A warning too late

 Maybe yesterday’s note on B.F. Skinner should have come with a warning label. I tried to imagine what one might look like.  

Warning: Please understand that as a reader with no background in psychology, I’m not unsympathetic to Skinner, just mystified. I read Skinner with the same wonder with which I read Bishop Berkeley. I marvel at the ingenuity of the thought and, at the same time, can’t imagine using the conceptual framework of either fellow to address problems.

 

I did not intend to imply that just because I could not think of a way to use the concepts that I think they are useless.

I think of concepts as machinery for doing practical work. I think of philosophy as tinkering with machinery when it’s cranky.