Vargas 2015

European Journal of Behavior Analysis
ISSN: 1502-1149 (Print) 2377-729X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rejo20
B. F. Skinner’s theory of behavior
E. A. Vargas
To cite this article: E. A. Vargas (2015): B. F. Skinner’s theory of behavior, European Journal of
Behavior Analysis, DOI: 10.1080/15021149.2015.1065640
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Download by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] Date: 14 October 2015, At: 12:28
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15021149.2015.1065640
B. F. Skinner’s theory of behavior

E. A. Vargas
B. F. Skinner Foundation, Cambridge, MA, USA
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Skinner’s Theory of Behavior exhibits the characteristics of sophis- Received 31 May 2014
ticated theories in its three metafeatures of philosophical founda- Accepted 22 November
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 12:28 14 October 2015
tions, experimental operations, and engineering applications. Of 2014

its several philosophical foundations (or frames of reference) the KEYWORDS
primary ones are: (a) no agent forms a qualitative core of its Skinner; theory of behavior;
analysis of behavioral events, instead the analysis is a quantitative contingency selection;
one of behavioral properties and their contingent relations with behaviorology; operant
each other and other events; and (b) behavioral events must be
interpreted within their own dimensional system of analysis, and
their analysis not default to the explanatory framework of another
class of sciences. The experimental operations provide the data
that support principles anchored in the laboratory analysis of the
two-term contingency relation – the operant. The laboratory work
starts with the consequences of selection, a postcedent impetus,
and combined with other variables, including antecedent ones,
examines further contingency relations based upon the operant.
Specific engineering applications are derived from the laboratory
work of experimental operations merged with the theory’s inter-
pretative frames of reference. These engineering applications are
vast. Their social benefits have been immense. Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior ushered in a new and revolutionary behavioral science
based upon the quantification of action properties combined with
the mechanism of contingency selection.
Necessity
Skinner stated firmly: “A theory is essential to the scientific understanding of behavior
as a subject matter” (1999a, p. 348).1 He had high hopes of such a theory forming the
basis of psychology and the analysis of all behavioral phenomena. He was even
optimistic. “What is emerging in psychology, as it has emerged at some point in the
history of most sciences, is a theory that refers to facts at a single level of observation”
(1999b, p. 350). Implied when he explicitly discussed theory in his 1947 article (rep-
rinted 1999b) was that the unifying theory would be his position. It did not turn out
that way. At least not within the institutionalized discipline of psychology – fervently
committed to its agency-centered perspective. But eventually Skinnerian theory formed
the foundations of two other groups of behavioral scientists – behavior analysts and
behaviorologists.2
CONTACT E. A. Vargas eavargas@mac.com.

© 2015 Norwegian Association for Behavior Analysis
2 E. A. VARGAS
Interestingly enough, Skinner’s Theory of Behavior has not been articulated as such.
Bits and pieces and even large chunks of what he explored and later wrote about form
the smaller part or the larger part or almost the entirety of the repertoire of those
individuals who designate themselves as behavior analysts and behaviorologists. The
labels are to some degree not necessarily misleading as to their scientific foundations,
but without an explicit articulation of his Theory of Behavior, those labels are certainly
vague as to what is implied with respect to operating within Skinner’s framework of
behavioral science. In diverse disciplines with their differing descriptors, various pro-
fessionals espouse Skinnerian principles but plucked and blended to greater or lesser
degree.
The identical label embraces differing commitments. A number of card-carrying
members of the Association of Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) state firmly that
they are Kantorian, working within the framework of J. R. Kantor’s Interbehavioral

Psychology. Of course, as behavior analysts they are entitled to that framework. Science
is not one mighty stream rushing to a sea of understanding but innumerable rivulets
trying to find their way to that sea through oftentimes landscapes of difficult and dry
terrain. Others inside psychology and part of it either as academics or as practitioners
state that they are behavior analysts, but further state that they only engage in
Skinnerian science as one of the points of view of their commitment to psychology.
Some psychologists promote a new behaviorism away from the old; an old behaviorism
often denoted as “Skinnerian” but essentially “Skinnerian” only as a caricature of his
position. And there’s a sort of mutated behavior analyst who while apparently using
some of Skinner’s core concepts states that these are passé, especially as interpreted by
others, and that one of the crown jewels of his science, his analysis of verbal behavior, is
badly tarnished and essentially worthless due to a number of failures such as not
understanding “understanding” especially in the “listener.” Those are not the only
behavior analysts operating outside or on the periphery of Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior. But at this point the reader does not need more examples easy enough to
come by. Most behavior analysts, however – whether otherwise calling themselves
speech therapists or clinical psychologists – simply use in practical fashion those
Skinnerian principles useful for their disciplinary practices. These behavior analysts
are “behavioral engineers” who “identify controlling variables and implement them
with precision in applied settings” (Iversen, 2012, p. 66). And how about behaviorol-
ogists? They are far fewer than behavior analysts. (Though any history of social move-
ments, including that of science, shows that numbers initially involved should be
ignored in assessing future outcomes. For a while after Galileo, he had few followers,
as Aristotelian physics had the backing of the Church and of the academics in the
universities. Sometimes the few do not prevail, sometimes they do.) But even among
behaviorologists there is variation. For instance, though all behaviorologists state
unequivocally that they are followers of Skinner’s science and advocates of his Theory
of Behavior, an article promoting behaviorology justified the science’s foundations with
a physicalistic interpretation that Skinner himself unequivocally rejected. Such messi-
ness is typical.
Differences of opinion and ambiguities of interpretation are not unusual in the
histories of the sciences. Darwin’s theory of evolution and especially his mechanism
of natural selection as its driving force was rejected not only by the culture outside of
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 3
biological science but by many biologists. Hull (1973), Mayr (1991), and Ruse (2006)
furnish excellent overviews of those contentions. Hull (1973) in Darwin and His Critics
provides an introduction that gives the status of the philosophy of science during
Darwin’s time. The philosophy of science at that time was heavily oriented to a
physicalistic interpretation of events. Darwin dived into this literature but some of
the people he admired (e.g., Herschel) despised his position (see Hull, 1974, pp.
86–114). Mayr (1991) in One Long Argument bears down on the central themes of
Darwin’s position, and describes, especially in Chapters 4 and 5, the resistance encoun-
tered both within and outside the scientific community. Ruse (2006) in Darwinism and
Its Discontents takes up the issues that pose difficulties for biologists and non-biologists
and examines each in detail in separate chapters. Biographies also get across these
disputations; see, for example, Janet Browne’s fine biographies on Darwin, Voyaging
(1995) and The Power of Place (2002). Examples of such contentious differences can be
drawn from all sciences and from all times. A current running dispute is one over the
first migrations and peopling of the North and South American continents. The
disagreements have become intense. One researcher
was singled out for special criticism. He was all but ostracized . . . for years. . . . “Its not fun
when people write to your dean and try to get you fired,” he recalled. “And then your grad
students try to get jobs and they can’t get jobs.” (Gugliotta, 2013, p. 42)
Science may be many-splendored, but it is also a many-scuffled enterprise.

As in other sciences, in the communities of behavior analysts and behaviorologists
the alarms and contusions over Skinnerian science appear to be typical – but they are
aimless. Darwin’s theory at least provided a frame of reference from which differences
of opinion could be understood and eventually adjudicated by evidence and logic. A
case in point: apparently now, epigenetic consequences introduce a Lamarckian aspect
to “inheritance”; such new findings adjust the effects of the selection mechanism.
Reading what others say about Skinnerian science, different readers with the same
professional label read what does not resemble what they acknowledge and accept. And
there is a tendency in these writings to merge what is not yet accepted with disciplinary
yearnings not yet achieved. Bits and pieces of Skinner’s corpus are patched together to
fashion new theoretical creatures. They are given their bolts of energy by the names
attached to the new efforts. Such efforts are made worse by not calling Skinner’s theory
what it is – his Theory of Behavior. He was unequivocal in his demand for such a
theory. We should be unequivocal in its expression.
In not articulating clearly Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, or at least specifying that
there is one, we have done our science a disservice. Not being able to point to the
scientific terrain covered by the theory leads to the disciplinary meanderings noted
earlier. Is there a science independent of other behavioral sciences, such as sociology,
psychology, or anthropology? And if there is, what is it? And if it is there, how should
the “there” be described? And if denoted unambiguously, what are the criteria of
reference by which to interpret the data of behavioral facts? What is the philosophic
framework of this science, what experimental effort supports it, and what is its engineer-
ing (practical) impact? For each of these three metafeatures, as Skinner well recognized,
a coherent theory of behavior provides the answers.
4 E. A. VARGAS
Theory
All discussions of behavioral events imply a theory, or at least a rough and ready
framework of interpretation. A consideration of behavioral events typically interprets
them, and often does so in a lay language that carries with it an explicit or implied set of
reasons for the actions encountered. As Skinner (1991a) put it, “The important objec-
tion to the vernacular in the description of behavior is that many of its terms imply
conceptual schemes” (p. 7). Any scientific analysis of behavior must work with its own
formulations. One advantage, as Skinner (1999b) pointed out, is the engineering pay-
off. “Only an effective and progressive theory of behavior . . . will make it possible to
apply the methods of science to human affairs to every field” (p. 358). The tremendous
impact Skinner’s “effective and progressive theory of behavior” has had on everyday
“human affairs” provides evidence of its cogency and its soundness. A second advantage
comes from the clarity provided to the scientific work done and yet to be done. A
formulated theory articulates its central propositions so these can be continually tested,
and as well, so they can be continually extended to other events of its dimensional
domain.
The term theory is much discussed and defined. Skinner (1999b) simply says that a
theory is “statements about organizations of facts” (p. 348). But for those who desire a
more extensive description and discussion of theory, Gerald Holton – physicist, philo-
sopher, and historian of science – sets forth a fine overview of the role of theory in
Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Kepler to Einstein (1973). He emphasizes theory
in the physical sciences. Mary Hesse (1972) – philosopher of science – presents an
excellent discussion in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Encyclopedia also includes a
number of articles on theory under their specific proponents (e.g., Ernst Mach).
Philosophers, scientists, and historians have explored the understanding of theory in
a variety of ways. No set conclusion emerges.
In talking about theory, including a theory of behavior, nothing fancy, certainly
nothing expressed within a particular format, is necessitated. It is not necessary to lay
out such a theory in hypothetical-deductive form. Newton’s Principia is indicated as an
exemplar but Newton’s pursuit of his discoveries was not how he did it. After all, here
was a fellow who severely poked his own eye to examine the properties of light. He did
say “hypothesis non fingo” and we must take him at his word. Theoretical analysis need
not be extensive, as Einstein’s 10-page article on Brownian motion shows, and not even
specifically based on the theorist’s experimental effort as Einstein’s expression of his
special theory of relativity illustrates. And as Darwin’s Origin of Species demonstrates, a
theory can stretch out without an equation in sight, supported “only” by a massive
marshaling of details from its own special view of the natural world. (An expression of
Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, his interpretation of verbal behavior, is work of this sort.)
No definition then prevails of what a so-called “theory” should look like. Finally, a
community of scientists agree about it.
Independent of the range and depth of the content, the principles of any theory
display what may be called a theory’s metafeatures: its philosophical foundations, its
engineering practices, and its experimental operations. Any theory has a set of philo-
sophical foundations that underpins the interpretation of its data. Newton, Einstein,
Darwin, and Skinner worked to describe a world that was there, not just constructed
from any stray notion they might have had. They engaged in the same kind of behavior
as Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe finds out what’s what on his island by what he
grips and eats when on it. (Of course, when it comes to naming what is gripped and
eaten so others can grip and eat it, a community of at least one other is involved.) Nor
do scientists describe a world that exists simply because others agree with them –
physicists don’t get together yearly for a consensus agreement to maintain gravity for
yet another year. If a theory’s scientific work is accurate, it leads to effective engineering
practices. Maxwell’s propositions result in flicking switches to light dark rooms, and
Skinner’s propositions result in reinforcing actions to shape new repertoires. And many
theories gain support from experimental operations that initially spurred the theory
(e.g., Skinner’s) or that later supported it (e.g., Darwin’s). A theory is constantly tested
by the prior successes and the later results of its metafeatures. The utility of a theory
depends on the effects of all three of its metafeatures.

