Unsolved Puzzles: Where to Find Them?

Abstract

A systematic point of view, like the Radical Behaviorism that originated with B. F. Skinner, tends to ignore data that come from sources outside the system. I suggest, however, that the original presentations of radical behaviorism included data and questions that have remained unanswered and that would repay systematic consideration. Here, I present informal recommendations of the original text by Keller and Schoenfeld, Skinner’s original experimental work, and Skinner’s verbal behavior text as sources of unsolved puzzles and interesting data that behavior analysis has never followed up. The general issue here is, of course, the verbal behavior of scientists themselves, a topic that has never received the attention it needs if we are ever to understand our own behavior.

Key words:

• verbal behavior of scientists
• biofeedback
• voluntary control
• generalized reinforcement