b. f. skinner's adoption of peirce's pragmatic meaning for habits

B. F. Skinner's Adoption of Peirce's Pragmatic Meaning for HabitsAuthor(s): Roy A. MoxleySource: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Fall, 2004), pp. 743-769Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40321027 .

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Roy A. Moxley

B. F. Skinner's Adoption of Peirce's Pragmatic

Meaning for Habits

Several behavior analysts have noted the similarity between B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism and pragmatism (e.g. Baum, 1994; Day, 1980; Greer, 2002, p. 151; Hayes & Brownstein, 1986; Lamal, 1983; Leigland, 1999; Morris, 1988; Moxley, 2001a, 2001b, 2001/2002, 2002, 2003; Schneider, 1997; Staddon, 2001, p. 96; Zuriff, 1980, 1985); and various passages from Skinner (e.g., 1945, pp. 293-294; 1953, p. 139; 1957, p. 428; 1966/1969, p. 141; 1974, p. 235) have been presented as exemplifying a pragmatic approach. The following supports this view and primarily addresses the similarity between Skinner's account of his three -term contingency for the meaning of verbal behavior - which includes speech, writing, and other forms of communication - and C. S. Peirce's account of his three-term contingency for the meaning of habits. Although these similarities do not exhaust Peirce's views on meaning, they bring out an aspect of those views that became central to Skinner's operant behavior and his epistemology. This is a causal account of meaning with significant implications. The initial focus will be Skinner's shift from a positivist to a pragmatist approach before detailing similarities between Skinner and the pragmatista Peirce, James, and Dewey.

Changes in Skinner's Views The greatest difficulty in understanding Skinner lies in understanding the

changes his views have undergone and how strongly they shifted from a positivist to a pragmatist orientation. The most fundamental changes seem to have resulted from Skinner's longstanding interest in epistemology and verbal behavior rather than from his experimental research, despite the image he (e.g., 1979/1984, pp. 150, 282) cultivated of a scientist deriving principles from his empirical experimentation (cf. Moxley, 2001a, pp. 144-145). He (1983/1984) said, "I often called epistemology my first love. A few references to the problem of knowledge by Russell were the original enticement, and my early 'Sketch for an Epistemology' was my first approach" (p. 395). Skinner also majored in English

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Fall, 2004, Vol. XL, No. 4



744 Roy A. Moxley

literature as an undergraduate, considered a writing career (Wiklander, 1996, p. 85), and published early papers on verbal behavior from an essentialist or S-R perspective (e.g., 1936).

If C. I. Lewis's (1941/1970) distinction between logical positivism's emphasis on "contenf and "exact formulation in physical terms" and pragmatism's emphasis on "method" and "usefulness in application" (p. 10) is applied to Skinner, we see some initial evidence for his shift in positions. Before 1945, Skinner was more concerned with "exact formulations and physical terms." Skinner (1987/1989a, p. 110) was a charter subscriber to Erkenntnis, the journal of the logical positivista of the Vienna Circle; and he (1979/1984) said, "As far as I was concerned, there were only minor differences between behaviorism, operationism, and logical positivism" (p. 161). Skinner (1931) insisted on necessity in the relation between the stimulus and the response (p. 430); presented a variety of mathematical formulas (1931, p. 452; 1932, p. 47; 1933, p. 341); and drew up an initial list of "pure" and "impure" physical terms (1938/1966, pp. 6-8). Later, he became more concerned with "usefulness in application." He (1945) said, "The ultimate criterion for the goodness of a concept is... whether the scientist who uses the concept can operate successfully upon his material - all by himself if need be" (p. 393). This account left out any final appeal to theories, rules, or logical foundations: "[M]odern logic... can scarcely be appealed to by the psychologist" (p. 271) and if a functional analysis of behavior "invalidates our scientific structure from the point of view of logic and truth-value, then so much the worse for logic, which will also have been embraced by our analysis" (p. 277). This last quotation was cited with approval by Dewey and Bentley (1947, 306n), who favorably regarded Skinner's views in that article.

