A Sentence from B. F. Skinner

Abstract

A sentence by Professor B.F. Skinner, 'It occurred to me to go for a
walk,' provides an opportunity to give it a framework of quantized
subjectivity, as distinct from Skinner's approach of contingent
reinforcement. Skinner's analysis of 'cognitive thought' is sustained,
but this in turn has to be rejected by post-Einsteinian theory with
respect to subjectivity, ignored in cognitive psychology and Skinnerian
Behaviorism alike. Modern science begins with the complexity of events,
as in theories of chaos and turbulence, and it is from this standpoint
that the growing science of subjectivity made its beginnings in
Q-methodology, as concourse theory. Self-reference is crucial in this
development, and is advanced in terms of the everyday communicability of
a culture, largely as verbal behavior. Skinner's well-known
achievements in this matter remain in the determinative framework of
Newtonian science. It is time for recognition of the indeterminateness
of nature, and for acceptance of a science for subjectivity.