Beyond the Carrot and the Stick: A Behaviorological Rejoinder to Rakos

In a rejoinder to Rakos (1989), I discuss three inter-related problems: scientifically inappropriate reductionism, a culturally biased concept of human nature, and a bourgeois view of capitalism and socialism. I argue that these three problems result from the Cartesian (positivistic) world outlook in which the part is held to be ontologically prior to the whole, a pervasive philosophical perspective which has also retarded the development of a natural science of human behavior. In response to Rakos' pronouncement that socialism is contrary to human nature, I offer as counter evidence the revolutionary achievements of Cuba's current reform program called rectification. In his article, "Socialism, Behavior Theory, and the Egalitarian Society", Richard Rakos (1989) continues the theme he introduced in the preceding issue of this journal (Rakos, 1988a)that capitalism is consistent with behavior theory while socialism violates many of its tenets. I (Ulman, 1988) argued that his reasoning was irreparably flawed by the conceptual error of reductionism and that his assessments of capitalism and socialism w ere counterfactual, basing my conclusio n on the contrast between the economic reform programs of the Soviet Union (perestroika) and Cuba (rectification). Immediately following my reply, Rakos (1988b) offered a one-page rebuttal, which he subsequently expanded to article length (Rakos, 1989). In defense of both socialism and th e natural scienc e of behavior, I submit the present rejoinde r. I entitle it "Beyon d the Carr ot and the Stick" in reactio n to his culturall y bias ed caricature of "human nature" the inevitable resu lt of hi s faulty reductionistic theorizing . I wish to make clear at the sta rt, how ever , tha t I do not believe Rakos' antisocialist argu m ent s to be intentionally malicious (as we might expect from a propagandist in the U.S. State Depa rtm ent). Rather , n otin g Rakos' self-report that his conclusio n s caused him p ersonal pain , I hope my rejoinder will alleviate his pain (a) by showing that his antisocialist conclusion follows quite pre dictably from his misconception of the science of beha vior and (b) by offering an alternative perspective on socialism grounded on the actual course of history in today's world the continuing advances of the Cuban revolution. The claims Rakos (1989) makes about human behavior in the name of behavior analysis is precisely why I no longer consider myself a behavior analyst and why I am now working to help build separate discipline of behaviorology (see Fraley, 1987; Fraley & Vargas, 1986). Based on the philosophy of radical behaviorism, behaviorology may be defined as "the natural life science of the functional relations that produce changes in the behavior of individuals during their lifetimes" (Ledoux & Fraley, in press). Behaviorology investigates "the effects of physical, biological, behavioral, and cultural variables on the behavior of organisms, with selection by consequences being the most important causal mode relating these variable at different levels of organization in the life sciences" (Statement of Purpose of the International Beha viorology Association, quoted from the association's brochure) . From this description, we can see what falls within the domain ofbehaviorology (the above stated determinants of behavior) and what is excluded from that domain (all mentalistic and cognitive variables) . Behavior analysis is an unremittingly ambiguous designation and its domain is pervious to all kinds of constructs. Is behavior analysis just a methodology , merely a set of procedures for analyzing behavior? Is it part of psycholo gy ? Does it include cognitive variables? And what is its un derlying philosophy is it radical, methodological, paradigmatic, emergent, cognitive, or inter-behavio rism? A quic k glan ce through articles published in The Behavior Analyst ( th e official journal of the Associatio n for Beha vior Ana lysis) will make obvious the fact that the re are sh arp differences of opinion on these matters among tho se w riters who call themselves beh avior analysts. It app ear s that behavio r analysis has become open to all sorts of int erpretations con cerning causes of behavior an d th at eclecticism has beco me its guiding philosophy . Rakos (1989) is a typica l member of the beha vior analytic community. To illustrate my ass essment, I have culled from his article several claims tha t I believe no beha vior ologist would endorse: political anal ysis cannot be scientific, concepts at a lower level of analysis explain phenom ena existing at a higher level, short-term consequences are nece sI thank Stephen Ledoux for his helpful comments. Reprints may be obtained from Jerry Ulman, Department of Special Education, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306. sarily more potent than long-term consequences or rules, satiation on primary or conditioned reinforcers functions as an aversive stimulus that prompts escape and avoidance behavior (a kind of Hullian drive-reduction hypothesis), modeling conditions secondary reinforcers, behavior is influenced by vicarious/cognitive processes, and psychology is our discipline . Additionally, Rakos reifies operant concepts (e.g., the matching law, metacongingencies, rules, equivalence classes), transforming them into things rather than relations, and employs them in arbitrary ways in order to support his syllogistic argument (as though they were so many toy soldiers, all lined up to slay the socialist monster) a practice that is far removed from a functional analysis of behavior. What he actually gives us is a view of human behavior from the standpoint of positivistic methodological behaviorism, not radical behaviorism. Rakos' faulty view of science is paralleled by his misinformed conception of socialism or more exactly, socialism informed by bourgeois ideology. Further, I would argue that these two errors are intimately connected, that his faulty conception of science and socialism come from a lifetime of exposure to capitalist culture. The corrupting influence of capitalist culture on the development of science in particular, the pervasive influence of the bourgeois philosophy known as positivism (especially its more reactionary form, pragmatism) is most endemic in the life sciences (see Levins & Lowentin, 1985). The influence of positivism is manifest in Rakos' (1989, also 1988a and 1988b) theorizing, most notably in the form of Cartesian reductionism and its derivative, atomistic individualism. In the Cartesian world, that is, the world as a clock, phenomena are the consequences of the coming together of individual atomistic bits, each with its own intrinsic properties, determining the behavior of the system as a whole. The lines of causality run from part to whole, from atom to molecule, from molecule to organism, from organism to collectively. As in society, so in all of nature, the part is ontologically prior to the whole. (Levin, & Lewontin, 1985, pp. 1-2) The methodology of Cartesian reductionism" entails cutting it [the subject matter] up into bits and pieces (perhaps only conceptually) and reconstructing the properties of the system from the parts of the parts so produced" (p. 3). Further, "Cartesian reductionism is more than simply a method of investigation; it is a commitment to how things really are" (p. 2); one feeds off of the other. Levins and Lewontin describe the crippling effect this ideology has had on the growth of biology. I suggest that it has had an even more pernicious effect on the science of behavior Rakos' analysis serving as a prime example. The irony is that those writers most affected by this ideology are typically the most vocal in eschewing "political ideology" in defense of their view of" science." Again, Rakos' scientistic aphorisms serve as a case in point . BEYOND THE CARROT AND STICK I Jerume D. Wman I 31 While we may not be able to escape from the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, we can examine its consequences and construct a philosophy that facilitates scientific progress in spite of its influence. To this end, for several years I have explored the relationship between philosophies of radical behaviorism and dialectical materialism (e.g., Ulman, 1979, 1986) perhaps the two most misunderstood and maligned philosophies ever developed. Although the number of people in the world who are committed to both philosophies could probably all fit into a mini-van, the more I continue with this project the more I am convinced that not only are these two scientific philosophies compatible but one is irremediably handicapped without the other. For example, without radical behaviorism, dialectical materialists will never be able to resolve the co-called mind-body problem in a consistently materialistic manner . And without dialectical materialism, radical behaviorists will never be able to adequately cope with the multivious harmful effects of Cartesian reductionism. What, then, does the philosophy of dialectical materialism have to offer students of behavior? I would not presume to give an acceptable account in a paragraph or two (see Kolbe, 1978; Ulman, 1979). For the purpose of this rejoiner, however, perhaps it will suffice to quote Engels' (1877/1972) assessment that "for the first time the whole worldnatural, historical, intellectual-is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connections that make a continuous whole of all the movement and development" (p. 41). As it applies to the evolution of human culture (i.e., historical materialism), Engels related that with the dialectical perspective "the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence ... but as the process of evolution of man himself" (pp. 41-42). This perspective provides us with a comprehensive and viable framework for conducting our scientific work; that is, to follow the evolution of the process of change through all of its manifold and convoluted paths, "to trance out the inner law running through all is apparently accidental phenomena" (Engels, 1877/1972, p. 42). I suggest that when the process of material change arrives at the point of living processes from self-replicating viruses to globespanning human cultures the two philosophies, dialectical materialism and radical behaviorism, begin to fused . The inner law Engels discussed, when examined within the life sciences, appears to correspond to the causal mode Skinner (1981) refers to as selection vy consequences. Further, I believe that this perspective is vastly superior to that vacuous world view called contextualism (as in Hayes, 1988) that Rakos so admires (cf. Natetov, 1984, pp . 