To summarize, a theory in whatever science – physical, biological, or behavioral – is
not a set of shoddy speculations. It is a set of intermingled statements analyzing,
explaining, and summarizing the phenomena that constitute a domain of events.
From these statements, precise predictions can be made and engineering practices
can be devised. Both prediction and practice confirm the propositions of the theory:
prediction through accuracy, and practice through effectiveness. How well the theory
holds up, its duration over time, depends on the repeated success of prediction and
practice. The rewards of predicting correctly and practicing effectively achieve perma-
nence of the theory through replication and extension of its core principles by anyone
who works with those principles in whatever setting.
Theory of behavior
Overview
Skinner’s Theory of Behavior consists, as do other sophisticated theories of science, of
philosophical frames of reference, experimental operations, and engineering applica-
tions. It is an elaborate edifice. To do justice to its foundations, the floors built upon
them, and the various balconied extensions of those floors, requires more than a
brief glimpse. A thorough discussion would be a long discussion, indeed; and a
much longer manuscript than requirements here permit. Thus, a quick pictorial
glimpse of the overall structure will do as a start before a wider survey – though
brief – of what occupies those floors. Figure 1 represents the scaffolding of the
theory.
The figure of the theory is one-layered. It provides only hints of aspects of the
components of the theory to each other, but concisely summarizes Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior pictorially. The representative theory figure denotes the frames of reference by
which movements when contingently selected by their consequences are interpreted as
operants. The two-term (2 t in Figure 1) contingent relations of action and stimulus
property classes (operants) expand into further networks of contingency relations.
Depending on the contingent controls involved, the probabilities of action properties
either increase or decrease. Incremental or decremental effects may be due: (a) to the
characteristics – as potentiated by other occurrences – of events (typically called
6 E. A. VARGAS
Figure 1. Skinner’s theory of behavior.
reinforcement or punishment – 3 t) that follow action-property classes or (b) to the

commonality of shared features (typically called induction or generalization – 3 t) of
action-properties or (c) to prior stimulus-properties paired with already-in-place con-
tingency relations (typically called evocation or discrimination). Interactions among
these basic contingency relationships give rise to further processes – demonstrated by
experimental operations – such as autoshaping, equivalence, matching, schedules, and
others. All these contingency relationships occur with actions that directly contact their
inner or outer milieus (event-shaped and event-governed behavior) or with actions
whose contact with events is mediated through culturally prescribed mediation (ver-
bal-shaped and verbal-governed behavior – 4 t+). Though not highlighted, of the various
measures taken, those involving time such as rate are most favored. Furthermore, the
figure spotlights only a few of the engineering practices that stem from the science’s
theoretical and experimental undertakings and in turn substantiate them.
Though not explicitly noted with “feedback lines,” each metafeature – philosophical
foundations, experimental operations, and engineering practices – of the science reci-
procally interacts with its other components. (The dotted lines denoting its separate
parts overlap to imply interconnections.) Such interaction both advances and amends
the science. No one metafeature component is more important than any other. But the
frame of reference – how you interpret data – advances a science more than the efforts
made to obtain a specific set of data, whether through naturalistic observation, math-
ematical transformation, or experimental manipulation. Experimental manipulations
provide means of producing data under highly controlled conditions for the observing
actions. Data from naturalistic observation are just as powerful – for example, Tycho
Brahe’s which furnished the basis for Kepler’s laws of planetary motion – and those
naturalistic data also indicate the “causal nexus” between events. The frame of reference
by which data are interpreted supplies their explanation and thus the basis for a given
theory. As Mayr (1965) points out:
As long as spontaneous generation and the instantaneous conversion of one species into
another were universally believed . . . there was no room for a theory of evolution. By
insisting on the fixity of species, Linnaeus did more to bring about the eclipse of the
concept of spontaneous generation than did Redi and Spallanzani, who disproved it
experimentally. (p. 4)
The philosophical dog wags the experimental tail.
Philosophical themas: Frames of reference

Movement and Frame of Reference: Skinner’s theory is vast and the domains of its
experimental operations and engineering practices immense. Any one arena of the
latter two metafeatures could constitute the lifetime work of a professional behavioral
scientist or behavioral engineer. And it does. In the experimental domain, the study of
equivalence relations (e.g., Arntzen, 2012) or contingency schedules (e.g., Palya & Allan,
2003) or joint attention (e.g., Holth, 2006) occupies the full-time efforts of many
scientists who publish books, monographs, and articles detailing new insights and
further advances. Engineering practices derived from Skinnerian science occupy the
efforts of even more professionals. A vast number specialize in autism or in organiza-
tional management – only two of the many specialties that apply the science to practical
problems whose solutions provide social benefits. Experimentalists and engineers
undergird, change, and move the science forward. Their importance cannot be over-
stated. But as we shall note, the degree to which they succeed depends on large measure
on the philosophical frame of reference they bring to bear when interpreting the actions
they encounter. In dealing with a student’s school work it makes a great deal of
difference in how effective a solution may be when considering whether that effort is
a matter of inner motivation or of contingency control. Data derived from experimental
operations do not stand in isolation from the frame of reference the experimenter
brings to bear on them. Galileo is called the father of experimental physics. Butterfield
(1953) points out that it was not simply the measurement of the rolls of balls down
inclined planes with respect to speed and to distance but how Galileo interpreted those
events that provoked the split from prior work in physics, or as then called natural
philosophy. The movements of objects, such as their fall to earth, were thought by
Aristotelian natural philosophers as due to impetuosity, a force that motivated their
return to earth. Galileo rejected such occult notions. Movement and distance were due
to the contingent relations between speed and slope, and he proposed a straightforward
mathematical treatment of the functions of the variables involved. As Darwin pointed
out, “How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or
against some view if it is to be of any service” (quoted in Hull, 1973, p. 277). Skinner
(2013) weighs in with a similar position:
Suppose we ask an observer who knows nothing about the analysis of behavior to look into
a typical experimental space when an experiment is in progress. . . . Our observer will find
it hard to make any sense of these scattered facts. He has observed a behaving organism
from what appears to be an almost ideal vantage point. Over a substantial period of time
8 E. A. VARGAS
he has seen various stimuli, responses, and reinforcers appear and disappear. The fact
remains that direct observation, no matter how prolonged, tells him very little about what is
going on. (pp. 8–9)
Skinner conveys explicitly that to interpret properly the behavioral events observed
requires a given frame of reference.
From the very beginning of his science, Skinner expressed the necessity of a frame of
reference, thus bringing in the philosophical themas by which one understands
obtained data. Early in The Behavior of Organisms (published 1938), he defines the
subject matter of his science: “By behavior, then, I mean simply the movement of an
organism or of its parts in a frame of reference” (p. 6). He notes other considerations
concomitant with movement by his earlier statement on the same page that “behavior is
what an organism is doing” in its “commerce” with the world. In that “commerce”
contingencies assert the critical consideration, but first a bit of analysis about movement
and the role of frame of reference.
In analyzing movement, three concurrent circumstances coexist in parallel
commerce: behavior occurs inside and outside the organism; events occur coin-
cident with actions; and actions and events occur over time – before, during, and
after (see Figure 2).
Time is always a factor, so epistemological considerations bear on whether actions
took place in the past, are now current, or may occur in the future. Paleontologists,
therapists, and family members address a great deal of behavior that occurred in the
past and certainly the legal system and the insurance business make probability guesses
on what may occur in the future. All deal with current behavior from which they
inferentially extrapolate to past and future actions. The issue of where actions are
located also brings to bear epistemological considerations. Location is by itself a trivial
factor. The issue of location is essentially one of verification of what was reported. The
term “private event” is a misnomer. It conflates what may be ineffable with the action of
the single observer. The events reported by a single observer may be in the body, in the
bathroom, in the Amazon on the other side of the world, or in the laboratory. Whether
the report is valid does not depend on how many reported it – a mob of people may
Figure 2. Movements of organism.

report a spectral occurrence and even under the controlled conditions of the laboratory
more than one person may concurrently view an erroneous result. Validity depends
whether from its occurrence other events can be predicted accurately and whether from
its control (however engaged) practical results can ensue. Events that actions encounter
may be described in any dimensional system – physical, biological, or behavioral. But
they obtain behaviorological significance only within the frame of reference of Skinner’s
theory which dictates how an observer interprets the facts observed. Epistemological
considerations come into play due to the state of the observer’s frame of reference.
Movement by itself portrays no significance.
As Skinner (1991a) states, what is of import is movement when “observed by another
organism” (p. 6), and takes place in a “frame of reference provided by the organism
itself or by various external objects or fields of force” (p. 6). More than one observer
brings into play a number of overlapping frames of reference. At some point, the
observations of other organisms observing must become invariant across them but
how is a matter of methodological and philosophical issues not within the purview of
this article.3 If not forced “politically” (adherence to an ideological position, e.g.,
creationist principles), the workable criteria of invariance, however, still remain predic-
tion and practicality. A last difficult matter to untangle is that a culture produces a
repertoire in an organism that observes other aspects of its repertoire. The person
observes one’s actions within a frame of reference. As an example of what a difference a
person’s own frame of reference makes to interpreting personal activities, any compar-
ison of autobiographical material will do, e.g., Confessions of St Augustine (1976)
compared with Henry Miller’s Book of Friends (1976). Whether nonhuman organisms
engage in this personal duality of observation remains a contentious matter.
Frames of reference define the doings of an organism and provide the significance of
its actions (see Figure 3).
Only two reference frames – agencyless and dimensional – shall be dissected in detail.
The rest shall be simply defined.
Figure 3. Significance of movements.

