subject: Bad Science and Determinism [print this page] Bad Science and Determinism Bad Science and Determinism
Bad Science and Determinism
Recently while watching a television program it occurred to me that the picture we get from the scientific community of the world, and more importantly, of people, is perhaps not as accurate or as honest as we have been let to believe.
BF skinner, the founder of behaviorism conducted many experiments on rats and pigeons attempting to establish whether or not, or to what extent our environment effects our actions and motives.
There is no question that he was not a fool but I wonder if I can say in good conscience that his experiments are worthy of their reputation.
Ill briefly mention two experiments and then submit my objections.
Experiment 1: a pigeon is placed in a box after being deprived of food. On the wall of the box is a small window display and beneath it a small feeding bowl that is exposed partially so that it can be filled with food from the outside. BF skinner has trained this pigeon to react to two words that alternate in the display window of the box. When the word "turn" is displayed, the pigeon obediently turns around in a circle and then collects his prize of food form the feeding bowl. When the word "peck" is displayed, the pigeon pecks at the sign and then collets his food from the bowl.
This experiment is stated to support (what I think is obvious) that pleasure is an effective method of reinforcement and therefore our actions as people are motivated by external offers of reward.
Experiment 2: same scenario as the last experiment only this time the feeding bowl is filled when the bird flaps its wings.
This is supposed to demonstrate that people wrongly attribute results to superstitious actions or occurrences when indeed there is no causal relationship between the action and the result, as demonstrated by the pigeon
Due to my lack of time and the limited word count allowed on this forum, I do not want to dwell on my problems with the conclusions of these experiments. What I take issue with is the very premise for the experiments.
The general guidelines of scientific experimentation is that if you are going to attempt to draw conclusions from comparing the results of two subject they must have something in common at least and in most cases have to be identical. It makes sense to compare the effectiveness of a tranquilizer on mouse A and mouse B because they are the closest to identical subject you can get. It does not make sense to inject adrenalin into adress formand a human a compare results. The science of someone doing that would not be worth the lab coat of the experimenter.
How then can the conclusions culled from experiments on creatures with no consciousness (and perhaps no, or limited, self awareness) be in any way relevant to us human beings?!
Now ask yourself, to what extent should we permit specious, pseudo-scientific "conclusions," persuade us (in this case) that we are part of an apathetic, deterministic, survival of the fittest universe.
