Free Will: Really?

B F Skinners Behaviourism is not merely a descriptive science of animal

behaviour; Skinner intended his behavioural psychology to be nothing less than a
means by which to engineer society as a whole and make the world a better place.
In Skinnerian Psychology, the stakes are very high: it is not merely in animal
training or to make circuses more orderly in animal affairs.
The bottom line here is to change the world. And Skinner is confident that
behaviourism is the right way to do that because the world today is itself the
outcome to reinforcement and punishment which has led to a particular kind of
global behaviour. Children are shaped; this is the whole process of socialization and
acculturation.
Is this a threat to human autonomy or free will or the likes? The world does not care
about it. For example an environmental option is presented and Smith did
something, do you care he did this because he wanted to do it or he did it even
though he did not want to do it. The thing that counts is his doing it.
The world gets in trouble not as a result of free will or determinism or autonomy or
moral theories or the likes, the world gets in trouble because of the behaviour that
takes place. Not because of the deep, dark, hidden Freudian motives that preoccupy
the realms of the unconscious, who knows about that. Or I guess only the selected
psychoanalysts do or at least, claim to.
Take the example of freshmen coming to university professors asking them about
the course which they should be taking. The professor asks, lets say, Ram You
have tentatively put down Chemistry, Biology and Calculus. Why is that?
Ram says I am pre-Med
Oh! I see. Is your mother or father a physician?
Oh no-no, Ram replies
Are you encouraged to go into medicine, because you will still have
4 more years after college? It is very demanding, you see, the Professor says.
No there has been no encouragement at home, it is my decision, and it is my free
will. I know that medicine is for me.
Oh I see, when did that happen? The Professor asks I always wanted to be a
doctor.
Did you? Did you want to be a doctor when you were 6 weeks old?
No sir, not as an infant, but as long as I can remember.
The above is something of a parody. But this is a quite common discourse that takes
place between teachers and students.
Suppose we entered into the life of this Ram. In Skinnerian frame of mind, this sort
of thing would be going on:
Ram is 6 years home and he comes into the house and he says I am going to be a
fireman. The father tells him to wash his hand and get ready for supper, and that is
the end of it.
Now Ram is 8 years old, he comes running into the house after watching a movie
and he says in no uncertain terms that he wants to be a hero.
Then his father scolds him and at night there is a little argument between Rams
father and mother.
Now he is 12 years old. He takes out a fish from the aquarium and operates it,
satisfied with his job he says I want to be a doctor. Well things start changing
from then on. On his next birthday his father presents him a microscope, his sister
asks him to check her pulse.

The long and short of this is that has this one sentence I want to be a doctor
garnered the attention of a significant fraction of the worlds adult population. The
point one wants to make is that a fair amount of reinforcement is going on in a
highly incidental way. You dont even have to set out to shape behaviour and
control it.
It does not have to be some sort of a fascist motive. It just happens.
People smile at each other, they complement each other. Facial expression,
postures, body language, all these have a certain amount of effect on others.
If you do have a significant other (an important person) in your life, which I am sure
you have and one day the significant other comes in and you say By the way I have
bought this tie and the reply is Oh did you? Remember now it is just three words
but it can have a devastating effect; whereas oh how nice can have a radically
different effect. What is the effect? The Oh did you? effect is:
no more plaid (suppose the tie is plaid); the Oh how nice is more plaid, positive
reinforcement.
Majority of us follow and believe what our fathers used to follow and believe. It is
rightly said If you want a man to hate you make him think. Most of us find
ourselves in deep water because we seldom think and plan our actions; we just
blindly ape our role-models.
This is where most of the troubles begin. In our religious life too, we seldom choose
to become Muslims or Christians or Hindus but we are born into a Muslim family,
Christian family or a Hindu family.
Free will is not forced will, of course. Forced will can be defined as, in terms of
theological conception, believing because of others
influence, whether it is because of physical pressure of moral pressure. Our parents,
training us to do this and to do that, believe this and dont believe that, does
not come under the category of free will, it is undoubtedly forced will; because here,
subtle influence and pressure is being applied at a subconscious level or at times,
unconscious level, without the parents knowing anything about it According to
Behaviourism, our life and its actions, since childhood till death can be changed and
modified the way one wants. Our thinking as well as our actions (behaviours) can be
trained. For example a child says that he wants to become a sportsperson and if the
parents congratulate him on his decision then this thinking will be reinforced and his
future actions will be in conjunction with that reinforced idea (of becoming a
sportsperson). But if the parent had ignored or spanked the child on the idea then
the child will reject that idea, as it led to punishment and his future actions will be
in isolation or at times, in total opposition to that idea. So, one can see that this is
how our thinking and actions can be modified, even at an unconscious level.
The traditional view is that a hero is a hero because of some great quality in him; a
villain is a villain because of some bad quality in him; a saint is a saint because of
some transcendental nature of his mind. All these qualities are inside the person.
But it is not so, according to the Behaviourists. The determinants of behaviour are
not inside the organism but it is outside, in the environment. The behaviour that we
are ready to either condemn or praise is actually engineered in that organism. And
when you stand around to applaud this or that performance or achievement,
understand that what you are looking at, the behaviourists says, is the result of a
lifetime or reinforcement history that has inclined that persons behaviour that gain
the approval, support and applause of other persons or of society. Why praise it or
blame it?

The real source of commendable and condemnable behaviour is not the person or
his inner qualities but it is the environment. The child who is reinforced for shouting
will become a bully, becomes the persistent aggressive, who never had enough.
Every person finds such a person obnoxious and everybody wants to blame that
person; if you want to blame anybody, blame those who were applying positive
reinforcements for a form of behaviour that have now become habitual.
This, of course challenges our ancient philosophical, religious, moral propositions. It
certainly violates the freedom of our own behaviour
References:
1.
Psychology, Fifth Edition. Robert A. Baron. Ch 5
2.
Psychology, Eighth Edition. Henry Gleitman, et al. Ch 7
3.
Psychology Applied in Modern Life, Tenth Edition. Weiten et al. Ch
7
4.
Encyclopaedia of Applied Psychology, Charles Spielberger
5.
http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/free-will--really?/d/10468
(This article has been written by me almost an year ago by a different pen name,
which I generally use for controversial topics, so dont think I have plagiarised from
it.
Aiman Reyaz