10 E. A. VARGAS
Agencyless
The second part of Skinner’s doctoral thesis (1930a)4 presented his experimental
operations on what he then called the “reflex” relation. He submitted a good many
records of rats’ eating rates. In the first part of his thesis, over half of it, he reviewed the
history of the concept of the reflex. He drives home in this history – whose manner is
adopted he says from Mach, Poincaire, and Bridgeman – how “the conflict between
observed necessity and preconceptions of freedom” (p. 9) [italics added] produced the
tension in interpreting the observed results of surgical preparations of decorticate
animals. In all animal life, the soul was held to be responsible for movement. As
Skinner (1930a) states:
the movement of an organism had generally been taken as coexistent with its life and as
necessarily correlated with the action of some such entity as soul. The necessary relation-
ship between the action of soul and the contraction of a muscle . . . was explicit. . . . it was
disturbing to find, experimentally, that a muscle could be made to contract after it had
been severed from a living organism or even after death. (p. 10). . . . Movement, far from
being the objective manifestation of the activity of soul, had become an organic process
subject to experimental investigation. (p. 12)
Unpredictable variability still occurred. When it did, a “non-physical concept” such

as mind or volition was asserted as its cause. Additional experimental work with
“spinal frogs,” for example, dispensed with the variability and thus with causes
outside of those of immediate mechanical or chemical applications. The physiologi-
cal examination of basic muscle motion eventually replaced, with the concept of
“stimulus,” the cause for movement that formerly was given to “causes” such as the
earlier one of “soul” and the later one of “mind.” Skinner then describes the
significance of Pavlov’s further step:
Pavlov was engaged in the investigation of the activity of the digestive glands. For much of
this activity it was possible to identify the necessary antecedent events (the mechanical or
chemical changes acting directly or reflexly upon the glands). The greater part of the
normal secretion . . . was . . . not under control of the experimenter. . . . this was called
“psychic” secretion. Pavlov undertook the investigation of this activity.
The work of Pavlov may . . . be taken as historically fundamental. . . . The principle of
conditioning supplied the extended range of stimulation needed to account for the
complex behavior of the total organism. (Skinner, 1930a, pp. 20, 21)
Pavlov’s work became a cornerstone of behaviorological science, but the experimental

specifics of the discoveries are not the focus here. What is of import is the further
exclusion of a non-material cause.
Skinner drives home the point (in all his writings) that the description of
behavior (and its explanation when description is extended) rests on two relation-
ships: the correlations between actions and stimuli; and based on those primary
correlations, the secondary correlations with a class of events he calls third variables
– events such as “emotion.” But critically, the primary functional relations between
actions and stimulus variables do not derive from antecedent events. Stimulus
events prior to an action cannot account for all of the variability between stimulus
variables and response variables. The typical solution has been to construe an
agency (such as an organism’s “mind”) or agency-like structure (such as a
grammatical “device”) between the antecedent stimulus events and the response
outcomes that adjust for the discrepancy in the paired values of the observed sets
of values. Almost all of behavioral science still operates within this stimulus–
agency–response formulation. Skinner stepped outside this stimulus–response for-
mula. Skinner’s position is radically contrary to other behavioristic positions, espe-
cially those that adopt an organism/structuralism approach. Stressing antecedent
control, the cognitive position, in whatever science, is a stimulus–response analysis
with an intruded agency. (For further detail see Vargas, 1993; Skinner’s introduction
to Contingencies of Reinforcement [2013], and Hineline’s and Wanchisen’s (1989)
fine overview listing of the differences between Skinner’s behavioral science and
other analyses, especially cognitive.) Skinner investigated the selective effects of an
immediate milieu upon those actions that impact it. The selection effects of parti-
cular properties of internal or external milieus combine with the appropriate effects
of third variable events and produce changes in classes of action properties. It made
unnecessary any agency.
Skinner’s thematic interpretation not only applied to the events the organism’s
behavior directly encountered. It was also applied to those actions mediated by others,
for example language. Skinner (1992) summed up his position as follows:
Whenever we demonstrate that a variable exerts functional control over a response, we

reduce the supposed contribution of any inner agent. For example, if we can show that the
occurrence of a response is due to the presence of a stimulus of specified properties, then it
is not necessary to say that a speaker uses the response to describe the stimulus. If we can
show that a response is stronger when we deprive the individual of food, then we do not
need to say that a speaker uses the response to describe or disclose his need. If metapho-
rical extension can be shown to take place because a particular stimulus property has
acquired control of a response, we do not need to say that a speaker has invented a figure
of speech to express a perceived similarity between two stimuli. If an audience can be
shown to strengthen a particular subdivision of a verbal repertoire, we do not need to say
that a speaker chooses words appropriate to his audience. (p. 311)
In this analysis of verbal and lingual behavior the agent disappears.

This exclusion of agency puts forward the most radical thema in the Skinnerian
frames of reference by which actions are interpreted. It is not an issue of whether there
is an “inner life” or not. For Skinner, undoubtedly there was. The issue was how we
talked about behavioral events wherever situated. (A couple of fine examples of this sort
of analytic talk of inner events is provided by Mellon (2013) with respect to clinical
matters and Palmer (2014) with respect to theoretical issues.) What were the descriptive
concepts and explanatory principles by which that talk occurred? Skinner’s theory
excludes “mind” as an explanatory principle. It excludes as well any agency or feature
within the organism that “intends” or “decides” or “chooses” or any of the other vast
array of words that centers an analysis upon an organism and its presumed inner
doppelgȁnger. Skinner’s analysis moves to the contingencies between actions and
events, wherever and however those contingent relations are located and whether or
not directly observed. It finalizes the dethronement of humankind’s dominion over
nature, which earlier featured Copernicus’s and Darwin’s revolutions. The implications
have not been lost to those who object to such a dethronement. And it is this kind of
thema, as Holton (1973) points out, that so upsets those with an opposite one:
12 E. A. VARGAS
the widespread feeling of paradox and outrage when a new thema is proposed in opposi-
tion to the prevalent ones – as was, of course, the case with relativity theory, so much so
that Poincaré, to the end of his life in 1912, referred to Einstein’s theory of relativity never
once in print (and to Einstein, as far as I could discover, only once on the subject of the
photon, and in a derogatory way). (p. 192)
Eventually, physicists got beyond their protests. It will take longer in the behavioral
sciences and social establishments, for many of society’s institutions operate on the
presumption of an agency with free will who sins, buys, and votes. These institutions,
directly (e.g., grants that fund projects to explore agency action) and indirectly (e.g.,
socialization that builds beliefs in agencies) shape the presumptions of behavioral scientists.
Selectional
All theories of behavior have a starting point for why actions take place as they
do. Overwhelmingly in the behavioral sciences, this starting point is an antecedent
one. “Some event” initiates an activity. The primary cause occurs before the action.
It may be as fleetingly evanescent as a thought or as ontologically massive as a
mind. Skinner starts with what occurs after an action contacts its milieu. As a
consequence, such a contact makes available a selective effect on later occurrences
of equivalent actions, and as well to their class of actions. The starting point for
his theory is a postcedent one. He avoids the term “cause”; but instead concen-
trates on the functional analysis of the reciprocal interplay between actions and
selectional effects. For example, when contingently scheduled in particular ways,
postcedent events select over time patterns of behavior quite distinct from each
other – some with many actions crowded in a small unit of time, others with few
actions in a similar time unit, other patterns highly resistant to extinction, others
quickly diminishing, and so on. And through their practical use at an engineering
level, selectional effects shape new topographies of behavior from the variation
presented within a class of actions. A selection effect increases the probability that
a member of that class will occur or even that the particular class will.
The selection effects go beyond one-way. The first sentences of the book of laboratory
experiments, Schedules of Reinforcement (Ferster & Skinner, 1997), and of a book of
cultural interpretation, Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1992), echo each other. The sentences
follow: Schedules of Reinforcement – “When an organism acts upon the environment in
which it lives, it changes that environment in ways which often affect the organism itself”
(p. 1) and Verbal Behavior – “Men act upon the world, and change it, and are changed in
turn by the consequences of their action” (p. 1). The theme presents itself persistently in
Skinner’s writings. Classes of action impact their milieu and change it, and that milieu in
turn through its selection mechanism changes those actions in a dynamic reciprocal
interplay between actions and milieus, both inner or outer and over time.
Probabilistic
In Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, probability is inferred from the rate at which actions
occur. As he states in Contingencies of Reinforcement (2013):
A natural datum in a science of behavior is the probability that a given bit of behavior will
occur at a given time. An experimental analysis deals with that probability in terms of
frequency or rate of responding. Like probability, rate of responding would be a
meaningless concept if it were not possible to specify topography of response in such a way
that separate instances of an operant can be counted. (p. 75)
His sensitivity to this measure goes hand in hand with his emphasis on contingency.
Contingent
The Oxford English Dictionary, the standard bearer of all English dictionaries, gives a
number of definitions for contingent, contingency, and contingently. All denote the
probability of occurrence depending on circumstances. Examples of a few will follow:
contingent: “not determined by necessity in regard to action or existence”; “may or may
not happen”; “dependent on the existence or occurrence of something else” (p. 905);
contingency: “a possible or uncertain event upon which other things depend or are
conditional” (p. 905); and contingently: “not under predetermined necessity” (p. 906).
Five columns in the Oxford provide various aspects of these central meanings.
It may come across as overkill to display so many meanings. But for whatever
curious reason critics persist in calling Skinner’s analysis a deterministic and mechan-
istic one when his analysis is its antithesis. From the very beginning of his scientific
efforts, his language implied a non-mechanistic analysis and made explicit the non-
deterministic nature of how he defined and examined behavioral phenomena. The
consistent use of the various forms of the word contingent underlines clearly his
position. It is no accident that he titled the exposition of his theory of behavior
Contingencies of Reinforcement (2013); see particularly Note 1.2 (pages 25–28) “From
‘stimulus and response’ to ‘contingencies of reinforcement’;” where he states “My reply
. . . identified the contingency between a response and its consequence as the important
variable in operant conditioning” (p. 28; italics added).
Dimensional
Skinner advanced an independent science of behavior. Its explanatory terms would not
refer to another science’s dimensional system. As he put it:
When we attribute behavior to a neural or mental event, real or conceptual, we are likely to
forget that we still have the task of accounting for the neural or mental event. When we
assert that an animal acts in a given way because it expects to receive food, than what
began as the task of accounting for learned behavior becomes the task of accounting for
expectancy. (Skinner, 1999a, p. 71)
The difficulty in accepting Skinner’s point is in getting a good grip by what he means
by another science’s dimensional system. The workings of a science at its own level
of integration raise a number of subtle issues. It is not a rejection of the validity of
an alternative science’s enterprise nor of the benefit of reciprocal interplay between
the sciences. It is a declaration of the proper role of a class of sciences in the
understanding of movement. Dimensional system means that each class of science
deals with movement in the units and measures appropriate to the type of analysis
that science class makes by how it frames its investigation of the properties of
movement.
The physical sciences such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and others
examine movement with respect to its physical properties such as its direction and
magnitude. Vector values facilitate placing in space any displacement of movement.
14 E. A. VARGAS
Figure 4. Movement: physical dimension.
The importance of vector values shows itself in concepts such as force and in
sciences such as physics (see Figure 4). In investigating matter, the atom still
constitutes the basic unit split into further subdivisions (see, for example,
Feynman, 2008, pp. 5–21).
In the biological dimension, sciences such as physiology deal with movement as
responses, and the conceptual concerns in these sciences is the organic nature of
response – reactions understood by examining biochemical pathways to specific stimuli,
or their overall species specific role within Darwin’s theory of evolution (see Figure 5).
The cell constitutes the most convenient functional and structural unit of analysis. (It
took a while for cell theory to revolutionize biology and medicine; see Cohen, 1985,
particularly pages 315 and 316.). The biological dimension constitutes a separate form
of explanation from the physical one. As the physicist Feynman (2008) puts it:
Figure 5. Movement: biological dimension.

