Theo, you're not out of your depth at all. You make some terrific points.
Indigo, as keep on saying. Behaviorism is a science. it is not used or understood properly by most people. If it was, the world would be a happier and more efficient place, freer of the problems which face us.
It's not really possible to draw conclusions from the examples of two schools.
I think it is helpful also to get away from the whole stickers business. it's not about stickers, it's about effective rienforcement (bit of a misnomer as something only a reinforcer if it is effective)for behaviour which isclearly described.
Just want to share some of Skinner's writings witn you.
?The literature of freedom (eg Rousseau) has encouraged escape from or attack on all controllers. It has done so by making any indication of control aversive. Those who manipulate human behaviour are said to be evil men, necessarily bent on exploitation. Control is clearly the opposite of freedom and if freedom is good, control must be bad. What is overlooked is control which does not have aversive consequences. Many social practices essential to the welfare of the species involve the control of one person by another and no one can suppress them who has any concern for human achievements.
?in order to maintain the position that all control is wrong, it has been necessary to disguise or conceal the nature of usual practices, or to prefer weak practices just because they can be disguised or concealed, and- a most extraordinary result indeed!-to perpetuate punitive measures.?
?The literature of freedom... has been forced to brand all control as wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to be gained from a social environment. It is unprepared for the next step, which is not to free men from control but to analyze and change the kinds of control they are under.?
This final piece really sums up for me how ineffective so many of our traditional ways oof looking at problems are.
?Noone knows the best way of raising children, paying workers, maintaining law and order, teaching, or making people creative, but it is possible to propose better ways than we now have and to support them by predicting and eventually demonstrating more reinforcing results. This has been done in the past with the help of personal experiences
and folk wisdom but a scientific analysis of human behaviour is obviously relevant. It helps in two ways; it defines what is to be done and suggests ways of doing it.
How badly it is needed is indicated by a recent discussion in a news weekly on what was wrong with America. The problem was described as a ?disturbed psychotic condition of the young?, a ?recession of the spirit?, ?a psychic downturn? and a ?spiritual crisis? which were attributed ?to anxiety?, ?uncertainty?, ?malaise?, ?alienation?, ?generalised despair?, and several other moods and states of mind, all interacting in the familiar intra-psychic pattern (lack of social assurance being said to lead to alienation for example, and frustration to aggression.)
Most readers probably knew what the writer was talking about and may have felt that he was saying something useful, but the passage-which is not exceptional-has two characteristic defects which explain our failure to deal adequately with cultural problems:the troublesome behaviour is not actually described, and nothing that can be done to change it is mentioned.?