1.1 B.F. Skinner

1960s and 1970s, major figure, dominated American intellectual life with his radical theory

Freud invented Psychoanalysis pretty much from scratch.

Skinner came late into the field, but he packaged these ideas. He expanded upon them and he presented them as an articulated theory, the

Theory of Behaviorism

• emphasis on learning: everything you know, everything you are is the result of your experience.Prior to Skinner, this idea was nicely summed up by John Watson, who said,

  “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random, train them to become any specialist I may select–doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, passions, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

• Anti-mentalism: see behaviorism as the backlash against the excesses of Freud
  • get away from unscientific things: desires, wishes, goals, beliefs, and emotions
  • stick to scientific things: stimulus, responses, feature of the environment

• no interesting differences across species: the only difference between a person and a rat is what they could come to know lies in the situations in which they are raised