In order for physics to be useful to other sciences in a theoretical way . . . the science in
question must supply to the physicist a description of the object in a physicist’s language.
They can say, “Why does a frog jump?” and the physicist cannot answer. (p. 55)
The biologist, Ernst Mayr (1965), also weighs in on this issue:
Some physicists . . . have attempted . . . to express the laws of evolution in terms of the laws
of physics. Statements to the effect that “evolution is one more expression of the general
principle of irreversibility embodied in the second law of thermodynamics” are based on a
facile analogy that has no operational value. . . . The processes in physics and evolution
labeled by the same term “irreversibility” are fundamentally different. To drag the second
law of thermodynamics into the discussion of evolutionary irreversibility confuses two
levels of integration. (p. 6)
In any of a selection of scrutinies, the distinctions between the dimensional domains of

the physical sciences and the biological sciences leave no doubt with respect to their
levels of integration.
The behavioral sciences are in a muddle. Within their own dimensional sphere of
analysis – or alternatively, within their own level of integration – they have yet to sort
out a basic unit of analysis. When explaining, they revert to age-old inferred entities
such as “soul” now updated to “mind,” whose circularity is not lost to astute observers
and whose placement is not possible on the graph of an X–Y axis of independent–
dependent variable relationships. The default position is to go to another class of
sciences, preferably the biological ones. The nervous system is now made the causal
agent of “choice.” This retreat to another dimensional system undercuts the validity of
an independent class of behavioral sciences, and, as such, interferes with obtaining a
proper meaning of individual and social action. It should be clear that when explaining
the political actions of people in, say, a voting booth, not much understanding is
reached by examining the vector properties of their arm movements or the nerve
pathways of these arms’ muscle synapses. Such actions as voting or buying or sinning
are contingent on factors in the behavioral dimension – factors such as educational
level, religious affiliation, or socioeconomic status – as well as a variety of many other
behavioral circumstances that dictate how people operate in their immediate milieus
with consequences that increase or decrease future actions. Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior provides a way out of this muddle. It underpins the behavioral sciences. For
any behavioral science, Skinner’s theory supplies the framework of analysis by which to
analyze behavioral properties and the contingencies by which those properties operate.
It gives a basic unit of analysis, the operant – the two-term contingency relation that
defines a class of actions and the selectional effects upon it from which more complex
categories of action can be built (see Figure 6).
We can sum concisely the relations of the dimensions of the different classes of
science as shown in Figure 7: The figure implies but does not indicate the great deal of
interaction that takes place between the classes of science, the separate sciences within
those classes, and the interdisciplinary sciences overlapping between the boundaries of
science classes. We briefly consider these reciprocal influences since the independence
of a science of behavior from the explanatory systems of other sciences underpins its
distinct further advancement.
16 E. A. VARGAS
Figure 6. Movement: behavioral dimension.
Figure 7. Movements: physical, biological, and behavioral dimension.
Dimensional systems and conceptual understanding. The dimensional independence

of the classes of science from each other does not ignore nor reject that much is gained
by what one class of sciences can give to another. But we enhance the value of the
reciprocity only by a cautious insertion from one dimensional system into another of
the relevant concepts, avoiding the subversion of the one science in order to gain a
dubious respectability from the other. Whatever insertion occurs must expand an
understanding within the given science’s dimensional system of analysis, not subordi-
nate that science’s explanations to another. A behaviorological analysis, for example,
can be made of neurological activity that illuminates both the role of the sciences of
neurology and behaviorology in their interaction with each other. In The Behavior of
Organisms (1991a, especially Chapter 12) Skinner promoted the contribution to each
other of the sciences of the nervous system and those of behavior. More recently, Silva
and her colleagues (2007) contributed an example of how neuronal activity can be
interpreted within a behaviorological framework. They state the matter well:
For a long time radical behaviorism has advanced the view that private events, “the world
inside the skin,” can be understood in relation to behavior within the same framework as
external events. . . . they share the same kinds of physical dimensions and are expected to
follow the same laws as public events. They are distinguished only by access. (p. 17)
If brain states were studied as behavioral events, thoughts and feelings hitherto private
might be adequately observed as neural activity. (p. 27)
This turns out to be the case, and this neural activity exhibits the same functional
relations as any other behavioral activity. Silva et al. (2007) sum the situation well:
“Neural stimulation acts as a discriminative stimulus for operant responses that are in
turn maintained by neural consequences” (p. 17). Since Skinner’s theory calls for
explanatory terms within the level of integration of the behavioral sciences themselves,
it is ironic that critics continue to call his theory of behavior “reductionistic.”
The explanatory and descriptive concepts of each science’s dimensional system point
to how developments in one science should be regarded with respect to another science.
At best what occurs in a science of a given dimensional system amplifies the findings of
a science within another dimensional system. It does not substitute for the concepts and
principles of that other science. As indicated earlier, all the classes of sciences attend to
movement and deal with it in their own parametric manner. What occurs in the science
of a differing dimensional system may facilitate its analysis of action through what can
be shared, such as a new tool or a new philosophical insight. But the different science
cannot, and does not, address what is another subject matter altogether. The social
meaning of dreams is not the electrical activity of neurons. The biochemical and
cultural significances of eating food radically contrast. Labor as an exchange value
differs from its energy value. The examples are many and the reader can think of
others as well.
The fact that a common activity may be addressed by various sciences in the
differing physical, biological, and behavioral dimensional systems leads to a certain
amount of confusion. When answers are few and puzzles are many, any new advances
in any of the sciences when dealing with a common subject matter lead to a possibility
of conflating analytic perspectives. For example, recent developments in evolutionary
development (so-called evo-devo) and epigenetics may indicate issues of significance for
behaviorological science. But whether or not they do depends on the issue in question.
Both evo-devo and epigenetics reveal a genome highly sensitive to environmental
impact since which genes are expressed depends on their switching mechanisms and
this switching activity may be altered by events in the environment. A chemical insult
or even what is eaten (or not) may have epigenetic effects generationally, and as now
suspected, even multigenerationally.5 These effects bear on behavior. That does not
mean that the case is closed with respect to a given action. An epigenetic outcome is
simply one of the many mechanisms that could be considered with any class of actions.
It is trivial to say that an environment affects behavior just as it is to say that a gene
does. One has to specify the mechanisms by which an effect occurs. Behaviorological
science takes into account any biological mechanism, when pertinent – as it does when
animal trainers review ethological factors when applying operant techniques and when
18 E. A. VARGAS
research stations design the operant apparatus to suit the anatomical features of the
organisms whose behavior they study.
Dimensional systems and science complementarity. As well as the clear-cut types of

analysis that belong to different dimensional systems that affect their interaction, there
is, of course, the complementary interplay between them. Any particular instance of this
complementarity must be dealt with on its own merits. Skinner consistently addressed
the interplay that takes place between the types of sciences – whether physical, biolo-
gical, or behavioral. The astute reader probably noted that Skinner’s thesis examined
how the concepts of “soul” and its subsequently more respectable substitute “mind”
were removed as the explanation for reflex action of the decerebrate organism. This
dismissal set the stage for their later removal as explanation of the overall behavior of
the intact organism. As early as the Behavior of Organisms (1991a – summarizing work
up to 1938 and published then), he asserts clearly the complementary nature of the
physiological and behavioral sciences. Each is necessary for the other to complete the
scientific story on a particular occasion of an analysis of action. Skinner (1978) even
addresses how the spread of the sea floor may have shaped the phylogenetic behavior of
the eel, thus taking into account how events in the physical world relate to the behavior
of a particular species. He furnishes a number of other similar examples when discuss-
ing the shaping of phylogenetic behavior. He sums up the effect of the two kinds of
selection on a “given topography” of behavior with respect to the probability that they
will occur “under the control of given stimuli”:
The effect on probability is due, in phylogenic behavior, to the selection of genotypes and,
in ontogenic behavior, to operant conditioning. . . .
. . . What evolves is an organism as a physical system, and it is such an organism that is

modified by operant conditioning. . . . It is not impossible, however, that operant con-
ditioning, itself an evolved feature of an organism, should have utilized a physiological
system which had already been developed in natural selection. (p. 170)
Skinner strongly maintained that no science, or class of science, could be ignored in

gaining an understanding of behavioral phenomena. All contributed. And the contribu-
tion flows both ways. Catania (2014) points out that the understanding of how species
interact with their immediate ecology must take into account the behavioral dimension,
for it is through behavior that such interaction occurs. The only issue is how to sort out
the degree and type of contribution, and – a strong and – not to undercut the
contribution of any science due to the presumed prestige of another. To prevent such
an occurrence requires the further understanding that each science explains best at its
own level of integrity with its own framework of description.
Dimensional systems and selection mechanisms. Moving between one science’s dimen-
sional framework to another becomes a slippery slope between behaviorology and
biology due to the correspondence of the “causal” process – natural selection and
contingency selection. In both sciences, the similarity in conceptual frame of reference
between Darwin and Skinner is easy to note – Darwin at the level of the species and
Skinner at the level of the individual. Though the levels of analysis differ, the frame-
works of interpretation overlap. When Gould (1991, p. 315) points to “Darwinian ideas
of chanciness, contingency, unpredictability, opportunism, and quirkiness,” such could

