Notes
- Karl L. Popper , Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge ( London : Routledge and Kegan Paul , 1963 ). Popper uses this formula brilliantly in an analysis of the link between epistemology and the ideas of political liberalism. The epistemological optimism of the formula suggests its opposite—epistemological pessimism. If thwarted, optimism can lead to a despair comparable in depth to the height of its expectations. Political authoritarianism can derive from anger at the betrayal of human potentiality. Therefore the opposite formula: “Man cannot know, thus he cannot be free.”
- Behaviorism is derived in the main from the works of Ivan Pavlov and, in the United States, of J. B. Watson, E. L. Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism abandons the “occult” or “metaphysical” concepts of mind and consciousness favored by the older introspective kind of psychology, and instead confines psychology to an objective study of overt behavior. Thinking and emotion, for instance, are interpreted as implicit behavior. According to this view, concrete, observable, and controlled conditions can bring about certain desired reactions. Conditions and behavioral responses are linked in predictable and enforceable ways. Behavior can be modified by positive and negative reinforcement, and by punishment and extinction procedures. For a discussion of behaviorism, in addition to works by the men mentioned above, see the entry by Arnold S. Kaufman in Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Vol. 1 , ed. Paul Edwards ( New York : Macmillan , 1967 ), pp. 268 – 73 but generally the attempt to purify and to free man proceeded more from actions to the inner than to the outer man. Man was to be taken seriously, not merely as an object but as a complicated whole being. Shattered by industrial forces and by the cruel use of other techniques (such as the operant conditioning of the behaviorists), the wholeness of man was to be restored. For statements of the “Basic Theoretical Concepts of Humanistic Psychology,” see Charlotte Buhler, “Basic Theoretical Concepts of Humanistic Psychology,” American Psychologist 26 (April 1971): 378–85; Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). For humanistic education see Abraham H. Maslow, “Some Educational Implications of the Humanistic Psychologies,” Harvard Educational Review 38 (Fall 1968): 658–96; George B. Leonard, Education and Ecstasy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968); Gerald Weinstein and Mario D. Fantini, eds., Toward Humanistic Education: A Curriculum of Affect (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970); and a special “humanism package” put together by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (1972)—“To Nurture Humaneness: Commitment for the 70s”; “The Humanities and the Curriculum”; “Humanizing Education: The Person in the Process”; “Humanizing the Secondary School”; “Removing Barriers to Humaneness in the High School.” Humanistic education and humanistic psychology during the 1960s and 1970s were viewed broadly as elements in a quest for the good life, which was seen as offering more than merely material wealth and a pedestrian existence. Love, kindness, service, and honesty were acclaimed as desirable values in personal relations and in intimate groups, and as worthy of extension to larger, impersonal groups. The enhancement of existence was to come about not by the indiscriminate application to man of techniques in general, many of which humanists believed to be hurtful, but by the use of special humanist techniques humanely applied. Economic restraints on individual freedom were acknowledged to exist, and it was sometimes asserted that they should be abolished;
- The contemporary doctrine of original sin is useful for charting some of the similarities and differences between behaviorism and humanism. According to Reinhold Niebuhr in A Handbook of Christian Theology , ed. Marvin Halverson and Arthur A. Cohen ( New York : Meridian Books, Inc. , 1958 ), the contemporary doctrine refers to the universality of the ineradicable taint of undue self-regard (p. 350). Both behaviorism and humanism empty this doctrine of its necessary and “pessimistic” restrictions, but they do it in strikingly different ways. Skinner in Walden Two has Frazier, the founder of his Utopian community, say: “Each of us … is engaged in a pitched battle with the rest of mankind… . Each of us has interests which conflict with the interests of everybody. That's our original sin and it can't be helped.” Therefore, by reducing original sin to a variety of interest theory, Skinner merely turns it into an engineering problem of conflict management. See B.F Skinner, Walden Two (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 104. Humanists solve the problem of original sin simply by asserting that the universal inclination of man to regard himself as his own end is a sign not of vanity and corruption but of liberation and personal growth. Therefore, humanists transform inordinate self-regard from a sin into a virtue. Both behaviorists and humanists manifest the flagrant fault that was referred to by the Greek tragedies as hubris—the general inclination of all men to overestimate their virtues, powers, and achievements. Professor William Stallings drew my attention to the contemporary meaning of original sin and to Neibuhr's essay on it.
- John Dewey , Democracy and Education ( New York : Macmillan , 1916 ), p. 62 .
- Neither the behaviorists nor the humanists ignore social and political theory. Skinner, for example frequently calls attention to the urgent need to reorganize society on new foundations and to redesign culture. Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity ( New York : Bantam/Vintage , 1972 ) are serious attempts to outline the kind of society he has in mind. Humanists frequently proclaim their attachment to participatory democracy, anti-elitism, and to an open society that fosters personal growth. But the social and political views of both behaviorists and humanists are not very thorough, detailed, or compelling. In practice both are socially and politically conservative. For the conservative effects of psychiatry, see Seymour L. Halleck, The Politics of Therapy (New York: Science House, Inc., 1971).
- Alan Ryan , “Liberalism and Liberty,” The Listener 89 (March 15, 1973 ): 345 – 46
- Richard Sennett , “The Boss's New Clothes,” New York Review of Books 26 (February 22, 1979 ): 42 – 46
- Joen Fagan and Irma Lee Shepherd , eds., Gestalt Therapy Now: Theory, Techniques, Applications ( Palo Alto , Ca. : Science and Behavior Books, Inc. , 1970 ).
