behavioural processes volume 75 issue 2 2007 [doi 10.1016%2fj.beproc.2007.02.016] charles p. shimp...

8/10/2019 Behavioural Processes Volume 75 Issue 2 2007 [Doi 10.1016%2Fj.beproc.2007.02.016] Charles P. Shimp -- Quantit

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Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

Quantitative behavior analysis and human values

Charles P. Shimp

Department of Psychology, 380 South 1530 East, Rm 502, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0251, United States

Abstract

Many scientists believe that among the virtues of quantitative science are that its facts are free from personal, social, political, economic, and

other cultural influences, or at least, if they are not, they should be. Radical behaviorism suggests, however, that a science of behavior must apply

to peoples everyday professional behaviors, including those of quantitative behavior analysts. The behaviors of quantitative behavior analysts,

however, like the behaviors of everyone else, depend on the cultures to which they belong. A quantitative science of behavior must therefore

describe and explain the cultural and human values of quantitative behavior analysts. In this sense, a quantitative science of behavior must apply

to itself. No such reflexive behavior analysis currently exists and its development might shed considerable light on the basic nature of behavioranalysis.

2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Reflexive behavioral analysis; Human values

Scientists generally believe that science, especially quanti-

tative science, offers a path to knowledge about the human

condition that is fundamentally different from that offered by

art, literature, politics, and music. Questions have long been

raised about the origin and legitimacy of this belief, however,

and I personally have come to question it for two reasons.First, behavioral science, experimental psychology, and

quantitative analyses, as I have experienced them, have involved

implicit and unevaluated assumptions, incomplete descriptions

of empirical and theoretical methods, self-interest and conflicts

of interest, strongly held opinion accepted as fact, and political

conflicts and angry disputes, and I have come to see my own

contributions as having been only too human. Science offers no

data on how it is practiced that compel me to believe it is dif-

ferent in these ways from the human condition in general, and I

cannot find scientific justification for the conventional hope that

science hassome property, as yetnot understood, that guarantees

that if errors are made due to scientists being human, ultimately

these errors will be replaced by truth.Second, I think it is an interesting and appealing feature of

radical behaviorism that it asserts that if we are to understand

science, the behavior of scientists has to be part of the sub-

ject matter of a science of behavior. This assertion opposes the

more conventional view that the scientific method can and must

Tel.: +1 801 581 8483; fax: +1 801 581 5841.

E-mail address:[email protected].

remove the human, subjective, value-laden component from our

knowledge of the natural world. This conventional view has the

problem that there is no scientifically compelling account, logi-

cal account, historical account, or any other kind of account, of

the scientific method. That is, science does not seem to under-

stand itself very well, and what understanding we have seems toinvolve hope and belief as well as scientific knowledge. Put dif-

ferently, . . .science is not some exalted, incorrigible, Platonic

domain of Truth, but a human activity. . ., controlled by history

and circumstances and consequences (Marr, 1985, p. 137), and,

The Skinnerian will certainly be sympathetic to the view that,

like other operants, scientific verbal behavior is controlled by its

consequences (Marr, 1985,p. 132).

1. Quantitative analysts of behavior have not yet

provided a behavioral analysis of their own behavior

Herbert Simon wrote in the Forward to a book (Klahr, 2000)

titled Exploring Science, Some forty years ago came the begin-

nings of the so-called cognitive revolution, which gradually

diverted psychology from the dominant behaviorist framework

toward three new directions: a concern with a wider range of

tasks than were then in common experimental use, an interest in

the specific information processes within the human head that

convert stimulus into response, and a tolerance for a wider range

of methods of observation and experiment than were admitted

by behaviorism (Simon, 2000,p. ix). The book for which this

is the Forward describes empirical studies on components of

0376-6357/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2007.02.016
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C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155 147

scientific thinking and scientific discovery. Immediately after

Simons Forward, the editor Klahr (2000, p. xi) in his

preface quoted Skinner, Here was a first principle not for-

mally recognized by scientific methodologists; When you run

onto something interesting, drop everything else and study it

(Skinner, 1956,p. 223).

Simons and Skinners positions are sharply different, with

one being formal and mechanistic in the sense that it invokes

the information processing metaphor from computer science,

and the other being informal and human in the sense that it

describesimpulsive behavior anddoes so in plain English. These

positions correspond to two opposing views on the nature of

science: one holds that science can and must be objective, and

the other holds that it inescapably involves human values such

as what one feels is interesting. This contrast has been noted

numerous times before in discussions of behaviorism (Catania,

1993; Hackenberg, 1993; Marr, 1984, 1985; Staddon, 1993),

with some advocating the former position and some advocat-

ing the latter. The former position gives little attention to how

the behavior of behavior analysts involves human values whenthey develop, construct, and evaluate behavior analyses, includ-

ing quantitative behavioral analyses. Perhaps as a consequence,

there is no behavioral analysis, and especially not any quanti-

tativebehavioral analysis, of the behavior of behavior analysts.

(To shorten this kind of complex syntactic construction, I will

use the acronym SQAB to refer either to the Society for the

Quantitative Analysis of Behavior, to its members in general, or

to an individual participant in it. Context will make clear which

meaning is intended.) In short, SQABs have not yet developed

an analysis of the behavior of SQABs that satisfies the evalua-

tive standards of SQABs, and furthermore, it is unclear which

experimental methods and reinforcement contingencies couldprovide the data upon which such a quantitative analysis could

be based.

The absence of a SQAB model for SQAB behavior tells us

something about SQABs, who otherwise appreciate the value

of describing what they do, how they do it, and why they do it

the way they do it (Catania, 2002; Ferster, 2002; Skinner, 1979).