Skinner presented his new views against the logical positivists and their sympathizers, whom he had originally regarded with favor. In his approving preface to Wittgenstein's (1922/1981) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Bertrand Russell (1922/1981) - whom Skinner (1987/1989a) saw as "sympathetic with logical positivism" (p. 110) - emphasized the logical quality of an ideal or universal language: "A logically perfect language has rules of syntax which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols which always have a definite and unique meaning" (p. 8); and he argued that we should try to approach this ideal in order to speak meaningfully, "[T]he whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfills this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate" (p. 8). Skinner (1979/1984, p. 10) said that Russell's (1926) account of meaning had converted him to behaviorism. That account had been indebted to Watson:

[I]f we take some such word as "Socrates" or "dog," the meaning of the word consists in some relation to an object or set of objects.... You see John, and you say,



B. F. Skinner *s Pragmatic Meaning 745

"Hullo, John" - this gives the cause of the word; you call "John," and John appears at the door - this gives the effect of the word... This view of language has been advocated, more or less tentatively, by Watson in his book on Behaviour. (Russell, 1919, pp. 7-8)

Less insistent on logical features than Russell, Otto Neurath (1931-32/1959), one of the members of the Vienna Circle, advanced physicalistic language as a universal language: "[T]he physicalistic language has the capacity some day to become the universal language of social intercourse" (p. 289); and this language would be developed by purifying ordinary language:

What is originally given to us is our ordinary natural language with a stock of imprecise, unanalyzed terms. We start by purifying this language of metaphysical elements and so reach the physicalistic ordinary language. In accomplishing this we may find it very useful to draw up a list of proscribed words, (p. 200)

Neurath (1931/1983) saw that, "In the field of psychology, the physicalists are closely allied with Watson and his behaviorists...." (p. 50); and he (1931- 32/1959) saw physicalistic language as unifying all of science:

The views suggested here are best combined with a behavioristic orientation. One will not then speak of "thought," but of "speech-thought," i.e., of statements as physical events.... orAy physicalistic statements have a meaning, i.e., can become part of unified science.... The physicalistic language, unified language, is the Alpha and Omega of all science, (p. 292)

In this unification, the physicalistic language would apply to all the sciences in "building up a uniform scientific language with a uniform

terminology" (Neurath, 1936/1983, p. 133). Rudolph Carnap (1934), another member of the Vienna Circle, also thought such a language would be well-suited for science, "[Our] theory is that the physical language is the universal language and can therefore serve as the basic language of Science" (p. 95).

Subsequently reacting against such views, Skinner discounted the link between logical positivism and behaviorism and the prospect of physicalistic language to become a universal language, Skinner (Blanshard & Skinner, 1966-

1967) said of his 1945 paper, "The physicalism of the logical positivist has never been good behaviorism, as I pointed out twenty years ago (Skinner, 1945)" (p.



746 Roy A. Moxley

325); and Skinner (1957) rejected the possibility of an ideal language: "Such a language is manifestly impossible" (p. 124). Skinner (1945) had said he was opposed to "adherents of the 'correspondence school' of meaning" (p. 274), saying, "It is simply not true that an organism reacts to a sign 'as it would to the object which the sign supplants'" (p. 271); and Skinner rejected the idea of a rule for the meaning of a word: "[The Psychologist] cannot, unfortunately, join the logician in defining a definition, for example, as a 'rule for the use of a term' (Feigl)" (p. 277). Feigl was a prominent logical positivist, a friend, and a colleague at the University of Minnesota. Further identifying those whose views on meaning he had rejected, Skinner (1979/1984) said, "It was not true, as Watson, Russell and others had said, that one responded to words as if they were the things the words stood for" (p. 335). In rejecting a one-to-one correspondence between word and meaning, Skinner was rejecting positions in which a single, essential meaning was assumed for the very form of the word.