- See, for example, B. F. Skinner , Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis ( Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc. , 1969 ); and B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).
- Fagan and Shepherd , Gestalt Therapy , p. 1 .
- Ibid. , pp. 47 – 69
- Ibid. , p. 14 .
- See Karl R. Popper , The Logic of Scientific Discovery ( London : Hutchinson , 1959 ) for the role of refutation and falsifiability in science. He characterizes empirical science in the following way: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality” (p. 314 ).
- Humanism is a good example of an “ unveiling philosophy. ” According to this particular unveiling philosophy the truth of humanist claims may be veiled to disbelievers but it can be unveiled by humanist “leaders” and technicians who have avoided the pitfalls of distortion, and who can therefore see through and reveal hidden motives that inspire error in others. Humanists' treatments free people from hidden enslavers, it is claimed, and enable them to attain the highest forms of insight and knowledge—“transcendence,” “joy,” and “ecstasy.”
- Karl R. Popper , The Open Society and Its Enemies , Vol. II , 3rd rev. ed. ( London : Routledge and Kegan Paul , 1957 ), pp. 297 , 308.
- The sectarian character of both behaviorism and humanism is made clear in a volume composed of writings of both groups. See Floyd W. Matson , ed., Without/Within: Behaviorism and Humanism ( Monterey , Ca. : Brook's/Cole Publishing Company , 1973 ). Even Matson, an ardent humanist, acknowledges that both sides merely “go on repeating our contradictory premises and declaring our respective ‘humanisms’—an exchange of monologues without dialogue” (p. 45 ). This volume has a good bibliography of works by both behaviorists and humanists.
- Henry J. Perkinson , “Learning From Our Mistakes,” The Gadfly 1 ( 1978 ): 46 – 63 Perkinson deals nicely with this point, although we differ about the ability of behaviorists to learn from their mistakes.
- For outstanding critiques of behaviorism see Karl R. Popper , The Open Society and Its Enemies ( London : Routledge and Kegan Paul , 1957 ), especially Chapter 23 ; and Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), Chapter 7. The critique by Chomsky is reprinted in Matson, Without/Within, pp. 58–79. Both Popper and Chomsky analyze the assumptions and methods of behaviorism and its social and political ambitions. They agree about the scientific value of behaviorism, at least as it has been formulated by Skinner. To Popper [Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 22] it is a “castle in the air” and “not serious from a scientific point of view.” To Chomsky, it is “vacuous” and “devoid of scientific content.” They differ, however, about its social and political implications. To Popper, behaviorism's “totalitarian dreams” of omnipotence are very dangerous politically. To Chomsky, behaviorism, being vacuous, “is as congenial to the libertarian as to the fascist.” Strike assesses the consequences of selected behaviorist doctrines for the description of educational goals and methods. He concludes “that the constraints that this philosophy [of behaviorism] places on a language render it incapable of expressing some meaningful educational goals, rule out some meaningful empirical hypotheses, and undermine some important ethical distinctions.” See Kenneth A. Strike, “On the Expressive Potential of Behaviorist Language,” American Educational Research Journal 2 (Spring 1974): 103–20. See also Skinner, Behaviorism, for his reply to critics of behaviorism. For a criticism of growth centers, encounters, and the human potential movement, see Bruce Maliver, The Encounter Game (New York: Stern and Day, 1973).
- Sigmund Koch and Ludwig von Bertalanffy make this same point in slightly different ways. Koch says: “The ‘human potential’ movement obliterates the content and boundary of the self by transporting it out of the organism—not merely to its periphery, but right out into public, social space. The force of behaviorism is merely to legislate the inner life out of existence for science , while allowing the citizen to entertain the illusion, perhaps even the reality of having one.” See Matson, Without/Within, p. 90. Bertalanffy claims that behaviorism and humanism “concur in one important aspect, namely, the zoomorphic conception of human nature and the devaluation of the individual. … In both antitheses, what is specifically ‘human’—reason, culture, and tradition—tends to be discarded.” See Matson , Without/Within , pp. 100 – 01
- Ehrenfeld speaks of the arrogance of humanism, but he does not confine his humanism to the views of the self-styled humanists. The object of his criticism is a “religion of humanism” which has as its basis a supreme faith in the ability of human reason to solve all human problems. According to this version of humanism, all of nature exists only to serve human ends, and man can master nature. Since this definition of humanism includes all technical approaches to human problems, Skinner is included as a prime example of humanism. See David Ehrenfeld , The Arrogance of Humanism ( New York : Oxford , 1978 ). and Samuel Chavkin, The Mind Stealers: Psychosurgery and Mind Control (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978). For criticism of the tendency of professionals to psychologize human behavior, see Martin L. Gross, The Psychological Society (New York: Random House, 1978). For some excesses of the “helping professions” in schools, see Peter Schrag and Diane Divoky, The Myth of the Hyperactive Child and Other Means of Child Control (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975);
- John Stuart Mill , Principles of Political Economy , rev. ed. ( New York : Colonial Press , 1899 ), pp. 443 – 44
- For the threat of psychotherapy to individual freedom, especially the threat of psychiatric medicine when it is in alliance with the state, see Thomas S. Szasz , Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man ( Garden City , N.Y. : Doubleday and Company, Inc. , 1970 ), pp. 140 – 66 Thomas S. Szasz, The Theology of Medicine: The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977), pp. 145–62; and Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Regression (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978).