
On Chomsky's Review of Skinner's “Verbal Behavior” (1970) [pdf] - travjones
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1333660/pdf/jeabehav00145-0085.pdf
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current_call
I could only finish two pages. What's so interesting about a response to a
review of a linguistics book written by a psychologist? Normally I always read
the entire article before commenting, but I feel like I'm missing something.
Am I really the only one here who doesn't have the background for this? Am I
expected to have read the book and review first? Am I expected to read the
book and review now?

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
Well, I'm not a fountain of knowledge here, but here's what I know. Skinner is
a psychologist, founder of the behaviorism approach in psychology. The chief
idea if behaviorism is that it refuses to build any imaginary psychology
models and sticks to what's really observable and measurable. For example, a
behaviorist won't talk about Id or Ego, introverts or extroverts, inner child
and such because these concepts are just that: imaginary concepts we have no
proof of.

I'd say that behaviorism was very successful and came up with very useful
results, such as teaching machines (note that it it was around 50s). Skinner
even went further and wrote about cultural engineering, that is a way to
change our culture to build a better future. You can read more about this in
his books "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and "Walden Two". The latter is a
utopia; it describes an imaginary community built on these principles. What's
interesting is that this took off somewhat and there were a few attempts to
actually built such communities and some of them appear to still function;
they started in 70s, so it's a very good result for an endeavor like that.

Now, Chomsky is a linguist and I don't know much about his works, except
formal grammars and such and I know that he has some strong political views,
although I cannot really describe them. When Skinner published his book
"Verbal Behavior", Chomsky wrote a very critical review of it. The review
became very popular, more than the book itself. Skinner never replied (he
rarely did). My understanding is that this was one of major blows against
behaviorism; nowadays many of its achievements are forgotten; the
psychologists know about this, of course, but do you see any teaching machines
around? Cultural engineering, anyone? (Also, check Skinner's air crib.)

Now this is a reply to Chomsky's review by MacCorquodale. Wikipedia says that
it was endorsed by Skinner, so it probably summarizes Skinner's position on
things. So yes, it must be an interesting piece. I think it's best to read
Chomsky first. I myself haven't read neither "Verbal Behavior" nor Chomsky's
review, but now I just might :)

