Writing this article began when I decided to write a poem
about my frustration over today’s pollical events.
Somehow, this turned into my thinking about one’s life being
undetermined, determined, or predetermined.
To start, my only online reference was a simple definition
of determination and free will.
This article went through a series of drafts; editing,
rewording, rewriting, reorganizing, grammar checking, reading aloud and
formatting. Somehow in the process it turned into an analysis of the
limitations of the Behavioral Psychology I was taught 50 years
ago.
As a behavioral scientist, I was taught the following
principles.
1. Human behavior:
reactions, thoughts, emotions, and overt actions are affected (determined) by
the person’s genetics, in some instances reflexes, biology, current health,
learning history, stimulus conditions, and the immediate environment.
2. Specific antecedent
conditions (recent or present) establish the probability of a person’s
thoughts, emotions (verbal labels for physiological reactions), and overt
actions.
3. The consequences of
one’s overt actions influence the probability of that action or similar actions
in the future.
4. Complex behavior can
be acquired / learned by observation, antecedent and consequence relations
involving deprivation, punishment or reinforcement.
5. Learned behavior can
be shaped (changed from one form to another) and behavior can be generalized.
Meaning a behavior may be emitted under stimulus conditions which are similar
to the original learning conditions.
6. A person has choice to
the extent his/her overt actions may be caused or affected by prior thoughts.
Therefore my thoughts or cognitive behavior may influence my behavior or a
choice to behave.
7. This level of free
will does not suggest behavior is random or completely uncontrolled, i.e.,
undetermined. Given these assumptions, I believe in determination as expressed
and I reject the idea of complete free will.
Also, I do not believe in predetermination. Meaning that a
person’s actions are completely controlled or determined by an outside agency.
That being said, I do not believe that the deprivation,
antecedent, response and consequence model of learning and behavior is adequate
to explain complex behaviors, nor do the explanatory concepts like establishing
operations, schedules of reinforcement, rule governed behavior, and stimulus
control.
These external models while useful at one level, ignore
genetics and biology and they don’t take into account cognition, and a modern
understanding of neurology and our understanding of the brain.
To say that writing this article was the result of the
environment, my prior learning, and my history of reinforcement with respect to
writing is too simple.
For example, many of the phrases and sentences written in
these 710 words, were learned more than 50 years ago and used in teaching
across 15 years, some 25 years ago.
In behavioral terms, one might say my writing today was
affected and controlled by prior stimulus conditions and setting events that
affected my memory, cognitive behavior, overt behavior (with choice). As to
reinforcement, if you want, go ahead and throw in reinforcement history and a
little self-reinforcement.
I would say my memory of these words and phrases combined
with thinking them and saying them privately influenced what I subsequently
wrote.
Skinner might call such sequences inter-verbal. A label I
once used, but I fear has little or no explanatory value for me, these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Jack Michael’s VB class, I was a
TA, and I taught VB for several years.
However, remember that Skinner’s undergraduate major was
English, and he didn’t do well in biology. In Science and Human Behavior,
Skinner said our understanding of behavior would change with our study of the
brain and neurology.
The problem is few of us have added brain science,
neurology, genetics, and functional assessment into our accounts and ad hoc
explanations.
Okay – explain this. I started out to write a poem
expressing my emotions and frustrations over current politics. Instead I write
a piece on my emotional frustration with the constructs I learned 50 years ago.
Freud might call this some type of literary transference, I
think.
It might be a type of avoidance. When I write, I ignore my
e-mails.
I spent an hour and a half writing and editing 700+ words.
Clearly, I was behaving; thinking (talking to myself) writing, and then
editing.
This is a thing I do every day and have done for some 70
years.
In my opinion, language and the behavior of writing is more
complex than I understand, and I’d argue not as simple as I was once taught.
Now I still have a poem to write.