433-448). I have made this brief digression into the philosophy of science because I think it is crucial in understanding the many errors Rakos has made in his analysis of the relation 32 / Jerome D. Ulman I BEYOND THE CARROT AND STICK between socialism and "behavior theory" (or what I term behaviorology). Although he does not appear to be aware of it himself, his world view, founded in Cartesian reductionism, has predictably led him astray from the natural science approach to the study of life processes and to view human nature in an extremely culturally biased way (i.e., human as commodity consumers). Consequently, I am obliged to counterpose his view to what I hold to be the more scientifically sound perspective, one founded on dialectical materialism and radical behaviorism. With these different perspective in mind, we can now consider some of the specific problems contained in his analysis. I will first consider Rakos' advocacy of reductionism and then his conception of human nature. Citing the logical positivist Ernest Nagel (1961) as his authority, Rakos (1988b, 1989) argues that the formal requirement for reduction is that all theoretical expressions in the higher order theory must connect with expressions in the lower order theory. Concepts at the lower level can then be used to explain the higher level phenomena. He contends that such an explanation concerns the actual functioning of the higher level phenomenon but not necessarily why it exists. Thus, according to Rakos, we can describe the functioning of the higher level system without referring to the lower level system, but to explain the higher level system requires reductionism to the lower levels. When Rakos applies this type of reductionism to socialism, for example, he asserts that it doesn't ignore the associated social, political, and economic phenomena; rather, it specifies the behavioral conditions under which these phenomena occur. He gives as justification for the reduction of the socialist environment to a behavior analysis at the level of individuals the supposed critical role that individual behavior plays in the metacontingency (Glenn, 1986). Rakos then jumps to the conclusion that because the metacontingency consequence is weak, the planned metacontingencies in the socialist environment have simply failed to increase productive behavior. The problem with Rakos' conclusion is more serious than the obvious logical error of his question begging. As Maull (1984) points out, such reductionism is limited in at least two crucial ways: "First, it confines our attention to relations between theories and, as a consequence, .. . [tends] to blur theories and branches of science" (p. 511). Thus, "Nagel talks about 'reductionism' of a branch of science as if it were simply a matter of reducing the comprehensive theory of that branch!" (Maull, 1984, p. 511). An arbitrary conflation indeed! "Second, in Nagel's account, derivation [of one theory from another through reductionism] is taken to be the essential relation between theories ... [when] such connections are actually hypotheses about the relationship between different areas of investigation" (p. 511). Nagel's, amd Rakos', kind of reductionism restricts our attention to deductive relations between theories. "Not only does the [reductive] model fail as an adequate description of particular research developments, but it also fails as a description of long-term tendencies in science" (p. 512). If Rakos fully accepts his reductionistic argument, he would have to agree with Baerend (1984) that such concepts as contingencies of reinforcement are merely stop-gap terms on the way toward a complete physiological account behavior. For behaviorologists, however, descriptions of physiological processes inform us about physiological processes but tell us little about the social behavior of humans. And for scientific socialists, descriptions of the behavior of individuals inform us about individual behavior but tell us little about the revolutionary transformation of societies. There is one kind of reductionism, however, that is not only permissible but potentially valuable as a guide for scientific work. It applies when dealing with hierarchically organized biological systems: protein molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, population, species, and social systems. Campbell (1974) refers to this reductionistic principle as downward causation: "Where natural selection operates through the life and death at higher levels of organization, the laws of the higher-level selective system determine in part the distribution of lower-level events" (p. 180). Thus, for example, the jaws of a soldier ant and the distribution of RNA protein therein require for their explanation certain laws of sociology centering on the selective advantage of the division of labor within the social organization of army ants (Campbell, 1974). The principle of downward causation applies just as much to the social evolution of human cultures. The behavior of an individual (the lower-level event) is in part determined by the laws of historical movement of human social formations (the high-level selective system) exactly