To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
B. F. SKINNEROld age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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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.
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
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If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?
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It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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