/nurture debate, not a purely nativist position, nor a purely nurturist position. The thing with behaviourism is that it is a partial truth, which all too often manifested as a complete truth about human behaviour. As for justifications that behaviourism is a natural science like physics etc, it might be worthwhile considering the supposedly foundational natural science of physics. There are clearcut examples in physics of concepts that are NOT directly observable - e.g. DARK MATTER. Moreover, consciousness is NOT a human construct - to know that you simply have to wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night. Humans have direct immediate empirical access to that fact every day of their lives. To deny it is putting the need for public, objective science BEFORE truly radical empiricism. BTW Halonics my reply seems to refer to you but is in fact intended for those who claim Chomsky doesn't understand either behaviourism or (as far as relational frame theory goes) neo-behaviousrism, and then distort or simply don't themselves understand what Chomsky's own view actually is.

[@beherit15]

I dont know why is he talking all this crap

[@dr.hankschlinger2481]

Chomsky is an anachronism. Saying that behaviorism has been refuted doesn't make it so. Chomsky has never understood Skinnerian (radical) behaviorism, which, by the way, is alive and well across the globe because the applied branch, applied behavior analysis, works! Chomsky is not now and nor has be ever been a scientist; Skinner was. Chomsky is and has always been a rationalist, even though much of what he has written in not very rational. It doesn't matter because when it comes to understanding language, he's irrelevant. Even the field of linguistics has a moved on from him. He should stick to social and political commentary.

[@appolo08]

Chomsky is correct cuz the simple Stimulus-Response model of behaviorism has been extended into a Stimulus-Organism-Response model, which states the organism may choose to respond to the same Stimulus in different ways depending on its state of mind.

[@appolo08]

@@gabrielcampeao31 You're late to the discussion, the simple stimulus-response model of learning was debunked by the father of modern linguistics, Chomsky, as shortsighted for failing to consider consciousness. S-O-R model is an extension of the simple S-R model

[@appolo08]

@@gabrielcampeao31 You're right, I was not up to date on the name change (from behaviorism/behavioral psychology to behavior analysis). Have they decided to consider consciousness yet? Skinnerian radical behaviorism boils down to everything is behavior, what is that mental processing we keep talking about?😆😂😁

[@Johnnisjohnnis]

I clicked on this video expecting to learn something about behaviourism.

[@JKDLIFER]

It would be incredibly difficult to learn from someone who doesn't know what it is. It would be like learning medicine from a car mechanic.

[@gopeace4797]

VB-MAPP ! Look it up for kids with autism.

[@whatabouttheearth]

"Its like genetics"? Wtf? "Whether or not language exists"? Wtf? So if he saying that 'behaviorism' s too narrow? Looking too much for A-B situations?

[@LeandroAlmeida108]

Maybe his talking about the new discoveries of epigenetics or even social sciences superseding beliefs related to genetics studies. About language, the question makes as much sense as saying the mind doesnt exist

[@yp77738yp77739]

I’ve always considered psychology a pseudoscience, that analysis is proven by the ebb and flow of fundamental tenets of the “subject”. Learning is very straightforward, you need to start with the right genetics/heritage, then you need to provide a highly stimulating environment from the first few days through to about the age of 7. Thereafter, there’s very little you can do to develop intelligence, most of the potential neural connections have already been stimulated to form. That’s why mothers dumping their children to go back to work is so deleterious for the child as you can never delegate responsibility for their development. You see the results very clearly in the youth around today, most are verging on the retarded.