Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
B. F. SKINNERUnable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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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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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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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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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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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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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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