FredCorbin on Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Skinner, B.F.
"FredCorbin on Beyond Freedom and Dignity"
...This will not be easy, to do because his supporters will be of two kinds...
...The White House is said to be of two minds about this issue...
...There exists nothing that is not observable, no mind, no spirit, no manner whatever of an "in-dwelling agent...
...Ergo, III...
...As Pasternak wrote, _9 'Man is born to live, and not to prepare to die...
...These behaviors are induced through necessity (eating) or through social arrangements that arise from those necessities (nourishment is more easily obtained through a large group than 'by individuals, and hence a society and a code of behavior also exist...
...The instrument of this theft was to have been the "check off" system, whereby a citizen could earmark a dollar of his tax bill for the political party of his choice...
...The more moderate supporters will be those who believe that Nixon is susceptible to pressure...
...Autonomous man must be conceptually replaced with controlled man, living in an environment created by social scientists...
...I Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F...
...He was trampled under the flying hooves of a Senate lusting after adjournment...
...Change the premise of the Republic from metaphysical concerns to psychology, and one immediately discovers Skinner...
...It is necessary now to change it...
...The criticisms leveled against Plato's authoritarianism and possible totalitarianism apply, in triplicate to Skinner...
...Marxism, and the "'state's withering away...
...In the end, of course, Nixon got his tax bill and the Democrats did not get the "check off" system...
...The Japanese yen has been floating up since then...
...If he can not, or does not, it will be a debacle and very damaging to conservatism...
...Science supposedly demands empiricism, and supposedly denies 'poetry...
...In Skinner's world, what are the alternatives...
...On the one hand, Presidential aides think that any opposition to the President tarnishes Himself's image...
...To that quest, Santayana had a devastating reply, "The fact of having been horn is a bad augury for immortality...
...And in Goethe's words, then, "'Man calls it reason and uses it to he more beastly than any beast...
...Amid the other questions to be asked, (Quidem ipsos custodes custodet...
...Fred Corbin...
...They believe (correctly, in my judgment) that many conservative anti-Nixon Republicans would cast a protest vote for McCloskey...
...Now there are four Nixon nominees on the Supreme Court and disgruntled conservatives are invited to imagine what the Court would look like with four Humphrey nominees...
...that Nixon is the best possible alternative, but that Ashbrook should be the instrument of pressure...
...the most damning query is, why must man be reduced to the level of a single disposition or attribute...
...Alone, survival is to be cherished, and alone, survival is man's precious asset...
...The human animal becomes merely the most intelligent of organisms...
...A number of curious strains merge into the philosophy here: logical positivism, with its attempt to render language isomorphic (at which task Skinner himself lends a hand) and its absolute rejection of anything metaphysical...
...The American nation has accustomed itself by now to hearing the litanies of doom and destruction in every corner of the park and from every soap-box available, and so we should not be surprised at a Harvard professor orchestrating his own threnody for civilization...
...Yet it is compelling because, in an era of gelatinous emotionalism, the volume is a work of immense lucidity and brilliant internal consistency...
...But to insist that existence is finer than, say, freedom or nobility, or any quality for which men will die, is to discover the logic of the padded cell...
...The necessity for change was precipitated, one supposes, by some inevitable holocaust directly attributable to the philosophically-created universe...
...Alongside Marx, with his socio-economic variables, and Freud, with his sexual levels, Skinner has employed that simplest and most often erroneous of all techniques, reductionism, and applies it to man...
...In a stream of thought parallel to this, Plato argued in the Republic: I. All men naturally desire wisdom, and thus society's great duty is to pursue wisdom...
...The principal whimperers were the Democrats who were thwarted in their attempt to steal twenty million tax dollars to finance their campaign next year...
...47401 logic, and dismisses external knowledge as illusory...
...The German mark has been floating u p since well before the 15 August cataclysm...
...This Utopia seems to be written with a scholarly detachment not common to visionaries...
...On the other hand, they like the idea of dividing the anti-Nixon Republican vote...
...Skinner's most recent Utopian tract...
...Firstly, Skinner's premise is material - - so material as to exceed the great materialism of physicists...
...What compulsion is there to exist, sheerly to endure, if our only purpose is to be a longevity contest...
...Thus devaluation of the dollar began nearly twenty months ago when Canada allowed its dollar to float...