easily be said of Skinner’s “ideas,” especially the emphasis on contingency. Further, their
conceptual schemes and the proposals that accompany them deal with classes of events
not just with the organisms engaged in those events. Darwin analyzed physiological
components, anatomical forms, and the behavioral features of species and how these
were generationally altered through natural selection in their interaction with an
immediate environment. Biologists attend to behavior with fervor, and the field of
ethology specifically considers the species contribution to the behavior of any organism
within its natural setting. The species mechanisms that account for this behavior must
be understood within their own biological dimensional level especially within the
evolutionary framework laid out by Darwin. Skinner’s selection mechanisms operate
within their own dimensional system of behavior. Skinner’s analysis addresses the
action properties of any one member of any species and across members of different
species. For example, in Skinner’s behavioral science a particular effect of a contingency
selection, to reinforce, means to increase under certain conditions the probability of a
class of actions as defined by a specified property. A reinforced class of actions could be
found in the behavior of any organism, e.g. repeatedly eating a substance critical to
health. A relevant scientific question might then be: what are the conditions under
which certain patterns of eating behavior are exhibited; or any other pattern of behavior
such as making tools or domesticating animals or sharing repertoires with others?
Skinner’s mechanism of contingency selection pertains to the actions of an individual
organism (human and infrahuman) over its lifetime. And as well, to classes of actions of
aggregates (societies and institutions) over generational lifetimes.
Contingency selection applies to the social behavior of groups of individuals as
they interact with their immediate milieu, and over time to what they mediate
behaviorally through custom and language. As the anthropologist Marvin Harris
(2007) puts it:
From a cultural materialist perspective, culture is the aggregate of classes . . . of socially

conditioned, operant responses, which are associated with a particular human group and
which tend to be replicated across generations. (p. 38)
Classes of culturally conditioned operants are conventionally identified by terms such as
hunting, collecting, warfare, feuding, polygynous households, bride wealth . . . and so forth.
(p. 38)
The explanation takes as a given, the biological status of the organism. Such a status is
not discounted – a particular kind of brain and facial anatomy appears crucial for
language and speech (see, for example, Lieberman 2011) – but the specifics of a
biological property may not answer much of a particular cultural question. In his
book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, the geographer and evolutionary biologist Jared
Diamond (1997) provides a considerable answer to a question a New Guinean, Yali,
asks him: “Why do white people seem to have so much cargo that they bring to New
Guinea?” At the beginning of his discourse, for the convenience of readers – or as he
says “journalists” – he sums up his thesis in one sentence: “History followed different
courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not
because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (p. 25). For Diamond, the
triumphs of certain cultures were due to the opportunities (with a confluence of
20 E. A. VARGAS
accidents) specific settings gave them. Diamond’s study underlines the appropriateness
of an analysis within its own level of integration. And that appropriateness also applies
to the analysis of cultural phenomena. Harris (2007) sets his counsel here clearly and
points out the behaviorologists’ “neglect of the systemic properties of cultural phenom-
ena” (p. 37). In Harris’s view:
Skinner . . . is . . . correct when he states that no new behavioral principles are needed to
deal with phenomena on the cultural level. But this merely takes us to the threshold of the
problem, the problem being how to account for the behavior, not of individuals alone, but
of the behavior of the cultural system. (p. 39)
Harris asserts quite firmly that how to deal with this situation demands knowing how
the structural components of a culture operate with respect to each other. Quite so. A
behaviorological analysis can frame these components only within the language of
anthropology and other social sciences. It applies its concepts to the abstractions of
another science, such as anthropology or linguistics, by considering how that science
operates at its macro contingency level (Ulman, 2006b).
To recapitulate: each science’s framework of description reflects directly what con-
trols those scientists’ actions working within that dimensional level, that is, what they
do or say or write about their subject matter. In the analysis of verbal (Skinner, 1992,
p. 14) and lingual behavior (E.A. Vargas, 2013), meaning results from the reasons – the
controlling variables – for what is said or written or gestured. Attempting to explain
concepts ensuing from observation at one science’s level of observation at another
science’s level of observation robs both of their meaning. Meaning differs, for instance,
if talking about the energy impact or about the social impact of an explosion. In their
talk, a physicist and a political scientist would demonstrate two differing sets of
controls, and either set would be inappropriate to the dimensional system of the
other science.
Materialistic
Skinner’s theory provides the foundations for an independent science of behavior
operating within its own dimensional system yet sharing the materialistic framework
common to other classes of science. Behaviorological science does not deal with a world
of appearances behind which lies another world responsible for those appearances. If
such a world were so, the reasons for events would never be contacted directly; only
inferences and assertions would be possible. As behavioral scientists, what behaviorol-
ogists and behavior analysts encounter includes what is said to be an appearance. A
“mirage” is that, and it is named as such because of the conditions that produce it; and
the study of “perception” is that of alternative frames of reference (perhaps dictated by
society or by somatic sensation) under differing evaluating conditions. In either case it
is activity that is observed within the context of certain circumstances and as the effect
of prior contingencies of reinforcement. Behavior is the subject of study. It is not a
surrogate through which or a means by which we study some other entity. (Notes 8.4
“The Copy Theory” [pp. 247–251] and 8.9 “Behavior and Performance” [pp. 262–265]
provide pertinent comments by Skinner in Contingencies of Reinforcement [2013]).
All the sciences have had this running battle with alternative frames of reference
about a world behind the world that is contacted. Figure 8 supplies a summary of the
Figure 8. Classes of sciences and frames of reference.
two disparate frames of reference, one consistently called materialism and the other,
depending on the class of science, called idealism, vitalism/essentialism, and
mentalism.
A brief reminder: the philosophical themas of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior designate
one of its metafeatures. We now provide only a brief overview of the other two:
experimental operations and engineering applications.
Experimental operations: a summary

Experimentation constituted an intimate part of Skinner’s behavioral science from its
very beginning. Both direct contact with events (event-shaped and event-governed) and
contact mediated by a culture (verbal-shaped and verbal-governed) have been studied
experimentally. (Vargas (1988) provides an early statement of the reframed distinction.)
The experimental efforts pursued under a variety of labels within Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior – such as equivalence or matching or schedules – embrace a remarkable reach
and depth, reflected in thousands of publications and presentations. Many books
encapsulate the progress of the science. One tome (739 pages in length), by itself,
catalogs an extraordinary variety of the experimental analysis of schedules of conse-
quences (Ferster & Skinner, 1997). Morse and Dews (1997) highlight an important fact
that sprang from this work: “Schedule histories, the sequential intertwining of respond-
ing and contingent consequences, are the primary determinants of current behavior” (p.
xvi). And they make a further important point, “Explanations of behavior in terms of
generalized motivational states are untenable when an individual responds in different
ways depending on the history of contingencies associated with the current stimulus
conditions” (p. xviii). (Contingency history exerts a powerful effect in the engineering
area: so-called “motivating operations” are scheduled contingency arrangements.) Many
laboratories operate in universities and industries and in a number of countries
22 E. A. VARGAS
throughout the world. One laboratory in New Zealand experimentally studies the
behavior of a dozen animal species – chickens, cows, horses, goats, pigeons, sheep,
cats, chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, kea, humans, and brushtail possums – with operant
equipment particularly designed for the animals’ anatomy and physiology (Messick,
2013). Many journals address issues in the science. One journal, The Analysis of Verbal
Behavior, publishes work primarily on Skinner’s examination of verbal behavior and,
among the articles addressing conceptual and engineering issues, includes experimental
studies of verbal behavior contingencies. Beyond immediate behaviorological science,
many other sciences pursue experimental efforts – from bees’ nectar foraging to
bonobos’ hierarchical actions – that draw upon the techniques and tools of Skinner’s
scientific work.
New disciplines have emerged. These disciplines not only draw upon Skinnerian
techniques and tools, but blend behaviorological principles and concepts with those of
another science – for example behavioral pharmacology (Laties, 2003). The experimen-
tal operations of Skinnerian science made it “possible to produce a near-infinite range
of behaviors, reproducible across species, stable in their maintenance, manipulable over
a wide range, and capable of being brought under rigorous stimulus control – ideal
conditions for examining the effect of drugs on behavior” (Barrett, 2006, p. 360).
The finding that provided the impetus for much of the initial direction of behavioral
pharmacology, . . . that the action of a drug could be determined by the distinctive features
of ongoing behavior, provided added credibility to the experimental utility of behavioral
control by schedules of reinforcement and incorporated the study of drugs as another
variable to be explored within the realm of the experimental analysis of behavior. (Barrett,
2006, p. 359)
Most importantly, “the effects [of the drugs] were determined completely by the
prevailing schedule of reinforcement” (Barrett, 2006, p. 361). Drug action is not a
one-way street from drugs to activities. These effects show the dramatic impact of
operant behavior upon the physiology and chemistry of the organism.
The experimental efforts also encompass respondent conditioning. Skinner’s Theory
of Behavior includes it. Such inclusion requires a broad view of how behavior interacts
with its environment. In its reciprocal exchange with its immediate world, an organism
inherits, from the species to which it belongs, activities that facilitate effective action,
such as salivation. These activities are explained by natural selection. But a particular
kind of environment in which a particular built-in species action may be effective may
be uncertain. So, respondent conditioning as a process:
probably evolved because it prepared organisms for unpredictable features of their envir-
onments. Foodstuffs like sugar and salt elicit salivation as an early step in digestion, but
because sweet and salty food vary greatly in appearance, organisms could not have
developed the capacity to salivate appropriately to their mere appearances, no matter
how important such a preparatory salivation might be. Through conditioning, the visual
appearance of a particular food comes to elicit salivation. (Skinner, 1978, p. 21)
Skinner includes respondent factors as “third variables,” for example as in emotion, and
a number of behavioral scientists working within the Skinnerian framework of analysis
attend to respondent processes.
As Skinner (1974) points out, both respondent and operant processes are “prepara-
tion[s] for new environments” (p. 38). In respondent behavior, a particular antecedent
stimulus that elicits an action characteristic of a particular species becomes paired with
other stimulus events that eventually also come to elicit the immediately available and
almost identical response. A tone with no prior effect once paired with the prior
effective stimulus (e.g. meat) now elicits a salivating response. Such pairing spreads
the effect of the original stimulus. Color, sound, and smell that formerly had no effect
with respect to a specific foodstuff may now elicit a salivating response. An emotional
response of affection may now occur with others who share features of the loved one.
The antecedent stimulus effect widens the impact of a particular species feature over the
behavior of an individual member of that species. In operant behavior, an action not
previously a built-in feature of a given species might be taken by any of its members.
The action affects its immediate milieu and a selective effect occurs that increases or
decreases the probability of any of that class of actions. The postcedent stimulus effect
increases the probability of similar actions in various patterns of occurrence. It may also
evoke new action features by selecting actions through the commonality of the proper-
ties of the actions involved. Such induction may be humdrum, a child calling a family
acquaintance by a familiar term Australia rather than the unfamiliar foreign name of
Estrella. Or it may be more exotic, as the following example of how the “idea,” a verbal
action, of one way of building body organs came about:
The idea came to Jordan Miller . . . in two stages. First, while visiting a display of preserved
human cadavers and organs . . . he saw that preparators had exposed the lacelike structure
of a large organ’s vessels by injecting silicone into the vasculature and then dissolving away
the remaining organic tissue.
Creating a synthetic mold on which to build internal vessels might work . . . . except that
the chemicals needed to dissolve the silicone would be toxic to the living cells that were to
be added. The way around that problem hit him when, at a fancy restaurant, he was served
a dessert with an elegant hard-sugar lattice. Why not create a mold for an organ’s blood
vessels and other chambers out of sugar which could be washed away with water?
(Harmon, 2013, April, pp. 54–55)
Further, much like natural selection may produce a new species over many generations
of variant characteristics, combined with directional shift for a variety of reasons,
contingency selection – either natural or cultural – may shape an entirely new topo-
graphy of behavior over time from many similar but slightly variant forms of actions of
the same action class. A new action class may result. Such a postcedent effect tends to
widen the topographies of behavior not only of a given member of a species but among
the members of a group, as members themselves become a selective force on the actions
of other group members. It is to be expected that respondent and operant processes
should be entangled in these sets of actions. As Allan (1998) relates, they do conjoin.
In sum, the experimental analysis of properties of behavior addresses attributes of
behavioral phenomena found among all members of a given species, in any setting, and
in any species of the animal kingdom. The principles that describe the processes
governing these properties result from a comprehensive investigation of contingency
selection. As a typical mechanism, contingency selection is as powerful in behaviorology
as natural selection is in biology. Natural selection in biology is a powerful mechanism
24 E. A. VARGAS
because it affects all forms and functions of biological entities. Contingency selection is
equally powerful in shaping all forms and functions of behavioral properties.
The expression of the selection mechanism may be studied through the attributes of
any organism. Though biologists and behaviorologists may pick out a particular
organism as a convenient platform of experimental analysis (or any other kind of
analysis such as natural observation or clinical study), it is not necessarily that parti-
cular organism or group of organisms that is being studied. In his experimental analysis
of genetics, T. H. Morgan worked with fruit flies. It was not the fruit fly that was his
particular concern. It was how the genome worked. In her experimental work on the
chromosome, Barbara McClintock worked with corn. Her analysis addressed meiosis.
Corn was the convenient organism through which such study took place. Morgan’s and
McClintock’s findings appertain to the human organism. No one would say that their
findings imply that we are fruit flies or corn or that such findings are not applicable
because we are not fruit flies or corn. It is equally irrelevant to protest that we are not
rats or pigeons or for that matter aplysia or apes due to those animals’ use as convenient
substrates for the discovery of behavioral principles. People who assert such a claim of
indignity might as well deny the basic laws of heredity discovered by working with
sweet peas by asserting they are not sweet peas.
Such an assertion misunderstands how science works. A scientific fact (or law when
facts are grouped) is the verbal behavior of scientists not what it addresses. It, the
scientific law, is the most extensive statement of the set of properties of the phenomena
confronted. From a back and forth contact with events, over time, scientific laws
emerge through frame-of-reference inductions expanded interactively with deductions
from the disciplines of logic and mathematics. Conclusions need to be checked by what
occurs more than once, or at least the single instance needs to be predicted with high
accuracy. Case studies become relevant only if they fit with others or with a specified
prediction. All of Skinner’s science, as signified by his Theory of Behavior, addresses
principles of behavior initially discovered (and the discoveries continue) in an experi-
mental investigation of behavioral properties. Predicted outcomes and the successful
results of practical (that is, engineering) efforts further confirm the experimental
analyses.
Engineering applications: a summary