To some extent, these statements were a case of "Do as I say, not as I do (or have done or will do)." More than once, Skinner had adopted a position in which the meaning of words depended on the meaning he attributed to their form (cf. Harzem & Miles, 1978, pp. 56-58; Midgley, 1978, pp. 109-110; Wright, 1976, pp. 88-90). Some of his essentialist positions he took back. Skinner (1948, 1971) notoriously gave the impression that freedom, didn't exist and that people were mistaken in their use of the term. The essential meaning he attributed to determinism required the essential meaning he attributed to freedom. His (1948) protagonist Frazier said, "'I deny that freedom exists at all'" (p. 257). Later, undercutting his apparent dismissal of freedom, Skinner (1979) said, "Our culture has failed to design and implement reinforcement contingencies under which people behave in ways in which they feel free and worthy" (p. 50). The implication is that Skinner now favored a culture that has "people behave in ways in which they feel free and worthy." Skinner (1981) also spoke against practices that unnecessarily "restrict individual freedom" (p. 504). In addition, granting a conceivable reality for freedom as against determinism, Skinner (1990) said that "if there is freedom, it is to be found in the randomness of variations" (p. 1208). There is no insistence on determinism at the expense of freedom. But some of his statements implying an essentialist interpretation remained like a bad habit, such as when Skinner (1984/1988, p. 265) objected to a critic's use of the term "extract" because the essential literal meaning that Skinner attributed to his critic did not make good sense. The critic, however, was understandably using the term metaphorically as did Skinner (e.g., 1971, p. 95; 1980b, pp. 85, 275; 1985/1987, p. 107).

Skinner's Pragmatic View of Meaning In Skinner's (1945) new view, "Meanings, contents, and references are to be

found among the determiners, not among the properties, of response" (p. 271). These determiners, or responsible conditions, were found in Skinner's (1945)



B. F. Skinner's Pragmatic Meaning 74:7

first formulation of his probabilistic three-term contingency, which was for verbal behavior:

There are three important terms: a stimulus, a response, and a reinforcement supplied by the verbal community. ...The significant interrelations... may be expressed by saying that the community reinforces the response only when it is emitted in the presence of the stimulus. The reinforcement of the response "red," for example, is contingent upon the presence of a red object. (The contingency need not be invariable.) (p. 272)

This formulation contrasts with the stimulus-response reflex in Skinner's (e.g., 1938/1966) early operant formulations of two paired reflexes in necessary relations that dominated his self-styled "positivistic" (p. 44) approach in The Behavior of Organisms. Speaking of that book's commitment to the reflex, Skinner (1987/1989a) said, "Unfortunately, I decided to use reflex as the word for any unit of behavior. In doing so, I no doubt contributed to the fact that you will still find a behavioral analysis called stimulus-response psychology" (p. 131). In using the "reflex as the word for any unit of behavior," Skinner also used the reflex in a context that supported traditional uses of the term reflex. So, in

dropping the reflex from operant behavior, Skinner had to change the conceptual foundations and the implications he had used to support it. The ramifications for these changes in his views extended throughout his subsequent writing although they took time to incorporate. He (1956/1999, p. 307) still had occasion to fall back on a global S-R formulation without a role for consequences.

Skinner's characterization that "the contingency need not be invariable" introduced probability for the operant, a distinction made easier by his (1935; also cf. Coleman, 1984) previous designation of the operant as a class concept. Skinner (1988/1989), for example, said,

We say that we reinforce a response when we make a reinforcer contingent upon it, but we do not change that particular response. What we reinforce, in the sense of strengthen, is the operant, the probability that similar responses will occur in the future.... An operant is a class of responses, not an instance, but it is also a probability, (p. 36)

Skinner's (1945) position on probability for the operant contrasts with his

(1938/1966) previous characterization of the "mechanical necessities of reinforcement" (p. 178) for the operant. Presenting operant behavior within reflexological S-R formulations until 1945, Skinner had assumed necessity



748 Roy A. Moxley

between stimulus and response and had followed this S-R account in his early work on verbal behavior in the 1930s (Moxley, 2001b). After 1945, an underlying foundation in determinism to account for why S-R necessity existed even when unobserved was no longer needed. With Skinner's increasing advocacy of probability, his need for and advocacy of determinism eventually disappeared (Moxley, 1997).