This interest in self-analysis presumably derives at least in part,

of course, from the role model we have of Skinners professional

interest in his own scientific behavior, corresponding to his view

that radical behaviorism, as the philosophy of the science of

behavior, demands that a behavioral analyst should examine

whether her behavior as behavior analyst conforms to it. When

Skinner described his own scientific behavior, that is, he wassimultaneously describing it from the perspective of a science of

behavior and indirectly from the philosophy of radical behavior-

ism. His descriptions of his own behavior from a philosophical

perspective never progressed beyond plain English. He never

even hinted at how he might construct a quantitative account of

his own scientific behavior that would be in agreement with rad-

ical behaviorism (see Killeen, 1999, for related comments about

implications of Skinners quantitative skills for the development

of the analysis of behavior). Let us call such a quantitative self-

analysis a reflexive behavior analysis. Such an analysis would

apply behavior analysis to the behavior of behavior analysts and

ultimately would apply quantitative analyses to the behavior of

SQABs. This is my first point: there is no quantitative analysis

of the behavior of behavior analysts. Put differently, by the stan-

dards SQABs use to evaluate their quantitative models, SQABs

know virtually nothing about what they are doing when they

develop quantitative models. By positivistic standards, that is

perfectly acceptable because model and researcher are entirely

different things, but by the standards of radical behaviorism,

that is unacceptable because model and researcher are interde-

pendent and neither can be understood without understanding

the other.

2. What is known about how SQABs behave

While there is no quantitative account of SQAB behavior,

behavior analysts have at least begun to develop a kind of folk

psychology of what they do, a pre-scientific kind of reflexive

behavior analysis, just by introspecting, remembering, and talk-

ing about, their own behaviors. An almost defining example is

Skinners informal description of his own scientific behavior

(Skinner, 1956). Another example is Fersters (2002)descrip-tion of how he and Skinner wrote Schedules of Reinforcement. A

third example is the series of case studies written a few years ago

by students who were at the pigeon lab at Harvard in the 1950s,

1960s and 1970s (e.g.,Catania, 2002).Dozens of behavior ana-

lystshave written these plainEnglish historical self-reports. This

kind of reconstruction of a scientists past scientific behavior is

a thriving area in the sociology and history of science, and it

may be the most common method by which behavior analysts

describe behavior of behavior analysts.

But notice two things, which jointly define mysecond point.

First, none of these analyses is experimental and in fact, it is not

yet clear how to translate any of them into any kind of reflex-ive experimental behavioral analysis research program. Some

are empirical in the sense that they deal with historical reality,

but none is experimental. Second, none hints at quantification

or acknowledges it would be possible in principle to develop a

quantitative analysis of the professional behaviors of a SQAB.

So far as I know, no behavior analyst has argued that a reflexive

behavior analysis is in principle impossible, although Staddon

(1993)has suggested that whether one is possible is beside the

point because it would be premature to try now to develop one.

In any case, behavior analysts are in practice conforming to

Herbert Simons portrayal of them, and are giving little atten-

tion to the development of quantitative analyses of the kinds of

complex scientific decision making and other forms of profes-sional scientific activity that would inform a reflexive behavior

analysis.

3. Thenecessityof a reflexive behavior analysis

The absence of a reflexive analysis of behavior is striking in

view of the implication of radical behaviorism that a reflexive

analysis of the behavior of SQABs is essential to the devel-

opment of a science of behavior that in turn is essential to an

understanding of the human condition. I conjecture that the prin-

cipal reason for this absence is the role model of the natural

sciences. The absence of a reflexive science of physics is to be


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148 C.P. Shimp / Behavioural Processes 75 (2007) 146155

expected because the conventional goal of physics is to exclude

the human element to the fullest extent possible in order to bet-

ter understand the natural world. In fact, to this day, perhaps

the most common way of viewing the science of psychology

is in terms of a philosophical perspective originally designed

for physics. It is a perspective grounded in impersonal logic,

rationality, parsimony, hypothesis testing, falsificationism, and

objectivity. It is the continuing impact of positivism on the prac-

tice of psychological science.

There is a misinterpretation of the role of observation in

modern physics that leads some psychologists to believe physics

no longer conforms to this position. In some circles, the Heisen-

berg principle is viewed as making physics and the physicist

an interacting system. This does not seem to me to reflect the

practice of high energyphysics,as represented in physics depart-

ments. Physics is not about the behavior of physicists. It is about,

for example, the impact of photons colliding with other parti-

cles on the behaviors of those particles. While a physicist

may have played a role in ensuring that photons struck those

particles, physics is not about the physicist, it is about particleinteractions. High energy physics texts are not full of equa-

tions describing the reinforcement contingencies operating on

the physicist who pressed a key on a computer keyboard that

set into motion processes resulting in photons interacting with

positrons. There is no such quantitative theory of the behavior of

physicists. The Heisenberg principle is important for showing

that particles cannot be studies in isolation. Their interactions

must be taken into account. It is not important for showing that

the behavior of physicists is part of physics. This perspective

excludes actual scientific behavior on the grounds that to include

it in the scientific method would be to acknowledge that sci-

ence inevitably has a human element. There is divided opinionaboutthe relation between this positivistic philosophyand actual

experimental methods in behavior analysis, but opinion is more

uniform thatradical behaviorism does not conform to positivistic

views (Catania, 1993; Hackenberg, 1993; Skinner, 1953; Smith,

1986).It does not reject a human element in a science of behav-

ior, and indeed, my third pointis that to understand a science

of behaviorrequiresus notto exclude the human element, and

requires us to understand actual, everyday, scientific practice,

including scientific thinking and the behavior of individual sci-

entists and the language they use (see alsoLewontin, 1991for

his example of how belief can and does affect science).

