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Essays on bf skinner behavioral theory
Skinner's behaviourist theory
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Behaviorism: Walden Two by B.F. Skinner
Castle closed the book deliberately and set it aside. He had purposefully waited half a decade to read Walden Two after its initial publication, because, years after parting from Frazier and his despotic utopia, he could not shake the perturbation the community inspired. But, eight years later, he had grown even more frustrated with himself at his apparent inability to look at the situation calmly. In a fit of willfulness, he had pulled the unopened volume from its top shelf, and now he was hoping that that had been a good idea. His daily temperament, to say the least, had suffered from his continual aggravation. Something had to be done about this.
As an experiment, he guessed, Walden Two was a success. He himself had seen the happy community and clearly remembered the horrid time he had had debunking it. It was certainly harder to criticize Walden Two than it was to debunk democracy and the outside society; Frazier had made sure to drive that point home. The inhabitants were clearly at peace, and he was struck by the story Burris told of the woman who sat in a chair, enjoying her rest and carefully not looking at her own garden. He hadn’t known that Burris’s doubts were so strong that he had to make his own observations. Castle’s mostly academic mind approved heartily.
He supposed the woman was happy. She was obviously too old to be a second-generation Walden Two inmate, and so had not been subtly forced to be unselfish and content. She willingly subscribed to the Code and accepted the rules that told her not to gossip, to refrain from gratitude, and not to admire her own flowers. She led a placid, comfortable life and he supposed that most elderly people, havin...
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...ything was automatically on the same level of constant happiness.
Walden Two was memorable as a community, not for its individuals. Its people were a mass of subjects, and Frazier did not admit that there were people who could not be made to conform. Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s were medical problems that could not be ignored and they threw the idea of “nurture, not nature” on which Frazier’s concepts rested, entirely off-balance. Behaviorism could not control every single aspect of life; that would be like trying to teach someone with no right arm to knit using his hands. And Castle knew that if he could resent being treated as part of a unit instead of a unique individual, millions of others would, too.
Feeling a savage flood of perhaps incomplete triumph, Castle practically threw the book back onto its shelf. He, for one, refused to give in to Frazier.
Thoreau, Henry David. "Walden." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 2107-2141.
Christopher Johnson McCandless was not justified for shunning society and social norms in favor of individualism. McCandless misinterpreted “Walden”, was crazy to shun society, misunderstood “Self Reliance”, and committed actions that contradicted themselves. McCandless was misguided, insane, and had no idea what he was trying to accomplish because he got two simple things like solitude and isolation mixed up.
Frazier explains to his guests that the children are taken care of and monitored by the whole community. The community experiments to find the best methods of behavioral engineering and uses them on the children. From an early age the children are conditioned to practice self-control and disregard certain unwanted emotions such as envy. They accomplish this with several trials. After this tour, the group heads back for lunch. After lunch, they fulfill their daily labor credits. At dinner, Frazier declares that Walden Two should succeed because it is based on experimental behavioral engineering and not on the faulty bases of other unsuccessful utopias. After dinner, the group debates several potential issues of Walden Two. However, they find no real issues. Following the discussion Burris goes out to smoke. He realizes that his urge to smoke has decreased after staying at Walden Two. While he is smoking Steve and Mary tell him they are considering staying at Walden Two. Burris endorses this and begins to wonder if he could do the
With beautiful mornings, stunning scenery, and revelry in the simple and exotic banalities of life, Walden is an experience in living. Thoreau's purpose for writing Walden is clearly stated: "As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up" (Thoreau 168). Its purpose is to help us to realize what we are missing in our everyday existence, and rise to our potential. Walden provides an ideal for true and simple living that can be juxtaposed against Willy's artificial and common city life. This contrasting pedagogy is immediately apparent in the settings of the books. Both stories occur in New England, yet in drastically different localities. Walden Pond is a sheltered, wooded chunk of paradise where a philosopher can do his business. Willy's Brooklyn, with its growing population, seems to tighten a choke hold on him as his dreams evaporate. When Willy started raising his family, their spacious home and garden was on the edge of a city full of opportunities, yet as his crisis approached he found that his city was crushing him. The gradual change is a reflection of Willy's choices and their effects.
In this time we must fully realize the true origins of our society, not the so called “party line” they feed us. True, while few of us find sanctuary in hidden places, what place is there for we strangelings? Is absolute equality truly a good idea? In our new world, our Walden Two, we are taught from an early age to behave, to conform. From our glass cages at birth, to our debuts at age seven, to our eventual marriages, all we do is in the name of a peaceful, simple existence. We are taught that anger is not allowed, faith in God is not allowed, anything harmful is forbidden! I ask of you, is this truly a life, much less, a life worth living?