Skinner (1979/1984, p. 47) said his 1945 article was derived from a longer manuscript eventually published as Verbal Behavior in 1957. Skinner (1980a) believed this book would "prove to be my most important work" (p. 198), and he (1979/1984, p. 324) suggested it was partly a response to Russell's (1950) theory of meaning. Skinner took issue with Russell's (1950, p. 82) claim that when we hear the word fox we show our understanding of that word by behaving (within limits) as we would have done if we had seen the fox. In part, Skinner (1957) said, "The verbal stimulus fox... may, as Russell says, lead us to look around... but we do not look around when we see a fox, we look at the fox" (p. 87). Skinner also said,

[M]eaning is not a property of behavior as such but of the conditions under which behavior occurs. Technically, meanings are to be found among the independent variables in a functional account, rather than as properties of the dependent variable. When someone says that he can see the meaning of a response, he means that he can infer some of the variables of which the response is usually a function, (pp. 13-14)

Skinner was rejecting Russell's (1926, p. 119) essentialist claim that meaning was a property of a word (its form) and replacing it with a causal concept of meaning in which the independent variables were to be found in the contingencies for the use of a word.

At first Skinner's (1957) account was primarily for the speaker, and a distinctive characterization of the listener was not given:

The form of a response is shaped by the contingencies prevailing in a verbal community. A given form is brought under stimulus control through the differential reinforcement of our three-term contingency. The result is simply the probability that the speaker will emit a response of a given form in the presence of a stimulus having specified properties under certain broad conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation. So far as the speaker is concerned^ this is the relation of reference or meaning, (p. 115)



B. F. Skinner Js Pragmatic Meaning 749

Skinner (1957) did not consider the listener as engaging in verbal behavior: "[T]he behavior of the listener in mediating the consequences of the behavior of the speaker is not necessarily verbal in any special sense. It cannot, in fact, be distinguished from behavior in general" (p. 2). Although Skinner (1957, p. 34) included the listener in the verbal episode, the problem was in distinguishing the behavior of the listener from behavior in general.

Actually, Skinner (1957) suggested how the listener's behavior can be distinguished from behavior in general when he said, "A verbal response makes it possible to 'think about' one property of nature at a time" (p. 448). Such a response appears applicable to both speakers and listeners. Listeners may also 'think about' and respond to one property of nature at a time in responding to what they hear from the speaker. Later, Skinner indicated how the listener's behavior might also be considered as verbal. Skinner (1980b) said, "As responses [of the speaker], the circumstances controlling their appearance are their meaning. As stimuli [for the listener], their meaning is the behavior under their control" (p. 114). Meaning for the speaker lies in the contingencies of what the speaker says. Meaning for the listener lies in the contingencies for what the listener says or does. The listener is at least partially under the probabilistic control of what the speaker says. For Skinner (1985/1987),

Meaning for the listener is what the listener does as the result of a different personal history.... Speakers create settings in which listeners respond in given ways; nothing is communicated in the sense of being transmitted from one to the other. Sentences are "generated," but usually by contingencies of reinforcement and only occasionally with the help of rules extracted [emphasis added] from them. (p. 107)

Speakers and listeners behave under different contingencies and different

meanings; and a good listener follows the meaning of the speaker's words closely as if speaking along with the speaker, which means inferring some of the

contingencies for the speaker's words.

Skinner's Analysis of Meaning Attention to the setting for the use of a word or expression becomes

prominent in an extended analysis of meaning (e.g. Skinner, 1981, p. 502; 1990, p. 1206). The context of the setting includes genetic, personal, and cultural histories. A personal history also includes private thinking and feeling, and Skinner included a functional role for such events in the contingencies of operant behavior. However, these private events were not to be regarded as origins that are sufficient to explain behavior in isolation from other contingencies (e.g., Skinner, 1957, pp. 157-158, 214; 1963, p. 958; 1974, p. 31; 1980b, p. 227;



750 Roy A. Moxley

1984/1988, pp. 486-487; 1987/1989b, pp. 3, 11; 1988/1989, p. 24). Detailed considerations of relevant contexts and consequences allow refined

distinctions of meaning to be addressed such as when a word or a sentence is irreplaceable :

We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.)

