ThinkBlog

B. F. Skinner caused a huge controversy in psychology when he said that there was no such thing as free will–this was back in the 1950s before liberalism was the norm–and many were persuaded that he was correct. Skinner’s evidence for this theory in psychology, dubbed “behaviorism,” was that rats behaved in predictable ways when exposed to certain stimuli, either positive or negative, many times. This was the “operant conditioning learning theory,” and it has been popularized in subsequent generations as a sort of postmodern update to the ancient Greek fatalistic determinism.

I’m here to tell you, that theory is false, at least in the case of humans.

If I eat Mexican food, a negative stimulus (we’ll spare the details) is applied to my body. I know this–I remember these negative stimuli vividly, much better than a rat, I’m sure, would do the same–and yet I still go to Mexican restaurants, and did yesterday in fact. Why? The so-called “higher cognitive processes” came into play, no doubt. Hmm.

B. F. Skinner caused a huge controversy in psychology when he said that there was no such thing as free will–this was back in the 1950s before liberalism was the norm–and many were persuaded that he was correct. Skinner’s evidence for this theory in psychology, dubbed “behaviorism,” was that rats behaved in predictable ways when exposed to certain stimuli, either positive or negative, many times. This was the “operant conditioning learning theory,” and it has been popularized in subsequent generations as a sort of postmodern update to the ancient Greek fatalistic determinism.

I’m here to tell you, that theory is false, at least in the case of humans.

If I eat Mexican food, a negative stimulus (we’ll spare the details) is applied to my body. I know this–I remember these negative stimuli vividly, much better than a rat, I’m sure, would do the same–and yet I still go to Mexican restaurants, and did yesterday in fact. Why? The so-called “higher cognitive processes” came into play, no doubt. Hmm.