...Thus it will not rescue the Democrats in 1972, and there will be time to chalIc..':ge the three or four major constitutional enormities of the plan...
...This happened when the HouseSenate Conference Committee met to ii'on out the differences~ between the two versions of the tax bill...
...Yet that doctrine has as many problems philosophically as dualism (the system of mind and body in the same entity, and against which Skinner is reacting), and it seems the more dangerous and less correct for its obsessive singularity...
...The syllogism of Skinner's universe argues: I. All men naturally desire survival and comfort in their existence...
...For though he cloaks some of his arguments in the popular rationales of the 12 The Alternative February, 1972 day - - nuclear war, population, inequity of wealth, the entire retinue of evil - - one suspects that those slogans are thrown in more for maximum effectiveness and appeal than for primary argumentation...
...The A l t e r n a t i v e F e b r u a r y , 1972 I 1 Lots of Whimpering and One, Dull Bang WASHINGTON - - The first session of the Ninety-Second Congress ended with a lot of whimpering and one firm, dull bang...
...The cacophony was the sound of the good guys doing well...
...All behavior arises, not from a mind nor a spirit nor any other observable agent, but from a need for survival and a desire for a degree of comfortability...
...Such are the postulates and premises that form the substratum of B.F...
...The bang at the end of the session was heard as a kind of distant echo in the Congress...
...Plato, of course, has a recognition of man's complexity that Skinner does not: otherwise wisdom could not be his goal...
...The important aspect to be remembered here is that, rather than revealing a psychological system, Skinner is constructiP4g a philosophy of society while utilizing the logic of psychology...
...In that world, in that desolate plain of the future, the only residuum of man would be existence - - existence without essence, without meaning, some form of resonant hollowness perhaps, but still hollowness...
...If Ashbrook - - or some other challenger - - can make clear that he stands with the moderates, it might be interesting...
...And that is the point...
...Whatever satisfaction would be left, would be, in Camus' words, ' t h e pleasure of a stone...
...Skinner's hypothesis is terrifying, for it is the vision of Man the dessicated automaton...
...Another conspicuous whimperer was Senator Bayh...
...If Ashbrook decides to run, his first task will be to make clear the exact nature of his mission...
...The Nixon Administration, as every Administration since Hoover, has acknowledged a demonstrable political fact: when it comes to losing votes, unemployment is more dangerous than inflation...
...this will lower the standard of living slightly...
...But, for Skinner, the flaw is man...
...The total pursuit of an ideal, the regimentation of society to that ideal, and the determination of what men are to do are inherent in both...
...But while doing so it will protect some existing jobs and stimulate jobs in exporting industries...
...that the pressure has all been from the left...
...The two most likely are New Hampshire and Florida...
...The result was to keep the "check off" system, but to make it inoperative this year...
...Even granted that, however, one would think that a better reason can be given for survival than "'Let it be...
...Empiricism is evidentally not the cure-all of history, yet here it does explain some of Skinner's conclusions: the empirical mind can see only materialism and hence can assert only materialism as real...
...but what is the theory of the atom, a minute planetary system that forms all things that are and ever will be, but poetry...
...The fallacious belief that man is autonomous has lead us to the destruction of civilization and almost of man...
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...These persons believe that there is an identifiable and vibrant "conservative movement...
...As of this writing it is not clear whether there will be another end-ofsession development, or whether it will be a popgun pop or the sharp, clear report of a highpowered rifle...
...empiricism, and the need for all facts to be observably corroborated...
...The phiiosopher-kings shall rule so that perfect wisdom may be found...
...The particular problem with discussing this work is not the radically different thesis, but the beauty of its internal logic...
...The concussion occurred in the Azores, where President Nixon announced that the dollar would be devalued...
...And yet, there is a quality to Skinner's book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, entirely separate and distinct from the freneticisms, the shrillness, and the shriekings of the other works of contemporary Apocalypse...
...Thus are we relegated to damnation...
...Hence, a philosophical critique is most convincing...
...Killing is in Skinner's world an absolute sin, and so he divests man of the dignity that demands that he fight and sacrifice for something nobler than existence...
...that a show of conservative strength in the primaries can move the President to a more resolute defense policy, and a less resolute war against the free market...