In the one case the thought in the sentence is something common to different sentences; in the other, something that is expressed only by these words in these positions. (Understanding a poem.)

Then has "understanding" two different meanings here? - I would rather say that these kinds of use of "understanding" make up its meaning, make up my concept of understanding. (Wittgenstein, 1958, pp. 143e-144e)

Skinner's account could address a word in its more particular (irreplaceable) and more general (replaceable) sense. What are the contingencies for the particular placement of a particular word in a poem? A detailed analysis of contexts and consequences is applicable here although consequences or effects, and their prediction, are commonly the central concern for the poet:

The effect on the reader - particularly on the writer as reader - is important because a poem evolves under a kind of natural selection. All behavior is intimately affected by its consequences, and just as the conditions of selection are more important in the evolution of a species than the mutations, so the selective action of a pleasing effect is more important than the meaningful sources of the responses selected. Pleasing responses survive as a poem evolves. (Skinner, 1973/1978, p. 187)

In saying that the effect was more important than the source, Skinner acknowledged the importance of consequences in our conscious concerns with meanings. We commonly attend to the effect of our words on others and make adjustments accordingly with little conscious attention to contexts.



B. F. Skinner*s Pragmatic Meaning 75 1

Despite a seemingly overwhelming number of considerations, an analysis of meaning proceeds like any other analysis of behavior. "When someone says he can see the meaning of a response, he means that he can infer some of the variables of which the response is usually a function" (Skinner, 1957, p. 14). A further analysis proceeds like any other account of the contingencies for behavior, "One begins wherever possible and proceeds as soon as possible to a more and more adequate account - which, of course, will never be complete" (Skinner, 1984/1988, p. 380). Such "a description of the contingencies is never complete or exact (it is usually simplified in order to be easily taught or understood)" (Skinner, 1974, p. 125).

Similarities with Peirce Although Skinner's virtual alignment with pragmatism came in 1945,

Skinner did not make an explicit public alignment or parallel with pragmatism until 1979. In response to the question, "Do you see operant conditioning as close to any existing philosophical system?" Skinner (1979) singled out C. S. Peirce's pragmatism as "very close... to an operant analysis":

The method of Peirce was to consider all the effects a concept might conceivably have on practical matters. The whole of our conception of an object or event is our conception of its effects. That is very close [emphasis added], I think, to an operant analysis of the way in which we respond to stimuli, (p. 48)

From the context of this interview, Skinner was apparently responding, at least

partly, to Raymond Williams's (1976) account of the term pragmatic. But it is

questionable whether Skinner was responding exclusively to the two brief quotes from Peirce given by Williams when Skinner said that Peirce's pragmatism was

"very close... to an operant analysis." More complete statements by Peirce

(1923/1998) closer to radical behaviorism and an operant analysis can be found in Chance, Love and Logic^ a book included in Skinner's (1979/1984, p. 41) library much earlier. The second essay in that book was Peirce's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," and Skinner's statement that Peirce's method was very close to an operant analysis is more understandable if Skinner had read that essay. In it, Peirce (1878/1992) included an acceptance of private events that anticipated Skinner's own acceptance of private events:

[S]ince belief is a rule for action, the application of which involves further doubt and further thought, at the same time that it is a stopping-place, it is also a new starting-place for thought. That is why I have permitted myself to call it thought at rest, although thought is



752 Roy A. Moxley

essentially an action... The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. (pp. 129-130)

Belief was a rule for action, and thought was essentially an action. Accepting private events in his radical behaviorism, a term he introduced in 1945 for his inclusive view of behaviorism, Skinner (1974) also considered potential behavior as a kind of action or as rules for action:

[O]ur knowledge ¿faction, or at least rules for action... There is room in a behavioristic analysis for a kind of knowing short of action and hence short of power. One need not be actively behaving in order to feel or to introspectively observe certain states normally associated with behavior, (pp. 139-140)

Skinner's first sentence - when he says that "knowledge is action, or at least rules for action" - paraphrases in reverse order Peirce's (1878/1992) "belief is a rule for action" and "thought is essentially an action" (p. 129).

