Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Skinner argues that the entrenched belief in free will and in the moral autonomy of the individual, which he calls dignity, stands in the way of using scientific methods to change behaviour and so to build a happier and better organised society. Almost all major problems involve human behaviour, he writes, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone; what is needed is a technology of human behaviour. The literature of freedom and dignity has done real good, in his account, by reducing the harsh forms of control, but it has defined freedom in terms of states of mind and feelings and so has obscured the way behaviour is shaped by its consequences. Credit and blame, he argues, are largely functions of how conspicuous the controlling conditions happen to be. Skinner rejects punishment as the product of an unscientific analysis of behaviour, examines the weaker alternatives usually proposed in its place, and restates questions of value as questions about contingencies of reinforcement. He treats a culture as a collection of practices subject to selection, holds that cultural design is already under way and can be conducted openly, and closes by arguing that a scientific view of humanity opens new possibilities.

Written from the wikipedia article on the book.

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• B.F. Skinner