In his world-famous thought-provoking novel, Walden, Henry David Thoreau presents his readers with a simple, inspirational guide for living. Written beside the beautiful Walden pond and completely surrounded by an unencumbered natural world, Thoreau writes about his own relationship with the beauty that surrounds him. His book provides an outlet for everyone to learn from his lessons learned in nature, whether they be city-dwellers or his own neighbors. One of Thoreau's most prominent natural lessons running throughout his novel is that of his deeply rooted sense of himself and his connection with the natural world. He relates nature and his experiences within it to his personal self rather than society as a whole. Many times in the novel, Thoreau urges his readers to break away from their societal expectations and to discover for themselves a path that is not necessarily the one most trodden. He explains that everyone should "be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought (341)." Walden inspires its readers to break out of the mold of tradition, away from outwardly imposed expectations, and out of the loyalty to society over loyalty to oneself in order to find truth and self in nature.
“To read [Walden] as a poem,” writes Anderson (1968), “is to assume that its meaning resides not in its logic but in its language, its structure of images, its symbolism—and is inseparable from them” (p. 18). In this way in general, as Anderson concludes, can we as students of literature “discover the true poetic subjects” (p. 18); and in this way in particular can we here read, investigate, and parse the meaning of such subjects as “solitude”, to which Thoreau devoted an entire chapter—the eponymous Chapter 5, “Solitude”. Thoreau delivers this his poetic sensibility by way of what Golemba (1988) discerns are two “clash[ing]…rhetorical modes” (p. 385)—more succinctly, what Anderson (1968) determines are wit and metaphor. It is of contention here that metaphor impels the poetry of “Solitude” and thus is that which, upon close reading expresses not the logic but the language of what solitude truly means.
The coldness felt in the house as the sheriff and court attorney entered the house symbolized the same coldness brought about by Mr. Wright. For the house to be cold and gloomy and everything else outside the total opposite, was much more than just coincidence. It was as if when you entered the house a cadaver, cold and clammy, had embraced you in its arms. “ I don’t think a place’d be any cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it”, Mrs. Hale told the court attorney (11). Mrs. Hale knew perfectly well what kind of personality Mr. Wright had, which is why she specified that she wished that she had gone to visit Mrs. Wright when only she was there. “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm”, says Mrs. Hale, yet they are seen as mere trifles because it is the women who take on these tasks.
Norvell, Candyce. "Critical Essay on Walden." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works. Ed. David M. Galens, Jennifer Smith, and Elizabeth Thomason. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Mar. 2011.
Behaviorism is a philosophy of psychology that concerns itself on behavior and actions of people acquired through conditioning. It is observable and can be caged by changing instances of reward and punishment. B.F. Skinner, man with many ideas, worked to become a leader of the behaviorist society. He presented the way of thinking that political action being avoidable, and human knowledge and behavior being important to a new revolution. In Skinner’s novel, “Walden Two”, he expresses his ideas about a utopian society. Utopia is a society that is perfect and ideal. Utopia is a perfect world. In utopias, problems such war, racism, diseases, poverty, oppressions, discrimination, inequality, and so forth do not exist. The word 'utopia' was made up from Greek roots by Sir Thomas More. In 1516, More wrote a book called Utopia. Depending on the Greek roots used, utopia can either mean 'no place' or 'good place In Walden Two,
E. B. White’s most important literary influence was Henry David Thoreau, the author of “Walden: Or, Life In The Woods” a...
Thoreau, Henry David, and Jeffrey S. Cramer. Walden : A Fully Annotated Edition. New Haven:
The books Brave New World by Aldus Huxley and Anthem by Ayn Rand are both valuable twentieth-century contributions to literature. Both books explore the presence of natural law in man and propose a warning for what could happen when man's sense of right and wrong is taken from him. In this essay, I hope to show how these seemingly unrelated novels both expound upon a single, very profound, idea.
Walden. 1854. The. Project Gutenberg. Jan. 1, 1995.. U of Illinois.
Behaviorism is a learning theory or a developmental theory that measures observable behaviors that are produced by the learner’s response to stimuli. On one end of the spectrum behaviorism is known as an attitude. At the other end, it is known as a doctrine. According to the behavioral views of human development, behaviorists argued that to focus attention on unobservable constructs, such as emotions, thoughts, or the unconscious, was an unscientific approach.(Craig & Dunn, Ex.: 2010)