This week’s blog post talks about Skinnerian behaviorism: https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog. Two Minds Theory draws attention to non-cognitive influences on behavior, and suggests that we can “train” the Intuitive System to improve healthy behaviors. Behaviorism provides training methods that are supported by decades of research. Many people who learn about behaviorism as undergraduates are put off by Skinner‘s insistence that we must deny cognitive influences at all, and move ”beyond freedom and dignity” in thinking about human behavior; Two Minds Theory offers a more nuanced way to look at these claims. As a bonus this week’s blog even includes a link to Skinner’s video of pigeons playing ping-pong, trained using operant conditioning!
When I visited Sarajevo while the war destruction was still there and lack of beauty resided, I used Skinner's method to lure doves to fertilize the few small plants I succeeded to acquire from the market place, for the balcony to keep my mind off the skattered windows and the like. It ended up like Hitchcock's film named Birds. They came in flocks and I had to figure out how to wean them off the balcony. I can assure you that the behaviorism or Skinner's ideas are still vital.
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