...Man, in short, becomes a creature devoid of the dignity we have associated with him, and a creature without any real purpose for living, except that he is already alive...
...In fact, Skinner is a serious thinker...
...Thus it will offer a kind of protection to American industries which make products that were being undersold by imports...
...Man is a creature composed of atoms that are animated into forms of observable behavior...
...As I write it is not clear what this means, economically...
...that the fate of this movement is inextricably entwined with that of the Republican Party...
...he could swallow the "check off" and thereby strengthen his political enemies, or he could veto the tax bill, and thereby cripple his economic program...
...It seems to be written with the dispassionate view of a serious thinker...
...And, since the internal logic is so rigorous, only two approaches are really left to the critic: the philosophic disputation, arguing against 1he premises, and the pragmatic disputation, arguing against the conclusions...
...Devaluation only makes sense relative to other currencies...
...This potential development is the Ashbrook Insurgency...
...Or, more exactly, the Democrats' bird in the hand suddenly became an elusive bird in a bush...
...They do not know how much of that vote there now is, nor bow much can be generated, but they would prefer to have it divided between two splinter candidates...
...that the worst possible tragedy is a Republican President who is not pure as the driven snow...
...Box 932, Bloomington, Ind...
...Santayana runs through the rigors of skepticism with his own compelling Just IssuedNew Books "MOVING WEST OF THE APPALACHIANS" 1760-1818, Indian Battles, Tribes, Old Forts, Buffalo Trails, Stage Lines & Trading Posts...
...Yet Skinner leaves us Without interest or even happiness, for while we shall be presumably contented, happiness could not be known in this world: even as Milton argued about good and evil, we know happiness by means of sadness...
...This was attached to the tax bill which the President says he needs for the implementation of Phase If...
...that Nixon must be defeated...
...Ergo, III...
...In place of that primitive notion, Skinner argues the case of the controlled man, alleging that we are already controlled by our environment, though we do not recognize that, and that the myth of the autonomous man can only lead to greater difficulties and more patchwork solutions...
...Devaluation is going to make imports more expensive...
...The last is perhaps the most important aspect, for no where is the need for empiricism explained, nor Skinner's compulsion in its pursuit delineated...
...But Skinner is not so easily rebutted as that: for perhaps we are nothing more than supreme animals...
...Philosophers are the best and only qualified people to lead society in pursuit of wisdom...
...Since sadno~ would be impossible in tlls worla, so would happiness...
...It will be slightly inflationary...
...The most ardent supporters will be those whose aim is to ensure the defeat of the President...
...indeed, he seems to have absorbed all extant notions of the apocalypse and its causes, for he too argues the existence of a tragic flaw in history...
...Hence, his thesis is presented with only the trappings, and little of the substance, of the apocalyptic literature now in vogue...
...Very simply, Skinner argues that the dilemmas of modern man are created by the misconception that man is an autonomous creature who makes decisions...
...If nothing else, life should be interesting...
...Another strain arises, though, to place Skinner in full perspective...
...And such a contest must surely be a seeking after immortality...
...Unlike Charles Reich or Jean-Francois Revel, the psychologist Skinner concludes not that his is the only solution because of the narrowing of options, but that his is the only correct and empirically consistent system...
...The Democrats thought they had the President between a rock and a hard place...
...Beyond Freedom and Dignity will provoke its share of debate: which is all well and good, for it will force us (I think) to remember again what man is...
...Compiled by Harry Emerick $1.50 each postage paid Special quantity discounts to dealers HARRY F. EMERICK P.O...
...The Senator wanted to del~y the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee William H. Rehnquist...
...Congressman Ashbrook of Ohio may challenge the President in several In The Land Of The White Rats" Republican primaries...
...Hence, freedom is nothing more than avoidance from those things painful or displeasing, and dignity is nothing more than a reinforcement of "good" behavior...
...conservatively speaking...
...Skinner Alfred Knopf Inc., $6.95 "DHILOSOPHERS," Karl Marx I ! wrote, "'have made the'world...
...pragmatism and its acceptance of "operative truth...
...No other value must conflict with this desire and that leads to the only moral precept in Beyond Freedom arid Dignity: Thou shalt not kill, or, alternately, Thou shalt exist...
...And eventually, in our secular world, the psychologist-king replaces the philosopher-king...
Vol. 5 • February 1972 • No. 5
