7. The New Enlightenment: Skinner and the Search for System

Comte was reborn in B. F. Skinner: both have elaborate (and false) theories of science as descriptive, both were terrified of freedom (it denies their god of “control”). They endorse metaphysical determinism—whereas Chomsky had a god named Creativity, Skinner’s was Control (schedules of reinforcement): no matter what happens, it is strictly determined by schedules of reinforcement. Freedom, dignity, and choice are outmoded, showing lack of awareness of controlling schedules. How to organize society? Put it in a rigid Skinner box—the grand conditioner, a Cartesian god outside the natural order, determines reinforcement and schedules. No “results of human action but not design.” No “inner man” to organize behavior: just schedules of reinforcement controlling behavior. Language? Just behavior. Skinner is Russell without happiness or a soul, with organization replaced by controlling reinforcements. Intellectual historians need to explain how this amalgam of pleonasm and pontification (refuted before Skinner was born) garnered so many followers.