09.13.06
Skinner: Why I am not a Cognitive Psychologist
Skinner, B.F.: Why I am not a Cognitive Psychologist?
Skinner attacks many of the bases of Cognitive Psychology in this article. Some main points he includes are: that even if these concepts were real we could not measure them therefore it’s debatable whether it’s valuable to study them, that introspection is not a way to gain insight on the inner workings of the mind, that Cognitivists feel a need to use physical examples to explain their mental concepts, and his main point that things that cognitive psychologists think of as mental processes are in fact behaviors or can be explain as a combination or sequence of behaviors. He ends by saying that the cognitive perspective is a diversion from real scientific study and practice of psychology. Metacognition won’t change the work but thinking about and studying molding behaviors could.
I found the grammar/rule example quite funny/applicable because of my experiences in learning grammar and watching other’s attempts to learn it. So much of grammar is unconscious unless they are taught to make it conscious through things like explicitly learning grammar in English or a second language. So just because we don’t know that we know something does it mean that we don’t know it? I’m not surprised that Skinner acknowledged the existence of inner mental processes nor that he thinks they shouldn’t be studied. I’ve never really been one much for behaviorism. I understand the merit to studying things which are completely testable. However, it always seemed to deaden the human element for me. There is intuitively more to learning than stimulus response and though intuition/common sense is nothing to base science or conclusions on it can be a starting off point.
