Fred Tuesdays 9.13.2016

A blogger writing about reinforcement schedules and their relation to the world at large occasionally goes for very long periods of time between new posts. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Evidently, I have abandoned the practice of posting new Skinner quotes on Fridays. No matter, I will just post new quotes "whenever I feel like it," whatever that means.

I am currently teaching a freshman seminar on the topics of freedom and determinism. My general thoughts on these matters should be obvious, but I try to maintain something approaching a neutral stance when it comes to working with my students. Something that has come up already this semester is in the notion that something important may be lost when we see the (deterministic) mechanisms by which things we call beautiful are revealed. By this view, peeking behind the curtain reveals the trick behind the magic and ruins the illusion.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain... or else lose your autonomy!

This is largely the sort of argument that many proponents of creationism are implicitly making when they deny Darwinian evolution. It's often, though not always, an appeal to a kind of "bugbear" (Dennett, 1984) wherein the truth of an argument takes a backseat to the horror of its being true, and the prescription reveals itself in denial.

I find that the following passage from Beyond Freedom and Dignity rings true.

Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. His achievements in science, government, religion, art, and literature remain as they have always been, to be admired as one admires a storm at sea or autumn foliage or a mountain peak...