Engineering achievements continue to be monumental. No institutional area in society
remains untouched. From the caring of children with autism to the safekeeping of
animals in zoos, as well as to the teaching and training techniques that change the
neuronal structures of organisms or the household habits of families, technologies
drawn from Skinner’s Theory of Behavior effectively achieve humane objectives.
These achievements undergird Skinner’s Theory of Behavior. They show its utility in
everyday affairs. By so showing, they demonstrate its validity. The efforts are even
greater and more widespread than those in the experimental domain. Not only are
more organisms involved (from dogs to dolphins, from bees to birds, from children to
cichlids6), but the derivative technologies involve as well a number of other additional
groups who are not Skinnerian scientists in the formal sense – such as parents, teachers,
physicians, and zookeepers. To give an insight into the kind of engineering here, a
sampling follows. Mostly engaged under the label of “behavior analysis,” three types of
endeavors illustrate the reach of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior.
The first exampled enterprise encapsulates how Skinnerian science keeps trans-
forming the vast field of education. Techniques drawn from Skinner’s Theory affect
every type of education and every kind of person and every level of repertoire taught.
Skinner himself directly applied his theory to the instructing of repertoires, in what
he called “programmed instruction.” The name identified the careful construction of
shaping procedures in the verbal and nonverbal instructional matrix which takes a
repertoire from an ineffective kind to an effective one in a defined subset of a subject
(Skinner, 1968; Vargas & Vargas, 1991a, 1991b, 1996). A general review of behavior
analytic technology in the educational field (J.S. Vargas, 2013) makes explicit how
Skinnerian science addresses every salient issue in education. These issues range
from the avoidance of punishment to the teaching of creativity, from precision

measurement techniques to the research applicable in daily classroom routines.
But, typically in education an older and traditional and more biological model
undergirds the notion of developmental stages. Increasingly an analysis drawn
from Skinnerian science supplants it. By adding features from Skinner’s theory,
Crone-Todd (2007) expands Commons’s Model of Hierarchical Complexity (2008;
not Skinnerian but non-mentalistic) of increasingly intricate stages of repertoires.
Also providing the engineering and research support for progressively complicated
repertoires and the necessary prerequisites for them, three particularly noteworthy
instructional systems are those of Douglas Greer, Francis Mechner, and Mark
Sundberg. [Sample references are Greer and Keohane (2004), Mechner, Fredrick,
and Jenkins (2012), and Sundberg and Sundberg (2011)]. Skinner’s Theory engenders
engineering practices as varied as the backgrounds of the scientist-engineers that
innovate them.
All technologies give rise to an ethical effect. For as far back of any recording of
techniques of instruction the predominant mode of control in education has been
punishment. From one of the earliest civilizations, the Sumerian (more or less between
5500 and 3500 BCE), this wail of distress resonates with today’s practices:
Falling foul of every regulation, one young student lamented,
The door monitor said, “Why did you go out without my say-so?”and he beat me.
The water monitor said, “Why did you help yourself to water without my say-so?” and he
beat me.
The Sumerian monitor said, “You spoke in Akkadian” and he beat me.
My teacher said, “Your handwriting is not at all good!” and he beat me.
(As quoted in George, 2010)
The passage provides an insight into that early miseducational “understanding” of the
science of behavior. From Skinner’s Theory even aversive practices would be hedged
with a keener notion of their effects and unintended consequences. But Skinner’s
science bestows something better. With the engineering practices based on Skinner’s
Theory, a powerful shift on how to exercise control occurs. The emphasis becomes one
of improving and increasing actions, not suppressing them (for example, the positive
behavior support system based on Skinner’s science [Sugai, O’Keeffe, & Fallon, 2012]).
An extraordinary range of words in the ethical literature covers such practices –
26 E. A. VARGAS
positive, caring, consideration, civility, concern, compassion, kindness, supportive,

affirmative, help, approving, and so on – and captures how a technology enhances
the welfare of the individual (Vargas, 1999). Such ethical concern becomes particularly
pertinent when dealing with difficult deportment.
In everyday instruction the special problems of controlling unusual behavior fre-
quently crop up, particularly those actions defined as deviant. Eventually every teacher
faces the difficulties posed by problem behavior, especially when disruptive. Ulman
(2006a) states it well: “Increasingly, educators are dealing with disruptive behavior –
actions that impede instruction and induce a social atmosphere of generalized disre-
spect for others” (p. 28). He clarifies how teachers, by taking a behaviorological
perspective, can interpret disruptive actions in a manner that avoids blaming the
student for a presumed inner motivative cause and that attends to the contingent
conditions under which those actions occur. In special behavioral difficulties of a

clinical kind, behaviorological application intersects with undertakings in other realms
of endeavor, for example, medicine.
As it relates to the care of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD),
pediatric medicine supplies an example. Copeland and Buch (2013) and Copeland
(2012) give an overview of early intervention treatments that best improve the targeted
repertoire. Copeland and Buch (2013) summarize the literature: the neurodevelopmen-
tal disabilities designated as ASD “are remediable to varying degrees when evidence-
based practices are used” (p. 7). Especially, they point out, those procedures and
programs that pediatricians obtain from behavior analysis. In family therapy a pedia-
trician works with other experts, so Copeland (a pediatrician herself) expands her reach.
Copeland (2012) provides an even more extensive review for practitioners in disciplines
such as social work. She reviews the “behavioral characteristics that define autism
spectrum disorders” (p. 2) and the ambiguities in their diagnosis. She describes in
detail the effectiveness of applied behavioral analytic techniques in shaping social and
intellectual skills in the repertoires of children with autism. The array of behavioral
difficulties grouped under the somewhat vague term of “autism” involves not only
pediatric medicine but includes a wide range of experts from other disciplines such as
counseling, social work, and linguistics. They specifically address the interactive aspects
of the “autistic” repertoire to its immediate social setting. Of vital importance is the
proper lingual behavior, and many behavior analysts extend Skinner’s analysis of verbal
behavior to the teaching of specific lingual behavior (e.g. Sundberg, Loeb, Hale, &
Eigenheer, 2002).
In summary, inherent in Skinner’s Theory of Behavior as it applies to education: one,
the instructional matrix is action-dense. For each new element to be learned, the
student must act. Two, it is cybernetic. Feedback is provided to any action taken with
respect to how it coheres to a defined objective. Three, feedback is bidirectional. It is
delivered not only to the student repertoire under construction but also to the designer
who constructs so the shaper can be shaped. Those instructing are not learning more
about a given subject matter. They are learning more about student actions. The
pedagogical technology demands more than subject matter expertise; one must know
how to shape proper responses to it. Four, the ethical posture is positive. Deviation
from formal aspects of the action desired does not denote a flaw – an “error” as
typically called – in the repertoire but in the pedagogical procedures that produce it.
The pedagogical technology does not punish the individual with whom the repertoire is
paired – by condemning what the “self” lacks or the “self” wills. It rewards the proper
action – by correcting the design of the instructional matrix. Lack of such sensitivity to
the science and to its technical implications prevails in mass instruction over the
Internet, called by a variety of names such as MOOCS (J.S. Vargas, 2014). It especially
impacts its ethical component, as the modus operandi of MOOCS exhibits a sort of
natural selection where only a prior fitness sorts out the percentage few that succeed.
Five, new technologies require new organizational arrangements (Vargas, 2004, 2007,
2012). The cyberneticity of action-dense instruction combined with multitudes of
repertoires means that masses of data at each action frame flow back to whoever
instructs. No one person could handle the informational load. Instruction becomes a
team-based enterprise, as it moves from a presentation mode (the Lecture Model) to a
shaping mode (the Cybernetic Model).