Empirical research on scientific behavior and on its devel-

opment and training is a booming part of contemporarypsychological science (Freedman and Smith, 1996; Tweney,

2004, as is the search for ways to understand and train the

psychological processes required for scientific discovery and

problem solving (Gholson et al., 1989; Gorman, 1992; Killeen,

2001; Klahr, 2000; Klahr and Simon, 1999; Kuhn et al., 1988;

Kuhn and Dean, 2005; Smith et al., 2002; Tweney et al.,

1981; Zimmerman, 2000). Most but not all of this empirical

research conforms to the philosophy of positivism and looks at

plausible components of scientific behavior within the context

of a broad information-processing, decision-making perspec-

tive. There has been relatively little effort among experimental

psychologists to use what they have learned to inform their

understanding of their own scientific behavior (for interesting

exceptions, seeFreedman and Smith, 1996; Smith et al., 2002).

In this sense, quantitative behavior analysts are in the same state

as experimental psychologists in general in terms of developing

a reflexive analysis. Neither group has progressed very far in

applying its work product to itself.

Psychologists who study actual scientific practice, and

attempt to develop methods to teach it to children and others,

have only seldom applied their findings to themselves because

they seem largely to accept the standards and methods of the

same positivistic philosophy of science that appears to guide

much of natural science. This same explanation does not apply,

however, to why SQABs have not applied its own methods to

itself, because it ostensibly is guided by radical behaviorism, not

positivism. Radical behaviorists are supposed to understand the

behavior of organisms, and that presumably means all behavior,

including scientific behavior, including even more specifically,

behavior of SQABs. So, I repeat my second and third points:

SQAB has not applied its own standards to an analysis of itself

but radical behaviorism says it should.Theapplication of behavior analysis to thebehavior of behav-

ior analysts by definition would reveal contingencies controlling

their behavior and explain why behavior analysts do what they

do in the laboratory and why they talk and write the way they

do. It might also facilitate better integration of basic and applied

behavior analysis because it is hard to tell what is basic and what

is applied when one is applying behavior analysis to behavior of

behavior analysts. It is applied in the sense that it extends a basic

science of behavior to everyday behavior of a special population,

behavior analysts, and it is basic in the sense that it clarifies the

social contingencies intrinsic to that science. Thus, a reflexive

behavior analysis blurs the distinction between basic and appliedbehavior analysis, and possibly even completely undermines it.

More broadly, a reflexive behavior analysis would inform our

understanding of the relation between scientific behavior and

other human behavior (Smith et al., 2002).

4. Can a reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior even

in principle be constructed?

Perhaps there is deeper reason why there is no reflexive

quantitative analysis of behavior than that SQABs follow the

path of natural science. Perhaps it is in principle impossible.

Just because radical behaviorism claims it is possible does

not guarantee it is. Perhaps conceptual and methodologicalincompatibilities between a quantitative behavior analysis and a

reflexive quantitative analysis are so severe that the two analyses

are not reconcilable.

Consider two facts. First, consider the first time a well articu-

lated quantitative model emerged from behavior analysis. Estes

(1950, 1959)was the first of Skinners students to develop and

elaborate a quantitative analysis of behavior. This first quan-

tification from the tradition of behavior analysis very quickly

evolved into a research program having experimental methods

and theoretical goals sharply different from those of behavior

analysis, as can be seen by comparingEstes (1959)withFerster

and Skinner (1957).Statistical learning theory can be seen as


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the original quantitative analysis of behavior, and it quickly

shifted from a commitment to the experimental and functional

analysis of the behavior of individual organisms to more con-

ventional methods in 20th century experimental psychology.

It involved an intentional use of formal logic, rationality, fal-

sificationism, parsimony, and objectivity. In these ways, this

original SQAB resembled physics more than a science guided

by radical behaviorism.Estes (1957)was concerned, for exam-

ple, about whether behavioral science more closely resembled

Newtonian or Maxwellian stages of development. So far as I am

aware, it showed no commitment to radical behaviorisms posi-

tion according to which a science of behavior must necessarily

extend to the behavior of behavioral scientists (see Cole, 1992,

for related observations). It has been suggested that a similar

transformation has taken place in SQAB itself, so that as SQAB

has matured, it has increasingly deviated from its roots in radical

behaviorism (Catania, 1981).Historical evidence in these two

ways suggests that as behavior analysis becomes quantified, it

becomes less compatible with radical behaviorism.

Second, consider the masthead of the Journal of the Exper-imental Analysis of Behavior, where we read the journal . . .is

primarily for the original publication of experiments relevant to

the behavior of individual organisms. This goal is close to being

a defining property of the experimental analysis of behavior.

However, radical behaviorism requires that a science of behavior

address social phenomena, most especially, language, Skinners

treatment of which was notably qualitative, not quantitative, in

nature (Skinner, 1957).These two considerations give no sup-

port for a claim that a reflexive quantitative behavior analysis is

in principle possible.

Can we think of anything that might make us more sanguine

about the possibility of a reflexive quantitative behavior anal-ysis? Can we imagine how it might be developed? If formal

logic, parsimony, or other conventions of scientific method can-

not in general provide the basis for it, what can? Perhaps there

are informal rules of thumb for doing behavioral research that

might be turnedinto quantitative rules that might apply to behav-

ior of behavior analysts? Consider Sidmans classic Tactics of

Scientific Research (Sidman, 1960). It recommended some rules

of thumb but neither derived them froma quantitative theory of

behavior analysis nor showed how they could be quantified. We

do not know, that is, that they are compatible with a quantitative

analysis of behavior. More generally, what guides do we have

for the development of any quantitative analysis of behavior at

all, reflexive or not? Here are a few examples of advice, mostof which I have been given (items numbered 1, 2, 4, and 5), or

have given others (items numbered 3 and 6), over the course of

my career. My point in reviewing these is to show their futil-

ity as facilitators of the development of a reflexive quantitative

analysis. I first state the advice and then give my commentary

on it.