Three paragraphs later, Peirce presented a three-term contingency for meaning that anticipates an operant formulation:

[W]hat a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now, the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be. What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. As for the when, every stimulus [emphasis added] to action [emphasis in original] is derived from perception; as for the how, every purpose of action is to produce some sensible result [emphasis added]. Thus we come down to what is tangible and practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtile [sic] it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice, (p. 131)

This is a causal account of meaning (although not the causal theory that Gale, 1999, p. 161, identified for James): "What the habit is depends on when and how it causes [emphasis added] us to act." As indicated by the phrasing, "might possibly occur," this is also a probabilistic account of meaning with three distinct



B. F. Skinner Js Pragmatic Meaning 7 S3

parts: 1) a stimulus to act, 2) an action, and 3) a sensible result - a causal, probabilistic three-term contingency. In the second paragraph after his formulation above of stimulus, action, and result, Peirce made an early statement of his pragmatic maxim. If Skinner (1979) was also responding to what he had previously read in this stretch of paragraphs, his conclusion that Peirce's method was very close to an operant analysis would be more understandable - with Peirce on private events in thinking as acting and a probabilistic three-term contingency for habits, points that were not included by Williams.

Peirce (1907/1998) used different variants of terms for his formulation of habit, such as conditions, act and result. "[U]nder given conditions, the interpreter will have formed the habit of acting in a given way whenever he may desire a given kind of result" (p. 418), which was soon restated in terms of conditions, action, and motive: "[H]ow otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with the specification of the conditions and of the motive?" (p. 418). Peirce then restated this formulation in terms of circumstances, act, and motives*. u[To] believe the concept in question is applicable to anything is to be prepared under certain circumstances, and when actuated by given motives, to act in a certain way" (p. 432). Peirce (1985) also addressed the habit of belief in terms oí occasion, act, and consequence: "A state of belief in a proposition is such a state that the believer would on every pertinent occasion act according to the logical consequence of that proposition" (p. 912). All of this gives the following terms in probabilistic relations for habits: stimulus/ conditions/occasion/ circumstances for the first term, action/act for the second term, and result/motive/motives/consequence for the third term.

These terms were similar and sometimes identical to the corresponding three terms that Skinner used for the contingencies of operant behavior. For his first term, Skinner used stimulus (or discriminative stimulus) at first, but he (1984/1988, p. 471; 1986/1987, p. 201) became dissatisfied with the term discriminative stimulus. Later he used circumstances (e.g., 1960, p. 206; 1956/1999, p. 304), occasion {z.%., 1968/1969, p. 7; 1986/1987, p. 201), and increasingly setting (e.g., 1973, p. 257; 1974, p. 91; 1980b, pp. 260-261; 1987/1989b, p. 10; 1984/1988, pp. 215, 265, 292, 354, 472; 1987/1989c, pp. 62-67; 1989a, p. 126; 1997, p. 156). For his second term, Skinner used

response at first and then more commonly behavior, and like Peirce act or action

(e.g., 1947, p. 36; 1950/1999, p. 72; 1956/1999, p. 304; 1977/1978, p. 115). For his third term, Skinner used reinforcement at first and then more commonly consequence or consequences. The shift in Skinner's choice of first terms is toward

greater inclusiveness of contexts in his three-term contingency. This brought a

conspicuously expanded consideration for the contexts of meaning. In addition, the shift in Skinner's choice for a second term indicates a greater distancing from his early stimulus and response formulation and its concomitant implications. Skinner now limited the S-R formulation to respondent (or reflex) behavior,



754 Roy A. Moxley

which no longer held much interest for him. In addition to using terms similar to those that Peirce used for his three-term

contingency, the relations in Skinner's (1945) three- term contingency are similar to Peirce's AB -because -of- C relations for the discovery of the laws of nature, the improvement of inventions, and natural selection. In his "Minute Logic" of 1902, Peirce (1931-1958) had generalized three-term probabilistic relations as cutting across these areas in an AB-because-of-C formulation: "[S]o we now meet with a Rational Threeness which consists in A and B being really paired by virtue of a third object, C" (2.86). Darwin's (1872/1958) three terms - conditions of life, variation, and selection - fit this formula: "Natural Selection [emphasis added], or the Survival of the Fittest.... implies only the preservations of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life [emphasis added]" (p. 88). (A) the conditions of life and (B) the variations of organisms adapted to it exist because of (C) selection by consequences for previous AB (conditions of life-variations) relations. This formulation was in strong contrast to if-A-then-B formulations such as S-R formulations.

