Brief look at the Debate between BF Skinner and Noam Chomsky regarding Human Behaviour
The following essay will explore the dialectic relationship between two thinkers, Skinner and Chomsky. It will begin by outlining Skinner’s views regarding science and human behaviour, with special reference to the negation of the value for functional analysis held by inner causes, as well as looking at method. This will be followed by a review of Chomsky’s criticism, primarily the accusation that Skinner still makes inferred reference to mental events to explain behaviour. Before concluding the essay will offer a possible response on behalf of Skinner to Chomsky’s criticism. Skinner’s paper begins by briefly exploring and negating the value for the study of behaviour, of three inner causes. He claims that these three, namely neural, psychic and conceptual inner causes, are misrepresentations of the inner workings of humans and are thus useless to the functional analysis of behaviour. (Skinner, 1980: 37 – 40) Neural causes include things such as shell shock, which have developed because people could not see or understand the neuro-chemical workings of the brain, but still wished to attribute actions to this. ... (Skinner, 1980: 37 – 38) Psychic causes refer primarily to dualistic models of thought, and include the concept of the mind. Skinner asserts that this particular paradigm developed as a result of primitive people believing that a controlling mental energy left an individuals body at death. Skinner disregards theories of this kind due to the fact that the mind is something that can be applied too generally to mental processes, and consequently is of little value to analysis. (Skinner, 1980: 38 – 39) Finally Skinner dispenses with conceptual inner causes. ... According to Skinner this link should not be assumed as freely as is done. ... (Skinner, 1980: 39 – 40) However, the major setback of dealing with inner causes is that they obscure the variables which are commonly available for functional analysis, a subject’s immediate environment and his environmental history.