Tag Archives: b.f. skinner

Carl Rogers is What I Would Call Retro-Humanist Cool

I’ve always admired Carl Rogers’s orientation toward the world (emphasizing existential authenticity and choice, transparency, imaginative sympathy, and meaning). In the 1960s, he used to have public debates with B. F. Skinner about whether people’s inner states were really all that … Continue reading

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Correlation-Causation Fallacies and the Origin of Religion

In the below video, a pigeon—let’s call it Shirley—engages in a correlation-causation fallacy. Shirley clearly presumes—insofar as pigeons can presume anything at all—that the machine is releasing food to her because she’s making a half-turn to the left. In reality, of … Continue reading

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Atheism and Free Will: The End of Praise and Shame?

If you’re an atheist and have concluded that free will doesn’t exist, where does that leave praise and shame? Atheist Jerry Coyne, who does not believe humans have free will, suggests that it leaves praise and shame in the dust: … Continue reading

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Richard Dawkins: The B.F. Skinner of Our Time?

It occurred to me today that atheism has a lot in common with behaviorism. It will be recalled that B.F. Skinner, the 20th century champion of behaviorism, was a very stark reductionist, literally ignoring mind as an explanation for anything. He … Continue reading

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