1. Advice: Do not invent imaginary theoretical things, like

stimulus elements you cannot see. Commentary: This

advice may have hastened the split between statistical learn-

ing theory, which ignored it, and behavior analysis, many

of whose advocates accepted it. I believe this advice is an

arbitrary constraint that only impedes the development of

a successful reflexive quantitative analysis, and it does not

derive from any quantitative behavioral model. It is a belief

some behavior analysts have about what modeling shouldbe

rather than about how SQABs actually behave.

2. Advice: Beware all theory that involves concepts at some

level other than that of behavior. Commentary: The problem

with this is that it would suppress or retard the development

of all quantitative models of behavior because we do not yet

know what behavior is (Shimp, 2001)and we are still in

the process of determining what the idea of levels means.

3. Advice: Use single-subject methods and replicate and dis-

cover functional relations. Commentary: This advice implies

that a quantitative model should deal with individual behav-

ior, yet as noted above, a reflexive behavior analysis would

have to address social phenomena, including the learning of

scientific language and mathematical behaviors.

4. Advice: Do not use cognitive vocabulary because it encour-

ages severe conceptual mistakes. Commentary: This advice

prevents the use of plain Englishs heuristic power and Ibelieve erroneously implies that the use of behavioral lan-

guage prevents severe conceptual mistakes.

5. Advice: You can safely conclude you know what you are

talking about if your theory accounts for 99% of the data.

Commentary: Accounting for 99% of the data does not mean

anything if the data accounted for is merely the data for

which the theory was invented in the first place and the theory

accounts for 0% of other forms of data.

6. Advice: The principal components of response strength

are latency or reaction time, average response rate, response

bout duration, etc., so record them and try to understand

them. Commentary: These behaviors ignore sequential pat-terning, or the local temporal structure of behavior, surely

including word order in a scientists verbal behavior, and so

fail to address behavioral units temporally more extended

but as unitized and fundamental as single responses, thereby

excluding much if not all scientific behavior.

This list is arbitrary and could be extended indefinitely, yet

gives a feel for the kinds of advice quantitative behavior ana-

lysts give each other on how to construct a quantitative science

of behavior. Is this advice coherent? Is it of practical utility?

Does it comply with radical behaviorism or with the evaluative

standards of SQAB? I believe the answer to all these ques-

tions is, We do not know. Where does all the advice comefrom? It simply reflects values, strongly held opinions, and tra-

ditions in an emerging quantitative behavior analysis. It just

represents the contemporary culture of behavior analysis. It is

what behavior analysts currently do. We have seen, however,

that by their own standards, SQABs do not understand what

they do.

So far, we have seen that a reflexive quantitative analysis of

behavior must be constructed if radical behaviorism is to fulfill

its promise. We have seen also, however, that behavior analysts

do not have a SQAB-ish description or explanation of their own

behavior andthe advicethey give each other neither derives from

nor clearly contributes to a quantitative analysis of behavior. It


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would appearthat a high priority project withinbehavior analysis

should be to develop a reflexive behavior analysis.

5. A thought experiment about two SQABs

So far we have seen that the first quantitative analysis of

behavior quickly turned away from radical behaviorism, that

some SQABs believe that SQAB itself is now doing the same

thing, and that it is not obvious how to use methods from the

experimental analysis of behavior to develop a reflexive quan-

titative analysis of behavior. Let us imagine one last way to try

to develop a reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior. Let us

try to develop it in a way that leads more directly to the social

perspective of radical behaviorism. First, pretend we can find a

member of SQAB to volunteer to serve as a participant, and sec-

ond, pretend some SQAB behaviors can be identified so that we

can make some kind of reinforcement contingent on them. What

is the special behavior that makes a person a SQAB instead of

a poet, gardener, or physicist? What is a reinforcer for a SQAB

behavior? What is a SQABs behavior stream? How can wediscriminate between a SQABs quantitative behavior and her

non-quantitative behavior? Is attendance at a SQAB meeting

necessarily SQAB behavior? Is receiving outstanding student

evaluations in a class on quantitative models a reinforcer for

some or all of the instructors behaviors during the class? How

about a smile or verbal thanksfrom a student to whom an instruc-

tor successfully explains an equation? What about instructing a

student or technician who runs birds on a quantitative task? How

about successfully avoiding a committee meeting and using the

time to work on a publication to be submitted to the Journal

of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior? Should that behavior

be positively reinforced or punished? We have much to learnabout how to conceptualize SQAB performance in terms of

any stimulus-response-reinforcer contingency. In fact, the truth

seems to be that we have everything still to learn.

SQABs seem to respond to this uncertainty and ambiguity by

waiting to study their own scientific behaviors until it becomes

clearer what methods are suitable. This either could be efficient

or could simply postpone learning that there are no such meth-

ods. Let us imagine not procrastinating. Let us return to our two

imaginary SQABs andpretend that the SQAB conducting exper-

iments on the other SQAB manages after some number of years

to publish a book resembling Schedules of Reinforcement,inthe

sense that it displays hundreds of pages of cumulative records of

some kind of behavior characteristic of SQABs, maintained bysome kind of reinforcer applicable to SQAB-ish behaviors. The

experimenter SQAB runs onto something interesting and, like

Skinner, drops everything else to study it. Let us suppose one

morning shewakes up anddecides to begin developingcomputer

modelsto simulate many of thecumulative records shepublished

in her Schedules of Reinforcement for SQAB Behavior. She does

this in part because she wants to instruct beginner SQABs on

what performance on various SQAB schedules of reinforcement

looks like. She realizes that any model to describe the quantita-

tive behavior of the experimenter SQAB would have to describe

and predict her own sudden shift in performance from generat-

ing cumulative records to generating models. Any sudden shift

refers by definition to the local dynamics of behavior, and to the

local temporal organization of behavior.

