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Beyond Freedom & Dignity
by B. F. Skinner
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Inc (2002-03)
ISBN: 0872206289
EAN: 9780872206281
Dewy Decimal #: 150.19434
Hardcover: 240 pages
Edition: Revised
SKU: 25647
Condition: Very Good
Comments: THE HARDBACK BOOK! KNOPF, 1972. THE UNABRIDGED 1ST EDITION. Early print. HARDCOVER WITH GILT LETTERING, DUST JACKET AND PAGES ARE IN FINE CONDITION, CLEAN AND TIGHT. Rapid shipping. Air Mail.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In this profound and profoundly controversial work, a landmark of 20th-century thought originally published in 1971, B. F. Skinner makes his definitive statement about humankind and society. Insisting that the problems of the world today can be solved only by dealing much more effectively with human behavior, Skinner argues that our traditional concepts of freedom and dignity must be sharply revised. They have played an important historical role in our struggle against many kinds of tyranny, he acknowledges, but they are now responsible for the futile defense of a presumed free and autonomous individual; they are perpetuating our use of punishment and blocking the development of more effective cultural practices. Basing his arguments on the massive results of the experimental analysis of behavior he pioneered, Skinner rejects traditional explanations of behavior in terms of states of mind, feelings, and other mental attributes in favor of explanations to be sought in the interaction between genetic endowment and personal history. He argues that instead of promoting freedom and dignity as personal attributes, we should direct our attention to the physical and social environments in which people live. It is the environment rather than humankind itself that must be changed if the traditional goals of the struggle for freedom and dignity are to be reached. Beyond Freedom and Dignity urges us to reexamine the ideals we have taken for granted and to consider the possibility of a radically behaviorist approach to human problems-one that has appeared to some incompatible with those ideals, but which envisions the building of a world in which humankind can attain its greatest possible achievements.
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Customer Reviews
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A good book to go to sleep with.
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-01-30
1 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Near the beginning of this book, BF Skinner notes that the language may be stilted and confusing, because he's talking about things for which there is no precise language.
Oh dear sweet lord, he's right.
This is a book of ideas. Some are lousy, based on his overgeneralizations from his own research. Some seem to foresee developments in the biology of the mind and brain. And some are downright revolutionarily brilliant.
An example of the latter? The conceit that there is no such thing as a person who is beyond control or influence. Denying such a thing - as proponents of freedom try to do - allows that control to be used for evil. Instead of denying control, we should examine it all, so that we can better determine what exactly is going on.
Or the brilliant quotation: "A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying."
Ultimately, the points of brilliance (or points of intriguing wrongness, since even his lousiest points are ones that make you think) are not enough to salvage the sheer impenetrableness of this text. Drink a lot of coffee while reading this text; you'll need it.
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Brilliant
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-01-20
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a very contoversial book, as are the teachings of Dr. Skinner. All college students at the least, haven taken Psychology 101, have been introduced to his pigeon conditioning. What makes this book controversial is his basic premise of the age-old question of free will vs. determinism. He is a behavioral determinist, and with that would reduce the violence, etc., of society by education and training (conditioning); however, since the majority of the population is very firm in their belief of free will, the brilliance of this psychologist and how society can benefit gets dissed. He must have felt like a modern day Copernicus saying for the first time that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Give him a hundred years to be famous.
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I'm Glad Skinner Did Not Become A Writer
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-10-12
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "The people on planet Earth are the only ones who think they have free will". Like other reviewers I am amazed that we live in a cause and effect world yet people still think we are exempt. The only logical explanation is that people are conditioned to acccept these irrational beliefs, yet nobody accepts conditioning as an explanation(Catch-22). Because of this misunderstanding and the fact that many of us are not even exposed to scientific evidence this book is the most important book of our time. To solve problems we have to understand human behavior. This book provides the tools to gain this understanding. Unfortunately it is not a page turner, but everyone needs to read this book to allow humanity the chance to prosper. I know most people want to think the earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth, and people have free will, but that is only because we have experienced a chaotic illogical education, if we are going to learn by experience why not learn based on evidence.