the opposite of Rakos' reductionistic conclusion. Let us now move on to consider Rakos' conception of human nature. He endows an atomistic individual with an essentially nonhuman behavioral repertoire, again the inevitable result of his Cartesian reductionism. His conception of human nature conforms to the dictum of that classical individualist philosopher, John Stuart Mill: "Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance" (cited in Carr, 1961, p. 36). To which the historian E.H. Carr replies, Of course not. But the fallacy is to suppose that they existed or had any kind of substance before 'being . brought together .' As soon as we are born, the world gets to work on us and transforms us from merely biological into social units. Every human being at every stage of history or pre-history is born into a society and from his earliest years is molded by that society. The language he speaks is not an individual inheritance, but a social acquisition from the group in which he grows up. Both language and environment help determine the character of his thought; his earliest ideas come to him from others. (pp. 36-37) Carr states that it is a serious error to suppose an antithesis between the individual and society. The development of the individual and the development of society condition each other. Consequently, "that elusive entity 'human nature' has varied so much from country to country and from century to century that it is difficult not to regard it as a historical phenomenon shaped by prevailing social conditions and conventions" (p. 38). Carr concludes that these very obvious facts have been obscured from us by the remarkable and exceptional period of history in which we live, one in which "the cult of individualism is one of the most pervasive of modem myths" (p. 39). Rakos' bourgeois conception of human nature exemplifies the pervasiveness of that myth. According to his "behavior analysis," humans are essentially consuming organisms under the total control of the immediate consequences of the carrot and the stick. He gives us the Madison A venue advertising executive's view of human nature: an individual who cares only about getting ahead of others, making more and more money, conspicuously displaying status symbols which make him the envy of the neighborhood, and becomming transfixed by the television tube which tells him about the latest commodity he should run out and buy. At the same time, he overlooks the use of the stick in capitalist culture motivating worker productivity by the continual threat of unemployment (and where "freedom" to borrow a lyric from the late Janis Joplin "means nothing else to lose"). In short, Rakos reduces the human being to that of a mediator between the exchange of commodities and money. Social relationships become relationships between thing the bourgeois orientation to the world that Marx aptly described as commodity fetishism (see Ulman, 1988). Certainly, few anthropologists would subscribe to Rakos' culturally biased view of human nature . For behaviorologists, "human nature" is the synthetized product of the interactions of cultural, environmental, and biological determinants of human behavior. Behaviorologists reject the two extremes of environmental determinism and biological determinism. The individual is essentially the locus of these biological, environmental, and cultural variables. What most distinguishes humans from nonhumans is our" social nature" which we acquire through a lifetime of participation in a particular verbal community. Our evolved biological capacity for verbal behavior (i.e., the structure of our vocal apparatus) made possible (and at the same time resulted from) another kind of evolution, that of cultu ral evolution, both being caused by the process of selection (Skinner, 1981). And as I previously suggested, "the most remarkable feature of the social component of 'human nature' is its incompleteness, it s being an unfinished and malliable product of culture and at the same time the locus of all cultural transforma tions" (Ulman, 1988, p . 26). BEYOND THE CARROT AND STICK I Jerome D. Ulman I 33 I will complete this rejoinder by shifting the focus from my concern about the science of behavior to a polemical defense of the Cuban revolution against Rako's (1988a, 1988b, 1989) unsubstantiated charges . While many of his criticisms of socialist countries are valid, Cuba is the exception to Rakos' rule . It only takes one black swan to prove that not all swans are white. Celebrating the accomplishments of 30 years of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro (1989) reports that in Cuba illiteracy has been eliminated, infant mortality rate is similar to that of the U.S., tuberculosis rate is below that of the U.S., and by the end of 1989 Cuba will have met its needs for polyclinics and special education. Additionally, the Cuban economy over the past 30 years has grown at a rate higher than 4 percent per yearin spite of the aggressive U.S. economic blockade. Castro cities many other accomplishments of the Cuban revolution too numerous to list here . "But the [U.S.] empire tries to deny everything," Castro observes. "It's in its interest to say that the revolution is not prospering ... in order to promote the idea that socialism is a failure"