by Robert Williscroft

Created on: February 27, 2008   Last Updated: April 15, 2008

On September 23, 1971, B. F. Skinner's new book rocked the intellectual world. "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" was a smashing success that seemed to explain some of the hidden mysteries underlying human behavior. Indeed, the author purported to set aside the very concepts of "freedom" and "dignity" as we normally think of them. You change human behavior, Skinner asserted, not by appealing to the "inner person," not by teaching "self-reliance," not by elevating human "freedom" and "dignity," but by changing the human environment, by structuring it so that the only viable outcome is the desired outcome.

"Beyond Freedom and Dignity" quickly became the justification for, or the reason behind, an entire slew of measures in both the public and private sectors aimed at redirecting human behavior by manipulating appropriate segments of the environment. Conversely, "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" also became the focus of widespread vehement opposition to its underlying premise, which is that in the final analysis, when examined sufficiently closely, free will does not exist. Or, put another way, whether free will exists or not is irrelevant; what matters is the outcome.

When confronted with the idea that the exercise of free will may not be "free," the initial reaction of most thoughtful persons is to demonstrate some trivial act of free will. In so doing, the self-evidence of free will seems incontrovertible. Skinner would argue, however, that the sequence of events that led to the free-will act in some way determined that act. In a sense he postulated an underlying set of micro-factors that inevitably determines each macro occurrence. In Skinner's view, these micro-factors ultimately are completely deterministic, so that it logically follows that macro-events must be determined and, therefore, without free will.

Skinner went on to argue that since one can never completely know these micro-factors, one can function as if they did not exist; in other words one may accept free will as a determining variable. He then argued, however, that one can more effectively modify human behavior by understanding and controlling - to whatever degree possible - the underlying micro-factors, than by appealing to the factors that seem to influence free will decisions.

In Skinner's view, the viability of free will is not particularly important. Free will is relegated to the uninteresting bag containing things in which we once believed. Free will becomes irrelevant.

One of the consequences of Special

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