She realizes that her model will therefore have to be a

dynamic molecular model,the kind I have describedas a behav-

ing model (Catania, 2005; Shimp, 1992, 1994; Shimp et al.,

1990). This is my fourth point: a reflexive quantitative analy-

sis will have to include models that generate behavior streams

and that therefore admit to being evaluated in any terms anyone

wants, cumulative records, molecular, molar, or anything

else. Molar models may prove useful but, being based on long-

term average performance, they do not behave. The matching

function does not actually behave. What behaves is the molar

theorist talking about the molar matching function. The molar

theorists behavior stream while talking about molar phenom-

ena would reveal local and dynamic phenomena requiring not a

molar theory but a behaving model.

6. A thought experiment about a community of SQABs,

Walden IIR

Let us assume that as the original two SQABs continue to

work for years to develop a reflexive behavior analysis, other

behavior analysts hear about their project, become excited about

it, and join up. The growing community sees ever more clearly

that the distinction in such a community between experimenter

and participant makes no sense and only retards the development

of a reflexive behavior analysis, so the distinction is dropped. All

members see themselves as both acting on, and being acted upon

by, all other members. A specialized kind of community there-

fore develops, consisting entirely of SQABs. They attempt to

recreate the fictional community in Walden II (Skinner, 1948)

that was designed in accordance with a science of behavior.More specifically, they attempt to design their new community

in accordance with the principles of the quantitative science of

behavior they themselves are constructing. Let us call this com-

munity Walden IIR, for reflexive Walden II. The key issue is

whether Walden IIR can simultaneously (1) develop a SQAB

model that accurately instructs it in how it should function and

(2) implementthis SQAB model to successfullyengineerits own

communitarian quantitative experimental analytical behaviors.

Myfifth pointis that it is inconceivable that this community

would not to some degree interact intellectually and socially

with the larger, non-SQAB culture within which it functioned

(see alsoLewontin, 1991).If this point were made about any

group other than scientists, few would find it more than a tru-ism.Scientists, however,are supposed to be different.Or, at least,

science is supposed to be different. To prevent sciences contam-

ination by human values requires scientists to exclude their own

scientific behavior from the content of science, because behav-

ior is indisputably influenced by culture and human values, and

science should not be. Many scientists concede that scientists

might be affected by culture but believe these effects can be

reduced, minimized, or eliminated through vigilant attention to

political, economic, and other cultural forces. This goal was part

of positivisms original proposal, to save society from its own

inevitable and unending disputes over intrinsically subjective

differences by developing a science-based culture. Contempo-


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rary indications that this goal is still influential are many. The

National Science Foundation (NSF) maintains,for example, that

science should develop according to its own internal logic and

empirical discoveries, and should not be subject to political con-

trol. NSF continues to battle congress and the public over this

issue, as in the appropriateness of NSF funding for stem cell

research. In our imaginary experiment, Walden IIR similarly

finds itself developing in ways that depend on its cultural con-

text. Some members of Walden IIR, those influenced by radical

behaviorism, are not troubled by this interaction between sci-

ence and society because they believe a science of behavior

must necessarily involve human values.

These members of Walden IIR wonder how the culture of

Walden IIR makes their behavior different from the behavior of

non-members, so they begin to develop a quantitative behavioral

anthropological analysis of SQAB and non-SQAB behaviors.

This turns out to be an enormous project with ramifications

across every intellectual domain, so they found a Walden IIR

University with academic departments to reflexively examine

how the various conventional academic disciplines change whentheir practitioners are SQABs.

Other members of Walden IIR see the ever-expanding

encroachment by cultural variables in SQAB models as a trou-

bling sign that they have not adequately freed themselves from

the unscientific values in the surrounding culture, and they

redouble their efforts to develop ways to isolate Walden IIR

from its surrounding culture so that its principles, functions,

and methods can be universal, unambiguous, logical, parsimo-

nious, basic and fundamental. These SQABs become so

impatient and exasperated with cultural studies in Walden IIR

that they break off, leave Walden IIR University and return to

conventional natural science departments in long establisheduniversities. These SQABs argue that it was a fatal mistake of

radical behaviorism to include the behavior of behavior analysts

in the subject matter of a science of behavior because it opens

the door to questions about political governance, issues of how

Walden IIR resources should be allocated to different SQABs

having different commitments to art, literature, and the perform-

ing arts and in general to exactly the subjective aspects of human

behavior a quantitative science conventionally views as outside

its scope.

The older remaining members of Walden IIR note that this

split resembles that between Skinner and Estes, when Skinner

followed the position of radical behaviorism and Estes, along

with the great majority of experimental psychologists, followeda more positivistic path. These older members also note that

this split would resemble the culture wars (Snow, 1959) if

it were not that the members of Walden IIR are attempting to

integrate quantitative behavior analysis andhuman values. For

this reason, Walden IIR is not a community dedicated to the

development of quantitative theory for social behavior in gen-

eral. It is designed specifically for the unique social behavior of

SQABs, which would be the same as any other social behav-

ior only if it were conceded that SQAB behavior that leads

to a SQAB model is no different from the social behavior of

medieval mystics, basketball players, a knitting group, or of a

collection of scam artists. Presumably no one expects a SQAB

model to emerge from the deliberations of a group working to

defraud Medicare. This must imply there is a difference between

SQABs and scam artists. What makes the difference? The sci-

entific method? Maybe some SQABs believe in the scientific

method but Skinner did not; it seems to me that the resistance by

many SQABs to the formalization of methodology by philoso-

phers of science suggests they do not either, and neither do I.

