5HC : Skinner, Turing

Andy Robertson · 03 Feb 2005, 13:34 · from 2005-February.txt.gz

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From: andywrobertson at clara.co.uk (Andy Robertson)
Date: Thu Feb  3 13:34:12 2005
Subject: (urth) 5HC : Skinner, Turing
In-Reply-To: <f5238c3050203124176c2d2de at mail.gmail.com>
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	<f5238c3050203124176c2d2de at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <E1Cwoc5-000IB6-DT at oceanus.uk.clara.net>

> I don't like the Copenhagen interpretation in the least bit: 

Nor do I 

> WIth QM
> you've got multiverse models you can switch to, but what alternatives
> do we have in psychology and philosophy?

Skinner's work pretty much comprised insisting that behaviour was mostly  
environment driven **or could only usefully be understood as such**  and 
studying how this worked out. 

I am sure Skinner knew this was untrue: but he attempted to ignore that 
fact, perhaps because nothing can be found out without making wild guesses 
and testing them (a true and noble attitude). 

However, the basic model is not simply wrong; it is so completely wrong that 
even as a wild and brave guess it is worse than useless. 

Human behaviour is so much more circumscribed and programmed (by evolution) 
than learned that the "blank slate" dogma is much, much, worse than useless. 
Since the basic model is wrong, Skinner's work can not be use to understand 
humanity. 

We are chattering about science, and forgetting what is really important in 
understanding the human world (even the world of humans in books), which is 
politics. 

The real emergent utility of Skinner's work - the way it was **used** in the 
real world - iwas to provide a shield of intellectual justification to those 
who want to reshape human behaviour through social engineering; which aim 
is, itself, merely a cloak over their own Inner Party desire for power. 

I'm not sure Skinner was guilty of intending this end (I doubt it), but his 
work fitted perfectly into the environmentalist dogmas of his age, like the 
fraudulent "anthropology" of Margaret Mead and her mentor Franz Boaz. 

Wolfe sets his face like granite against this slavery, in book after book. 

.

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