The second exemplifying endeavor takes place in the huge domain of looking after
animals and teaching of repertoires, within their species parameters. In its employment
of engineering technologies drawn from Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, the enterprise
comprises a large and active scene. For the health care of their creatures, zoos deploy
behavior analytic techniques to teach their animals to accept their teeth being cleaned
or to present their ears for blood drawing (for example, Otto Fad’s elephants at the
Pachyderm Palace at Busch Garden Tampa, Florida, USA [Habarad, 2014]); in training,
sea parks instruct novel behaviors for entertainment or even for “contentment” (for
example, Jeff Pawloski’s dolphins at Sea Life Park Hawaii, USA). Karen Pryor’s work
here (among that of many others) makes available a window that gives a vista on the
types of initiatives undertaken so far. As many behavioral engineers do, she started by
engaging in basic science work.7 She researched dolphin behavior (1991). She soon
applied behavior analytic techniques to train dolphins and from there extended beha-
viorological principles to other animal species, showing how many so-called cognitive
abilities in animal behavior are consequent upon shaping specific skills. Reese (2004)
puts it well:
The behavior takes place in the open view of an empirical world. No nonphysical states,
processes, or structures need be inferred or invoked. The actions she [Pryor] describes are
replicable, and given sensible observers who are knowledgeable about the species, they are
undoubtedly predictable. (p. xvi)
Pryor (2004) advances a further important point:
Innovative responses, and increased communication, thus may be not so much an indica-
tion of unusual or near-human capabilities in a species, but rather an artifact of advanced
techniques . . . of operant conditioning in opening pathways for communication, between
other species . . . and man. (p. 116)
Pryor’s point is one to keep in sight when reviewing the literature on the presumed
“cognitive abilities” of animals; abilities that seem to emerge only after teaching,
often by species members themselves. The greater sophistication in training by
humans ensues from behaviorological science. As Pryor and Ramirez (2014) state,
the care and education of animals is “evolving from methods-based training to
science-based training.” In such an evolution, Pryor and her colleagues demonstrate
28 E. A. VARGAS
the three-cornered complementarity of ethology and behaviorology and

neurophysiology.
The third engineering endeavor stemming out of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior
makes explicit the intimate interconnection between behaviorological and physiological
phenomena, and how behaviorological techniques can clarify neurological activity. Two
enterprises exemplify this interaction.
Edward Taub’s behavioral engineering work primarily addresses the profound loss of
limb movement due to a central nervous system injury. Taub’s work takes place where
neurophysiology and behaviorology intersect. His techniques, grouped under the gen-
eral label Constraint-induced Movement Therapy, have further been extended to treat
focal hand dystonia and phantom limb pain (Taub & Uswatte, 2009). (Their article also
provides an excellent review of other efforts – dealing with central nervous damage –
such as biofeedback and pharmacological, and points out that these efforts work best
when combined with behavioral training.) Taub (2012) states the rationale for the
behavioral engineering technology well:
Constraint-induced (CI) therapy is a term given to a family of efficacious rehabilitation

treatments . . . The protocol of CI therapy consists primarily of standard behavior analytic
methods. It produces a marked plastic brain change that is correlated with its therapeutic
effect, and therefore provides an example of the way in which behavior change can
contribute to a profound remodeling of the brain. (p. 155)
Ronald Lazar further elucidates how operant techniques may be used to diagnose
neurological disorders. One technique, continuous time measurement, (Lazar et al.,
1996), “was initially explored as an operant conditioning procedure with animals”
(p. 562) to inquire into the impact of drugs. Lazar and his colleagues ported the
technique over “to detect the earliest signs of cerebral ischaemia in the anterior
circulation” (p. 559). As they state, data suggest that “clinical evaluation alone is
unreliable in identifying patients with diminished perfusion reserve” (p. 562).
Availing themselves of the continuous time measurement technique made it possible
to be more accurate in assessing the neurological disorder. Another study (Lazar &
Scarisbrick, 1993) addressed reading disorders following brain damage. A more
complex assessment of reading disorders was made possible through a functional
analysis using equivalence relations techniques. Their analysis precisely sorted out
the distinctions between the various actions involved in reading.
These representative endeavors simply illustrate the tip of a deep iceberg.
Skinner’s science also guides efforts in organizational management, veterans’
rehabilitation, sports, games, addiction, and in short, in any arena of institutional
and social action. In his commentary on so-called “behavior modification” tech-
niques, Freedman (2012, p. 52) summarizes the effect well, “What distinguishes
our intellect from animals’ is not that we can go against our environment – most
of us can’t, not in the long run – but rather that we can purposefully alter our
environment to shape our behavior in ways we choose.” No other behavioral
science has produced as profound an effect in its engineering employment to
alter the environment as Skinner’s.
Conclusion
A common impression views science as apparently a progressive, unbroken march to
foreseen conclusions. It is not. It is a human enterprise with its practitioners’ usual set
of fiery fits and illusory starts. Everyone does his or her best breaking new trails (a
Rosalind Franklin or a Marie Curie); but many endeavors lead to dead ends or simply
return to where they started. Looking back with a finer detail than we usually do, we
can note concurrent efforts many of which were wrong but all pursued by the pursuers
with an equal passion that they were correct. Many examples from any of the sciences
can be provided of this concurrency of conflicting analyses, but a brief couple from the
physical sciences should be sufficient:
When Newton arrived in Cambridge in 1661, the movement now known as the scientific
revolution was well advanced, and many of the works basic to modern science had
appeared. Astronomers from Copernicus to Kepler had elaborated the heliocentric system
of the universe. Galileo had proposed the foundations of a new mechanics built on the
principle of inertia. Led by Descartes, philosophers had began to formulate a new con-
ception of nature as an intricate, impersonal, and inert machine. Yet as far as the
universities of Europe, including Cambridge, were concerned, all this might well have
never happened. They continued to be the stronghold of outmoded Aristotelianism, which
rested on a geocentric view of the universe and dealt with nature in qualitative rather than
quantitative terms. (Westfall, 1978, p. 17)
And in Paris, Cohen (1985) portrays much the same scene, “The revolutionary
Cartesians fought for power with the forces of orthodoxy – represented by the Jesuits
and their schools, the Church and its University of Paris, and the Aristotelians – on
every imaginable level” (p. 12). In his examination of revolutionary changes in science,
Cohen provides many instances of intense struggles over what would seem to be cut
and dried facts, or at least facts reputable enough to be accepted by everyone. What
Cohen makes clear is that the struggle takes place over the philosophical themas by
which those facts are interpreted. Further, as Cohen points out, scientific revolutions
also have their ideological and application components that influence their acceptance.
All three factors have played an important part in the acceptance of Skinner’s Theory of
Behavior.
In the scientific community, the philosophic themas of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior
have presented an obstacle to the favorable reception of his behavioral science. Those
themas called for a massive shift in how to interpret the facts of experimental opera-
tions and those of daily life. As Skinner (1991a) himself noted, it marked a shift into
dealing with behavior in quantitative terms (“a quantitative science of behavior,” p. 432)
rather than with qualitative ones. A “self” dropped out of the interpretation. So did its
qualitative attributes, such as what it felt or thought or intended. Such a shift did not
imply that the qualitative attributes did not necessarily exist. It highlighted instead the
deconstruction of qualitative attributes into their behavioral components, observed by
directly contacting actions and their contingent relations to other events. If someone is
said to be “selfish,” such a qualitative attribute is not directly contacted. It is an
interpretation of actions such as taking a bigger piece of a shared good. Only actions
can be tacted – not the category in which they are placed; and only specific actions can
be addressed – through whatever technique is employed. Yes, an action may be viewed
30 E. A. VARGAS
in its biological and social matrix and a different interpretation may lead to a different
technique of, say, shaping or medicating; nevertheless, it is still solely the action that is
contacted in its contingent relation to other events, including the consequences of the
technique employed. The analysis of behavior no longer depended on the analysis of an
inherent self, such as political man or economic man as the basis of political and
economic activity. In its shift to contingencies and the selective effect of consequences,
Skinner’s Theory of Behavior puts in place an entirely different foundation for the
behavioral sciences.
If there was a certain degree of dismay in scientific circles over Skinner’s science, the
outcry was far greater in the public sector. No behaviorist, even Watson who was
accused of being a “bolshevik” (Cohen, 1985, p. 475), was more pilloried than Skinner.
The philosophic thema of no-agency-within was converted into an ideological battle cry
against it; as before, a rather consistent reaction to other prior diminishing of the
special importance of the human agent. Copernicus’s theory had dethroned humankind
as the center of the universe. Darwin’s theory removed humankind from any special
status in the biological world; and further added that only a common mechanism,
natural selection, primarily produced the characteristics of species, and people were
only one kind of species connected to earlier ones. Skinner’s theory further removed
any notion of an inside homunculus sitting outside the domain of nature, deciding by
free will what the human agent got its body to do. In the twentieth century, Freud had
stated that all action was determined. There were reasons even behind our accidental
slips of tongue. But he accounted for action as struggles between surrogates – ego, id,
and superego – of a cultural and biological self. There are no agents, entities, or
surrogates in Skinner’s Theory of Behavior. It completes the connection to a set of
events inside and outside the organism that provide the reasons for its behavior. The
ideological furor resulted in Skinner being the favorite behavioral scientist to decry as
people reacted as if he personally selected their pet principles to gore. Of course, some
of the most vociferous voices were those who exulted above all else their made-up
attributes of the individual, and it has been ironic to see ideologues on the far right and
far left make common cause in their distaste for removal of the individual from center
stage of congratulatory concern. For these people, the free will of the individual
triumphs über alles. Such a triumph seems only to justify selfish action, or, the converse,
its punishment. But a large challenge looms for Skinnerian science. If actions are due to
contingencies and not to a self’s inherent right to take them, such an analysis calls for a
radical rewrite of institutional arrangements, and their vindications. Skinner dipped
into this matter (Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity). But in reworking the
behavioral assumptions of institutional arrangements such as law or politics or eco-
nomics, not much progress has ensued. The difficulties are obvious. The creative
breakthrough would require a sophisticated knowledge of Skinnerian theory plus that
of what other institutional area is at issue.
Skinner’s science has benefited greatly from the applications derived from it. In fact,
it has brought about a sea change in its acceptance by the public. This is quite contrary
to what Cohen (1985) says: “A second kind of societal hostility to a scientific revolution
arises . . . from a reaction to the results or applications of science rather than to the
science itself” (p. 17). He further goes on to say (again on p. 17), “there has been a
growing tendency to consider science and technology as one, and even to hold science
responsible for the effects of technology.” It apparently is exactly such tendency and
such responsibility that has produced the increasing welcome to Skinnerian science by
the public. Such increasing welcome results from the fact that it works well in solving
social problems. The engineering utilizations have accelerated and the benefits equally
so. Interestingly, this has led to Skinner’s science not only being accepted but pushed by
the business classes. It has not only been traditional manufacturing industries in which
this has occurred, a sector of business much worked in by a branch of applied behavior
analysis called organizational behavior management. Expansion of the science has also
occurred in those areas allied with the medical profession, and prospered in the service
sector especially that providing help to children and parents. A great number of small
enterprises have flourished. An outcome of these effects has been to call for more
teaching of the applied area of Skinnerian science. This coursework has proliferated,
ranging from workshops in toilet training or safe driving up to full-fledged university