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little substance, annoying to read, and laughably dated
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-08-08
12 out of 27 customers found this reveiw helpful
First let me say that aside from any of the ideas presented, this book deserves a low rating just because of how horribly it is written. Skinner has no real style and simply rattles of declarative sentences at such a monotonous pace that I was practically tearing my hair out at the end of the book. And for all the mechanistic nature of his writing, he's suprisingly inept at conveying a point.
But getting to the ideas contained therein. This book combines the very shaky "science" of behaviorism with the silliest doomsday rhetoric that was so typical of the decades following the invention of the atomic bomb. Skinner starts off by talking about how horrible the human race has thus far managed itself, how we are in danger at any second of annihilating ourselves. This kind of alarmism was probably very convincing in the 70s, but it hardly has any force with reasonable people today, who realize that, despite our flaws, we seem to be pretty good at surviving. Skinner then goes into the meat of his book, which is pretty much summed up by saying, "There is no circumstance under which humans are not controlled. It's just a matter of the form the control takes, and there's no such thing as an autonomous agent inside us. We need to accept that and engineer the perfect society by devising ways of control that are better."
If you read those three sentences, you don't really need to read "Beyond Freedom & Dignity," but for those who are curious, I'll say a few more words, mainly criticism. The first criticism is that, of course, Skinner just constantly and tediously repeats that it is an established scientific "fact" it is that we are purely products of the environment (whether personally or through evolution) without justifying it very well. Paradoxically, he admits that the science of human behavior is poorly developed compared to, say, biology and physics, and in fact hasn't progressed much since Aristotle. He is oblivious to this contradiction. On the one hand, he wants it to be certain and unquestioned that a human can be completely explained by his science. On the other, his science is underdeveloped (because people have not accepted that it is true yet). He seems to think that behaviorist science does not need any sophistication or development in order for it's most weighty premise--that humans have no autonomy--to be an accepted fact. Skinner puts the cart before the horse.
The second criticism is that Skinner never really gets down to any even slightly useful details on what his Utopia will look like. His excuse is, again, that behaviorist science is still not developed enough, I guess. But it seems like someone who says, "We must change our culture so that it has the best possible effect on our lives" isn't really saying anything profound. In other words, his dramatic plan for the human race reduces to nothing more than saying, "Let's do things better." In a book of 200 pages, Skinner really doesn't give much information at all. It's worth mentioning that after every chapter he gives a short one-paragraph summary of the ideas in that chapter. He could have simply published those summaries and retained about 90% of the real content of his book.
Thirdly, Skinner is oblivious to the inherent contradictions in his position. If man is just a product of his environment, with no real autonomy, no inherent ability to act in and of himself, then how can we even "plan" anything for the future? If a superior culture does develop, it cannot be considered anything but a happy accident. It can't even be considered "happy," since that term implies some inner agent who is happy. I guess we would just say, "It would be favorable for the participants."
There is something just simply idiotic in saying, "We should design a better culture, because none of us have free will and are just products of our culture." I suppose Skinner only wrote his book due to the stimulus of his environment and thus can't be blamed for the inconsistency... But the point I'm making is that in order to act for positive change, you have to feel like you have some autonomous capacity to change things.
All in all, the book is rather dated. The idea of man as simply a machine that converts stimulus to response, with emotions and thoughts (if they exist at all) as mere side effects is absurd to anyone who does a little introspection instead of, say, studying figures on how incomes and education relate to robbery convictions. And the doomsday scenarios that motivate the work are much less compelling (to reasonable people, at least) than they used to be. I don't recommend this book unless you have some scholarly need to read it. On final reflection, it appears to me as simply an attempt by Skinner to profit off the anxieties of his times rather than an earnest attempt at offering useful knowledge to mankind.
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Critique
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-05-29
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I will admit, I was somewhat skeptical when I began reading Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity. I expected Skinner's writing to be adamant and presumptuous in dealing with human nature as a stimulus-response reaction. Skinner's ideas and views, however, are highly credible and not as "radical" as one would think those of a radical behaviorist might be. I have condensed Skinner's book into a brief synopsis and personal reaction of five sections: technology of behavior, freedom and dignity, punishment and alternatives, evolution and design of culture, and the idea of man.