If not the scientific method, then what? It must be something

about the behavior of SQABs. That means to understand the

work product of SQABs we need to understand what SQABs

do. I think radical behaviorism requires that there is something

unique about a science of behavior, and if it is not that it uniquely

and reflexively applies to the behavior of its own practitioners,

what is it? Surely it is not the classic reinforcement contingen-

cies invented in the 1930s, or single subject research, or any

other existing set of methods. To determine what it is, I suggest

SQABs might want to evaluate the reflexive implications of their

theories for their own behaviors. For example, powerful quanti-

tative modelsof social behavior arebeingdeveloped,such as that

byKirley (2006)on how dominance hierarchies can be emer-gent properties of self-organizing systems. It will be important

to determine if such models can describe actual SQAB behavior.

Some observers of social psychology suggest the answer is yes,

andothers suggest no. Jones (1985) suggested social psychology

has two components, a quantitative natural science component,

and a social constructionist component. He categorized himself

as belonging to the former, and others as belonging to the latter. I

categorize both radical behaviorism and myself as belonging to

the latter (Shimp, 2001).Perhaps a Walden IIR could clarify the

difference between natural science and a quantitative science of

human behavior that successfully addressed cultural values, that

is, could clarify our understanding of the difference between ascience of behavior and science in general.

7. Implications of the thought experiments: human

values in quantitative analyses of behavior

My sixth point is that after the departure of natural scien-

tists from Walden IIR, the remaining SQABs will see that their

last frontier is to understand the contingencies that link human

values to a science of behavior, including a quantitative science

of behavior (Kuhlmann, 2005; Rakos, 2006; Wolpert, 2005).

From this perspective, the goal of Walden IIR is to find a way to

integrate conventional quantitative natural science, on the one

hand, and social constructionism, on the other (Hacking, 1999;Pickering, 1995; Shimp, 2001; Smith et al., 2000).Walden IIR

therefore explores such cultural themes as metaphors, partisan-

ship, peer review, and conflicts of interest (see Killeen, 1999, for

related comments about human values in quantitative models).

7.1. Metaphors and models

Quantitative models are not entirely quantitative: they are

developed, evaluated, and presented in the context of natural

language, and this language includes metaphors (Leary, 1990).

For example, Catanias (2005)computer simulation model is

derived from a 1930s hydraulic metaphor for the reflex reserve.


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The model invokes the science of hydraulics in only a loose

sense, not in the complex, quantitative, realistic sense in which

hydraulic engineers might design and construct a dam spill-

way or an oil distribution system within an automobile engine.

The engineers have no interest in how well their quantitative

model conforms to a plain English metaphor. In contrast, the

reflex reserve model is designed to feel as though it conforms to

simple hydraulic engineering principles stated in plain English.

So, although the quantitative model might appear to be only a

sequential string of binary numbers rapidly processed by a dig-

ital computer, several cultures implicitly affect its nature and

development, including the culture of plain English and Cata-

nias intuitions about how hydraulics work and his knowledge of

the history of the reflex reserve metaphor, the culture of SQAB,

the culture of the computer industry, and so on. In this sense,

human values are embedded in Catanias computer model, and

to understand the model requires understanding their effects

on it.

7.2. Peer review in SQAB

Much has been written about scientific peer review and its

impact on science (Blackburn and Hakel, 2006),including how

cultural variables such as gender and ethnicity of author can

affect peer review. Cultural variables presumably affect peer

review by SQABs (Shimp, 1990, 1999, 2004), especially in view

of my first point; one scarcely can know what good SQAB work

consists of, or what good peer review of SQAB work is, if there

is little understanding of what SQAB is in the first place.

Davison and Nevin (2005)provide an excellent example of

how an analysis of peer review might facilitate the development

of a science of behavior. They clarified how scientific culturetends to suppress the publication of failures to replicate. Their

scholarship described reinforcing contingencies that operate on

behaviorof behavioranalystsand hint at thekind of experimental

research that might be conducted in Walden IIR.

Also, of course, Skinner (1979) provided many retrospective,

verbal self-reports of some of the contingencies of peer review

that operated on his scientific behavior. He presumably would

have agreed that to understand the effects of peer review on

the development of SQAB, we will need a SQAB analysis of

peer review by SQABs, that is, a reflexive peer review that will

explain the contingencies determining peer review behavior of

SQABs.

7.3. Partisanship in SQAB

Consider this paper. This is not a neutral, objective, impar-

tial presentation of facts. It instead advocates a point of view

according to which the development of a successful quantitative

behavior analysis will depend critically on inventing methods

to study the behavior of quantitative behavior analysts. The par-

tisan nature of scientific papers is not always this obvious, but

if human values are embedded in a science of behavior, then

those values presumably affect much or all of the behavior of

behavior analysts. I suggest that we basically cannot commu-

nicate without advocating, or at least indirectly expressing, our

own personal values. Partisanship is especially clear in teach-

ing, where some positions are described sympathetically and

others are not. How often do behavior analysts sympatheti-

cally describe cognitive psychology (see, for example,Skinner,

1977)? We need a model to describe or explain the contingencies

operating on behavior analysts that explain why the answer is;

almost never.

7.4. Conflicts of interest

Science is rife with conflicts of interest that pose serious

ethical problems (Shamoo and Resnik, 2003).For example, a

scientist once told me that a grant proposal had been sent to him

to reviewand that he himself had just submitted a proposal to the

same grant review panel. His own proposal was in competition

with the one he was asked to review. He told me with a smile

that he had rated it just a little bit lower than he would have

had it not been in competition with his own. Another example,

one familiar to any faculty member who has ever served on a job

search committee, is the advocacy of candidates whose hiringwould facilitate the advocates own research career. Conflicts of

interest like these are so common in scientific practice that they

might make onewonder if they were actually part of thescientific

method, were it not that, according to the conventional account,

they are betrayals of the scientific commitment to impartiality

and objectivity (Lewontin, 2004).From the perspective of rad-

ical behaviorism that sees science practice as the behavior of

organisms who just happen to be scientists, this dishonesty and

betrayal is to be explained in terms of the contingencies that

maintain them, and the kind of sharp contrast between science

and values inherent in conventional accounts attribute, for better

or worse, too much impartiality to science.

