Chomsky -- Put up or blah blah

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Thu Mar 30 16:51:01 PST 2000


On Wed, 29 Mar 2000 23:25:37 -0800 bill fancher <fancher at pacbell.net> writes:
> on 3/28/00 11:49 AM, William S. Lear at rael at zopyra.com wrote:
> >
> > How useful. Please provide us some quotes and show how they
> slander
> > Skinner, and otherwise botch the job.
> >
>
> Chomsky accuses Skinner of, e.g., "play acting at science", using
> "pseudoscientic" terminology, and making "dogmatic and completey
> arbitrary
> claims". The review is:
>
> "...ungenerous to a fault; condescending, unforgiving, obtuse, and
> ill-humored... The review's one kind word is in a footnote. It is
> almost
> impossible to reply... without at the same time sounding either
> defensive
> and apologetic, or as truculent as the reviewer. I have hesitated
> until now
> because I am an editor for the Series in which _Verbal Behavior_ was
> publshed. Caveat lector." MacCorquondale, JEAB Jan.'70

Concerning the Chomsky-Skinner debate, there is an interesting discussion from a pro-Skinner standpoint in Marc Richelle's *B.F. Skinner: A Reappraisal*. In Richelle's view Chomsky's famous review of Skinner's book *Verbal Behavior* reflected some major misunderstanding's of Skinner's work. As he sees it Chomsky's critique of Skinner had two aspects: (1) a critique of Skinner's strategy of extrapolating from animal behavior, supposedly of a simplistic nature, to language, which is a highly complex and specifically human activity; from the laboratory where Skinner forged his concepts to real life where Chomsky argued, Skinner's concepts failed to account for the richness of human conduct. (2) And a critique of behaviorism as providing an inadequate account of language.

As far as the first aspect is concerned, Richelle sees it as a restatement of the kinds of criticisms that have always been of experimental, scientific approaches to human behavior. As for the second aspect, Richelle makes the point that Chomsky displayed some prodound misunderstandings concerning Skinner's behaviorism. Chomsky for example argued at length against the stimulus-response model in psychology, oblivious to the fact that Skinner not only rejected S-R psychologies but was himself a major critic of the S-R model. Likewise, Chomsky attacks drive reduction explanations of behavior despite the fact that drive reduction never played any role in Skinner's analysis. In other words Chomsky seemed to confuse Skinner's radical behaviorism with other brands of behaviorism, ignoring the existence of crucial theoretical differences between them. Richelle, also scores Chomsky for misunderstanding the nature of Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior, suggesting that Chomsky was blinded by his own strong commitment to developing a purely formal account of language. Thus, in Richelle's view, Chomsky failed to understand that Skinner was interested in developing a functional analysis of verbal behavior rather than an account of language as such. Skinner was interested in verbal behavior, that is a person's activity in speaking and/or listening. Skinner was attempting to apply principles of behavior that had been discovered in animal research and the functional approach to behavior that he had developed in the course of this research to verbal behavior.

Jim F.


>
> Chomsky's basic argument runs something like: if behaviorism is true
> then it
> is possible to control people. We ought not to be controlled (since
> it is in
> our nature to be free), therefore behaviorism is false.
>
> His review of "Verbal Behavior" is restrained, though, in comparison
> to his
> "The Case Against B.F. Skinner", where he presents Skinner as a
> crypto-Nazi.
>
> Chomsky's deep respect for, and appreciation of, science can be seen
> in this
> quote from _Noam Chomsky, A Life of Dissent_ by Robert F. Barsky:
>
> Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under
> a
> lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street,
> because
> that's where the light is. It has no other choice.
> - Noam Chomsky, letter to the author, 14 June 1993
>
> --
> bill
>
>

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