Skinner begins this book with an overview of behavioral technology. He points out that the physical and biological sciences have solved any problems facing human nature though the utilization of technology. A similar type technology should be applied to behavior though a scientific analysis as opposed to abstract concepts such as states of mind and feelings. At this point, Skinner transits the responsibility from autonomous man to the environment.
One would assume that the goal of any first chapter in a book would be to grasp the reader's attention. This is exactly what this does. I am reminded of Hippocratic doctrine of the four humors when Skinner discusses early biological science. He compares the early physical and biological sciences to modern behavioral science. I am also intrigued, because Skinner begins to discuss potential ways to use behavioral technology to create a utopian society.
The next sections deal with freedom and dignity. Skinner states that the literature on freedom has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings. Skinner defines the struggle for freedom as the avoidance of or escape from aversive features of the environment. Skinner also states that people commonly recognize the concept of dignity as a person's worth when deserving credit for actions. However, when people are the products of their environments, dignity should not be a concern, because ultimately, people are not autonomous.
Again, I found there to be much validity in Skinner's writings. What is interesting is that there are schools of thought built entirely around the concept of freedom (e.g., existentialism), stressing its importance. Skinner claims that no creatures possess free will; this is very bold statement. I also found his views of dignity interesting. He claims that more dignity is given to individuals when the causes of their achievements are less conspicuous. In retrospective, I find this to be mostly true.
Skinner then begins to discuss punishment and alternatives to punishment. He points out that the most commonly used technique for constructing, or manipulating, human behavior is negative reinforcement and punishment. According to Skinner, these punitive techniques can be maladaptive. He then explains that nonpunitive contingencies (e.g., positive reinforcement) are commendable alternatives to negative reinforcement and punishment.
I agree with Skinner's claim that nonpunitive contingencies are not commonly used to mold behavior, because this would somehow be viewed by society as manipulative, which subsequently, would reduce freedom. In turn, punishment is not viewed as "controlling;" people still have the option to choose. He gave much evidence to support this, and these comments, in my opinion, are true. However, I did not particularly like the way that Skinner made the assertion that positive reinforcement could be used to better society. I did not like this, because he said nothing to back up this claim. An entire chapter of this book was devoted to potential alternatives to punishment but never was an alternative created other than the broad category of positive reinforcement. In addition, I do not agree with Skinner's belief that those who defend the literature of freedom and dignity are those who attempt to control, or manipulate, people. I am not even sure why this was stated, and again, there is no evidence to support this statement in his book.
Skinner then focuses on the evolution and design of a culture. He compares the evolution of a culture to the evolution of a species. Basically, both culture and species propagate those traits which lead to better or longer survival. In his design of a culture, he basically applies most of the previous concepts. He states that in his design, different cultures would be separated geographically with no form of authoritarian government and people would be very frugal and economic (i.e., they would produce only what was needed and would only consume small, practical potions of the natural resources).
I particularly enjoyed Skinner's application of evolution to culture. I found his design of a culture to be interesting but not particularly impressive. It is too simplistic, much like the utopian designs that Skinner initially criticizes. I do agree with Skinner's belief that a science of behavior could and should be exercised in creating a culture.
Skinner then focuses the last portion of his book on a question: what is man? He explains that the role of environment does not abolish man. It abolishes the autonomous, inner man. He claims that this understanding is would lead to scientific progress. He also states that man is not a passive product of the environment, because the environment is ultimately of man's own making.
This last section is basically a redundancy of previous concepts. It did serve, however, as an effective closing for his arguments. One thing I might point out is that I did not particularly care for his statement that man is controlled by his/her environment and, at the same time, man is responsible for his/her environment. This seems to me like a very circular explanation (i.e., a is the cause of b, and b is the cause of a) that was just inserted to please some of the more anti-behaviorist readers.
Overall, Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a very persuasive book with some very innovative concepts. I can reluctantly, but honestly, admit that I cannot entirely refute any off his proclamations. Skinner does not deny the role of nature or of cognitive processes in his assumptions, which is something that I did not come to expect in reading this book. I have, however, pointed out a few slight weaknesses in his arguments. After finishing this book, I am fully aware as to why this book is deemed a classic in the scientific community.
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