8. Summary and conclusions

Thequantitative analysis of behaviordoes nothavea reflexive

analysis of itself, that is, there is no quantitative analysis of the

behavior of quantitative behavior analysts thatsatisfies behavior-

analytical evaluative standards. This does not distinguish it from

any other quantitative science, none of which has a quantita-

tive reflexive analysis of itself. There is no reflexive analysis

of contemporary experimental cognitive psychology, for exam-

ple, and cognitive psychologists do not generally appear to be

troubled by thelack. There aremany studies showing how cogni-

tion differs across cultures,but cognitive psychologists generallyappear to believe they can rise above these differences and avoid

the potential implication that their own cognition, and therefore

the science they construct, is itself culture dependent. Cognitive

psychology does not derive, however, from a philosophy that

requires a cognitive analysis of cognitive psychologists. Its phi-

losophy seems generally indistinguishable from that of physics,

for which there intentionally is no reflexive physics because a

goal of physics is precisely toremovethe behavior of physicists

from descriptions and explanations of the physical world. Many

scientists have seen the utility of psychological and social anal-

yses of scientific behavior (Fleck, 1935/1979; Lewontin, 1991;

Mach, 1914),but so far as I am aware, no one has successfully


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developed a quantitative reflexive analysis of any quantitative

science.

The quantitative analysis of behavior may represent the only

quantitative science without a reflexive analysis that derives

from a philosophy that implies it should have one, but this

implication often seems forgotten. Quantitative behavior ana-

lysts admire the role of mathematical theory in the physical and

biological sciences and generally seem to view the role of math-

ematics in the development of modern science as a kind of role

model for how SQAB can and should develop. Thus, SQABs

feel that quantification can increase rigor, reduce ambiguity,

improve clarity, simplify, facilitatebeautiful formal descriptions,

provide a means by which to derive new predictions, clarify

how to interpret variability, etc. SQABs virtually by definition

believe quantification in these ways facilitates the development

of a quantitative science of behavior resembling the established

natural sciences. In this, SQABs resemble natural scientists as

well as Skinner, who wrote that science . . . is a disposition

to deal with the facts rather than with what someone has said

about them (Skinner, 1953,p. 12). Skinner often likened a sci-ence of behavior to the natural sciences, and rejected that there

was anything special about it, and he objected to the idea that

. . . science is appropriate up to a certain point, but. . . there

must always remain an area in which one can act only on faith

or with respect to a value judgment (Skinner, 1953,p. 8).

He objected further that . . .the kinds of intellectual activities

exemplified by value judgments or by intuition or interpreta-

tion have never been set forth clearly. . . (Skinner, 1953, p.

8). That is, human values play no greater role in a science

of behavior than in physics or biology, which is to say, none

at all.

At thesame time, however,Skinner linked a science of behav-ior to the behaviors that in plain English involve values. The

sentence preceding the claim that science deals with facts rather

than about what someone said about them was the following:

Science is first of all a set of attitudes (Skinner, 1953,p. 12).

On the assumption that attitudes are behaviors, this implies sci-

ence is behavior, including the behavior of plain English. He

went on to say, Science is, of course, more than a set of atti-

tudes.It is a search fororder, foruniformities, for lawful relations

among theevents in nature (Skinner,1953, p. 13). The searchhe

referred to was by humans and consisted of behavior, not some-

thing apart from behavior. Skinner obviously wanted to eat his

cake and to have it too. He wanted the analysis of behavior to be

a natural science and to apply to behaviors that involve humanvalues. He wanted a natural science of human values. Analo-

gously, he argued tirelessly for the development of an empirical

science of behavior but described his own scientific behavior in

an entirely human, non-quantitative, even anti-quantitative way

compared to howEstes (1959) described the first quantitative

analysis of behavior. It is as though Skinner resisted apply-

ing what most people think of as science to his own scientific

behavior.

Thus, Skinner in Science and Human Behaviorsubscribed

simultaneously to the position that a science of behavior was

similar to the natural sciences, implying that it would evolve into

a quantitative science, andto the position of radical behaviorism

that demands that this power of quantification be turned onto the

behavior of scientists themselves. He seemed to resist doing so,

and SQABs to this day have scarcely begun to do so. I have

briefly described some of the problems inherent in developing a

quantitative science of behavior that is compatible with radical

behaviorism. It is one thing to apply methods of behavior anal-

ysis, even functional analyses, to behavior of behavior analysts;

it is something altogether different to develop a quantitative

science of behavior of the behavior of quantitative behavior ana-

lysts. Not having significant training in mathematics, Skinner

may not have been aware of the perhaps irreconcilable prob-

lem he was defining, a coordination of a quantitative science of

behavior with a reflexive quantitative science of behavior.

In short, behavior analysis, like the Western culture within

which it developed, may be divided over whether quantifica-

tion is a virtue or a vice (Catania, 1981; Mazur, 2006).Within

the broader culture, on the one hand, quantification is seen as a

virtue in societys methods to promote fairness, social justice,

and accountability. Standardized test scores are used in deci-

sions about funding of public schools and quantitative measuresof productivity are used in decisions about tenure and promotion

in academia. Many similar examples of the use of quantifica-

tion to replace unfairness caused by idiosyncratic and subjective

judgments could be identified. On the other hand, quantification

canbe seen as an evil andbe denouncedfor itsdehumanizing ten-

dencies. Turning humans into numbers can be seen as less than

admirable when school childrens test scores negatively affect

their treatment by teachers, when number of publications by a

candidate for tenure completely replaces informed professional

judgment by peers, and so on. The most critical literary opposi-

tion to the quantification of human values of which I am aware

is that of Zamiatin (1921). Orwell (1949)andHuxley (1932)are related examples in the sense that they show negative conse-

quences of putting society on a scientific footing. Skinner in his

own person seems to have shared his cultures divided opinion

on the merits of quantification of human behavior.