programs at the masters and doctorate levels. Such educational undertakings are taking
place on every continent. The educational enterprises are currently emerging under the
title of behavior analysis. Though I prefer that title for the science’s engineering
component, the educational endeavors are having the effect of asserting a discipline
independent of other disciplines in the behavioral science sector.
A final consideration, not well explored yet, is how Skinner’s science connects and
relates to the popular culture. Such an intertwining occurs with all the sciences, but
especially those that propose a profound change in the lens by which everyday events
are viewed. For example, in cosmology, Genuth (1997, p. 221) describes how the
physical sciences, combined with “the interplay of high and low culture and the
interfaces linking religious thought, political action, and natural world views,” altered
both the common and scientific perceptions about comets. Over the many centuries
and over all the levels of societies, comets were antecedent agents, even willfully
directed, of catastrophic change. These notions of directed disasters changed to an
understanding of the impersonal forces at play:
Newton’s and Halley’s theories helped to wean people away from a fixed, immutable
creation and accustomed them to the idea of birth and death in the heavens, the impact
of one world on another, and the transformation of one celestial body into another.
Whereas their catastrophic theories focused attention on God’s direct agency, the evolu-
tionary theories later advanced by Kant, Herschel, and Laplace tended to push God to the
margins and emphasized the interplay of natural forces. (Genuth, 1997, p. 219)
Any consideration of the transformation Skinner’s science has made on the interpreta-
tion of behavioral phenomena brings us to the edge of that world of change it begins to
make in the popular culture. Not ascribing change to an inner agent would be one
profound alteration; another would be a cultural shift from punitive methods of control
to positive ones. The impact of both is easy to imagine in as abstract an area as the
political economy and in as concrete a situation as the prison population. Such a
metamorphosis advances slowly, but as of now, surely.
In the analysis of behavior, Skinner’s Theory of Behavior took a revolutionary step. It
was revolutionary to no longer cast the explanation of action as due to an actor within
an organism, but instead dispense with the qualitative attributes of organisms to focus
on the quantitative properties of action. It was revolutionary to move from an
32 E. A. VARGAS
Aristotelian analysis to a Galilean one, and to add as well Darwin’s selection mechanism
as the critical force of change and stability. It was revolutionary to explain all activity as
derived from the contingency relations of properties of actions with other events,
especially as these contingent relations were driven by selectional consequences.
Skinner initiated a behavioral science whose novel features only now begin to be
recognized. Any description of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior merely presents a starting
point to further clarify it. Such a start sets out an opportunity to articulate the basic
principles, to answer the questions yet to be resolved, and to ask new questions that
emerge from these efforts.
Acknowledgment
My thanks to J. D. Ulman and J. S. Vargas for an editorial reading of this article and for
providing a number of fine edits. An earlier version of this article was published in Vestnik
Novosibirskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Seriia: Psikhologiia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In his introduction to Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (2013),
Skinner lays out the facts of his theory building from the very first days of his scientific
career. As he further points out, he continued his discussions of theory throughout his
scientific career. In the foreword to the 2013 reprinting, D. C. Palmer relates the relevance
to the science and benefit to the culture of Skinner going beyond experimental procedures
in order to interpret behavioral events. Palmer underscores how such interpretation is
commonplace, and necessary, in all the sciences. See his well-stated distinction between
interpretation and speculation on pages viii and ix.
2. For an very good review of the state of Skinnerian science in its disciplinary aspects, see
the special issue of the European Journal of Behavior Analysis (Volume 15, No. 1, 2014)
edited by Per Holth. Holth (2014) provides an excellent introduction to the current
contentions, which range from maintaining that behavior analysis is a part of psychology
to demonstrating that it is a separate science. I took the position that it is a separate science
and that its separation is an established fact (Vargas, 2014b). For those interested in what
the disciplinary name “behaviorology” denotes, see Ulman and Vargas (2005) and my
short discussion of the designation in E.A. Vargas (2013).
3. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (which could have been called a “Theory of Invariance”)
was as much a treatise in philosophy as in physics as it addressed the role of the observer
(its frame of reference) with respect to physical events (Barnett, 1948; Isaacson, 2007). The
principles of Skinnerian science pertain regardless of the status of the observer. As in the
physics of gravity or the biology of natural selection, the mechanism of contingency
selection controls an animal’s action properties. A pertinent article here is Skinner (1981).
4. I quote from Skinner’s thesis (1930a) rather than his later slight reworking of it, The
Concept of the Reflex in the Description of Behavior (1931), as I wanted the earliest
statement of his views on this matter. Prior to his thesis, he published two articles on
experimental matters, one on the geotropic action of the ant (Barnes & Skinner, 1930) and
the other on eating reflexes (Skinner, 1930b); a third article, a review of a paper on
inherited learning behavior, was essentially a theory article but confined closely to the
assessment of the study critiqued (Skinner, 1930c).
And those to whom history attracts may find the following of interest: for his parents,
Skinner prepared (with a copy for himself) a hard cover bound copy of reprints of his
articles between “June 1 1930–January 1935.” He placed the articles into three categories:
theoretical, experimental, and reviews and miscellaneous. “Theoretical” included “The
Concept of the Reflex.” He later read over at least a portion of his own copy as he listed
a few “Errata” in the flyleaf (and then changed them). He changes, for example, the term
“affective” to “effective” on page 43 in the article on “The Generic Nature of the Concepts
of Stimulus and Response” (1935). Of course it makes a huge difference in the meaning of
the sentence.
5. For those interested in epigenetics, Saey (2013) provides a brief overview of it. Francis
(2011), a science writer, gives a non-technical introduction to the topic. Carey (2012) is a
scientist working in the area and while her writing is clear and sprightly, it approaches the
subject more technically. As do the others, Francis makes evident the mutual relationship
between the genetic apparatus and its surrounding environment, each reciprocally influ-
encing the other. So that, “the cellular environment is itself influenced by other cells, both
local and remote. Moreover, the cellular environment is often influenced by events that
occur outside of the body, including social interactions” (p. 32). He provides a powerful
example: “One of the reasons war and other forms of trauma have such enduring . . . effects
is that they induce epigenetic alterations” (p. 33).
6. Any excursion into Wikipedia will provide a wealth of detail of operant techniques and the
contingency selection framework that explains how those techniques work. If one enters
“cichlid fish, operant” in Google, numerous mentions appear, with items ranging from a
design for an operant apparatus for fish (Chase & Hill, 1999) to a morphological and
behavioral study of juvenile cichlids’ visual resolution during growth using operant
techniques (Van Der Meer, 1995). As for working with husbands, Sutherland (2008)
provides a good-hearted account.
7. Behavioral engineers stretch the science by applying its principles in uncharted areas or
demonstrating new aspects of them not considered before. It reminds one of Benjamin
Thompson’s (Count Rumford) work in boring cannons whose practical experiments
discredited the caloric model of heat; see Gribbin (2006). Of course, not understanding
the science, or the ethical principles entailed (Vargas, 1999), leads to polemics paraded as
principles and to negative outcomes from the popular culture; see e.g. Skinner (2006, pp.
351–352, 1983).
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B. F. Skinner’s theory of behavior

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B. F. Skinner’s theory of behavior

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

tions, experimental operations, and engineering applications. Of 2014

CONTACT E. A. Vargas eavargas@mac.com.

they are Kantorian, working within the framework of J. R. Kantor’s Interbehavioral

Science may be many-splendored, but it is also a many-scuﬄed enterprise.

depends on the eﬀects of all three of its metafeatures.

Figure 1. Skinner’s theory of behavior.

reinforcement or punishment – 3 t) that follow action-property classes or (b) to the

The philosophical dog wags the experimental tail.

Philosophical themas: Frames of reference

Figure 2. Movements of organism.

Figure 3. Signiﬁcance of movements.

Unpredictable variability still occurred. When it did, a “non-physical concept” such

Pavlov’s work became a cornerstone of behaviorological science, but the experimental

Whenever we demonstrate that a variable exerts functional control over a response, we

In this analysis of verbal and lingual behavior the agent disappears.

Figure 4. Movement: physical dimension.

Figure 5. Movement: biological dimension.

The biologist, Ernst Mayr (1965), also weighs in on this issue:

In any of a selection of scrutinies, the distinctions between the dimensional domains of

Figure 6. Movement: behavioral dimension.

Figure 7. Movements: physical, biological, and behavioral dimension.

Dimensional systems and conceptual understanding. The dimensional independence

Dimensional systems and science complementarity. As well as the clear-cut types of

. . . What evolves is an organism as a physical system, and it is such an organism that is

Skinner strongly maintained that no science, or class of science, could be ignored in

of chanciness, contingency, unpredictability, opportunism, and quirkiness,” such could

From a cultural materialist perspective, culture is the aggregate of classes . . . of socially

Figure 8. Classes of sciences and frames of reference.

Experimental operations: a summary

Engineering applications: a summary

from the avoidance of punishment to the teaching of creativity, from precision

positive, caring, consideration, civility, concern, compassion, kindness, supportive,

conditions under which those actions occur. In special behavioral diﬃculties of a

shaping mode (the Cybernetic Model).

Pryor (2004) advances a further important point:

the three-cornered complementarity of ethology and behaviorology and

Constraint-induced (CI) therapy is a term given to a family of eﬃcacious rehabilitation

ranging from workshops in toilet training or safe driving up to full-ﬂedged university

Isaacson, W. (2007). Einstein. New York: Simon and Shuster.

Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf.

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