Re: Bareknuckles Behaviorism

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:02:58 GMT

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 05:21:19 -0400, "zerkanX" <zerkanX@nospam.net> in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:42:25 +0000, Lester Zick wrote:
>
>>>Behaviouralism in my view has less to do with science, as the ethos
>>>of superficial judgement which follows its acceptance. Because this
>>>is accepted as science, it is accepted in life.
>>
>> I couldn't agree more. An intellectual superstructure built on sand.
>
>First of all I must pick my jaw up off the floor in finding myself as an
>apologist for 'behaviorism' or worse yet, posting ANYTHING about it which
>infers knowledge. However, it does have a history in my life because of, and
>only because of, the fact that I have hung around the therapeutic wing of
>social work a lot.
>
>Given all this, behavioralism, as it seemed to me, was or is more of an attempt
>to change very destrucAn intellectual superstructure built on sandtive
>behavior very fast. It was not that practitioners were incapable of
>considering anything else but because 'drastic times call for drastic
>measures' as it were and cutting to the behavioral chase was the most direct
>way to alleviate an immediate danger. All of this was done inside the context
>of sever abnormality, usually. I do say 'usually' because it seemed to also
>spawn a sort of emotional-power mongering among those that moved from direct
>intervention social work into more broad based applications.
>
>The finish line for me was when I was involved in a workshop put on by the
>business college at a liberal arts (!) university for local ad executives. It
>was run by a behavioral psychologist. The techniques he introduced for
>behavioral conditioning/manipulation inside of a sales situation were as mind
>bending as they were repulsive. Here I saw not an 'intellectual superstructure
>built on sand' but a intellectual substructure upon which to build extremely
>self-serving power and control.

Hi zerkanX -

I'm of mixed feelings here. There are many therapists trained in the
behavioral modification approaches offered by behaviorism. And most
are sincere and provide effective therapy to a lot of very sick
people. So I don't consider my remarks as directed at behaviorists in
general just because they happened to have been trained in one set of
techniques or another. Therapeutic techniques have to be evaluated
strictly in terms of efficacy.

Attempts to comprehend, control, and direct the mind hold an age old
fascination. And, frankly, behavior modification through training
represents an effective therapeutic strategy in many cases. For
example I believe Japanese police use variations of such techniques
for dealing with criminals, and I know that scientologists use them
for behavior modification among their members.

However the scientific basis on which behaviorism is founded is flawed
and leads to an intellectual superstructure offering people methods
for behavior modification which may or may not work in all cases
because people don't understand what exactly is being modified or how.

My own take on behavior modification in healthy people is that it is
not the role of psychology to break peoples' habits but to get them to
understand the source of a behavioral problem and then to get them to
break their own bad habits through retraining and manipulation.

That's the approach I see used in scientology although Japanese police
obviously use behavioral manipulation directly to avoid recidivism
in criminals. (I would like to add that I am neither Japanese nor a
scientologist.) Yet there are many people out there who wouldn't mind
using behavioral modification for their own purposes. And those are
the ones I see attracted to the prospect of categorical behavioral
manipulation offered by behaviorism.

Regards - Lester