This division on the merits of quantification emerges in a sur-

prising and interesting way in the behavior of SQABs. SQABs

are ordinarily enthusiastically in favor of quantitative analyses,

but they have not rushed to apply quantitative behavior analy-

sis to their own behavior. Myfirst pointis simply that there is

no SQAB analysis of the behavior of SQABs. I coined a term,

reflexive quantitative analysis of behavior, for this kind of miss-

ing analysis, to remind us that by our own SQAB standards, we

do not understand, or are even aware of, the contingencies thatcontrol the behavior of quantitative behavior analysts.

This is not to say that behavioral analysts have not tried in

any way at all to describe their own behavior. These efforts have

been largely limited to historical verbal self-reports, a form of

scientific inquiry not generally viewed with the greatest enthu-

siasm among behavior analysts. So, my second pointis simply

that from the perspective of radical behaviorism, this diagnoses

how far a science of behavior must progress before it can be

said to understand itself. Skinner obviously considered his own

behavior to be appropriate for analysis by the science of behav-

ior, defined in terms of a functional analysis linking stimulus

contexts, behaviors, and contingencies. Neither he nor anyone


9/10


else has as yet demonstrated or explained, however, how such

a functional analysis could be quantified. This is particularly

interesting because my third point is that from the perspective

of radical behaviorism, a reflexive analysis is not a luxury, it

is a requirement: the behavior of behavioral scientists, like the

behavior of everybody else, should be part of a science of behav-

ior. Experimental psychologists (Klahr, 2000; Kuhn and Dean,

2005; Simon, 1986; Smith et al., 2000)have begun to investi-

gate the nature of various components of scientific thinking and

scientific discovery and even to develop a few empirical and

computer simulations of bits and pieces of what is ostensibly

scientific behavior.

To construct a reflexive science of behavior I am inclined

to think that we will need to develop behaving models that

generate actual behavior streams because otherwise, we will

not be able to capture rapid shifts and other dynamic proper-

ties of scientific behavior. My fourth pointis therefore that we

need to develop process models (Staddon, 2006),process mod-

els that behave (Catania, 2005; Shimp, 1992; Shimp et al., 1990;

Staddon, 2006),and other powerful techniques such as dynamicsystems theory (Butner et al., 2006).If we want to understand

our own scientific behavior, we will need to use computer sim-

ulation methods to develop process accounts that describe and

explain real-time behaving because mathematical analyses for

such complex behaviors will not be workable.

The development of a quantitative model of behavior of

SQABs requires a community of SQABs andpresumably, such a

community would to at least some small degree act like ordinary

human beings and their behavior would reveal what are typically

calledhumanvalues.The members of Walden II (Skinner,1948),

an analogous community in the sense in which it tried to use a

science of behavior to engineer its own structure and function,certainly revealed human values, and after all, part of Skinners

purpose was to use the science of behavior to re-engineer human

society precisely to improve the quality of human life. Thus, the

development of a required reflexive quantitative analysis will

of necessity take place in a real community, not in laboratory

isolation of individual SQABs.

Real communities involve human values often expressed in

natural language, and different communities can have different

languages. Therefore, the construction of a reflexive quantitative

analysis of behavior will have to describe and explain human

values as expressed in different languages and cultures. This

kind of statement may seem self-contradictory if we assume

that behavior analysis should be at the pinnacle of empiricalrigor and if we see quantitative models as guaranteeing objec-

tivity, logic, parsimony, and so on. If we see behavior analysis

as fundamentally involving human beings behaving as behavior

analysts, however, then it is clear that human values must be

implicit in behavior analysis, in SQAB, in a science of behavior,

in radical behaviorism, and in a reflexive quantitative analysis

of behavior.

Some of the these human values are much easier to see than

others. Some of the contexts in which they are most clearly

seen involve metaphors, peer review, partisanship, and conflicts

of interest. Presumably, a reflexive analysis of the behavior of

behavior analysts would turn up many, many more which, once

identified and experimentally analyzed, could do to the practice

of behavior analysis what Skinner hoped a science of behavior

would do to human society in general.

Therefore, myfifth pointis simply that SQAB functions as a

culture within a larger culture. My sixth pointis that Walden IIR,

an imaginarycommunityof quantitative behavior analysts trying

to develop a reflexive quantitative science of behavior to apply

to themselves would therefore not pretend that a quantitative

science of behavior can be constructed independently of human

values, and would study how human values affect the develop-

ment of a quantitative analysis of behavior. Walden IIR would

necessarily involve human values from the broader culture, and

Walden IIR would provide the broader culture with improved

means to quantify social justice, educational standards, and all

the myriad ways in which quantification can contribute to soci-

ety.

My overarching point is that SQAB looks like one thing

from the perspective of how well SQAB methods and theories

describe the laboratory behaviors that SQABs convention-

ally examine. From this perspective, SQABs have successfullydeveloped models that in various local contexts perform reason-

ably well. SQAB looks like an entirely different thing, however,

from the perspective of how well its methods and theories have

been shown to describe the scientific behaviors of SQABs: From

this perspective, it appears not to have methods, data, or theory,

by which to understand itself. There is, therefore, an immense

chasm between the claims SQABs make about the generality

and basic nature of SQAB models on the one hand and how

well they describe and explain scientific behavior of SQABs

on the other hand. It should be an exciting adventure to deter-

mine if a quantitative analysis of the behavior of SQABs can be

developed. The answer will determine whether radical behav-iorism simultaneously defines both a science of behavior and the

relation between science and society.

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