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B. F. Skinner - The Butcher, the Baker, the Behavior-Shaper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Richard F. Kitchener
Richard F. Kitchener*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University
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Extract

Once upon a time in the land of Psi there lived a very famous baker named Fred. Fred the baker was known from far and wide as the very best baker in the land. His skill at baking was unmatched for he could produce loaves of any size or shape - long and thin bread sticks, round Kaiser rolls, crescent-shaped croissants, twisted oval loaves, and so on. His famous motto was: “Give me the unkneaded dough and in time I can produce any kind of loaf of bread desired.” Fred called this process ‘shaping’.

There was a limit, of course, to what even Fred could do: he could not, for example, create whole-wheat bread from white flour. But this was a small flaw in an otherwise unblemished character, and although Fred frequently admitted the importance of the kind of flour one began with, rumor had it that he was even working on the possibility of overcoming this limitation.

Type
Part II Philosophical Problems of Biology and Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1972 , 1972 , pp. 87 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company

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Footnotes

*

This is a slightly revised version of a paper read to the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association Convention in Lansing, Michigan, on October 27, 1972. I am indebted to Gene D'Amour, John Hebert, Pat McKee and Bernie Rollin for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

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