Adopting similar AB-because-of-C relations, Skinner (1945) said, "[T]he contingencies of reinforcement... account for the functional relation between a term, as a verbal response, and a given stimulus" (p. 277). The causal or explanatory role established by "account for" is not given to the antecedent stimulus as in S-R accounts. Instead, the causal role is given to the consequences, and the relation between stimulus and response is because of these consequences. The relation between (A) "a given stimulus" and (B) "a verbal response" is because of (C) "reinforcement." As applied to Skinner's (e.g., 1997, p. 156) later operant formulation, the relation between (A) the setting and (B) the behavior is because of (C) the consequences for previous AB (setting-behavior) relations. Peirce could also have applied this formulation to his three-term contingency for habits, where it may be considered as implicit.

Skinner's view of meaning based on his three-term contingency for operant behavior is remarkably close to Peirce's view of meaning based on his three-term AB-because-of-C formulation applied to habit. This may have been a case of independent discovery, but it may also have been a case of direct or indirect influence. In addition to his reading of Peirce, Skinner had discussions over the years with his friend and colleague at Harvard, the pragmatist W. V. Quine, who could have presented some of Peirce's views (see Cerullo, 1996). Quine (1981), for example, said, "Peirce scored a major point for naturalism, moreover, in envisioning a behavioristic semantics. Naturalism in psychology and semantics is behaviorism; and Peirce declared for such a semantics when he declared that beliefs consist in dispositions to actions" (p. 36). It may not be surprising then that John Staddon (2001), editor of the journal Behaviorism and Philosophy said, "The philosophy of radical behaviorism [Skinner's philosophy] is a descendant of the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce" (p. 96).

Both Peirce and Skinner also emphasized the importance of community in



B. F. Skinner^s Pragmatic Meaning 755

determining meaning. Peirce's (1868/1992, p. 52) reality "in the long run" could not be determined without a community for determining it, and just as there were multiple selves in a community, there were multiple selves within a person:

Two things here are all -important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood) is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism. (Peirce, 1905/1998, p. 338)

Peirce was indicating a similarity between a person as a community of multiple selves and a society as a loosely compacted person of multiple selves.

Drawing on Malinowski's appendix to The Meaning of Meaning by Ogden and Richards (1923/1989) - a book that Skinner (1979/1984, pp. 92 & 213) bought and discussed at length with its co-author Richards - Skinner (1957, pp. 432, 461-470) emphasized the role of the community in the development of verbal behavior. Speaking of the relations between speaker and listener, Skinner (1988/1989) said, "We have been considering a kind of super-organism, the first half of which gains when the second half acts on the world, and the second half gains when the first half makes contact with that world" (p. 45). As for the selves of this superorganism or community, Skinner (1947) proposed "a new conception of the individual as the locus of a system of variables... it is quite clear that more than one person, in the sense of an integrated and organized system of responses, exists within one skin" (p. 39; also cf. 1974, pp. 149-150, 167-168; 1986c p. 716; 1989b, p. 28). Different selves within the same skin can function in the roles of speaker and listener:

Many persons or selves reside within one skin.... When we say that we talk to ourselves, we mean that one self talks to another. Different repertoires have been shaped and maintained by different verbal environments.... In all this our role as listener is the important thing. We are better listeners than speakers, and we continue to listen to and read much more than we ever say or write....



756 Roy A. Moxley

When repertoires of speaker and listener come together in the same skin, things happen which are much less likely to happen when they are in separate skins. We converse with ourselves, arguing perhaps, but looking for agreement. The selves who converse have different histories (or silent verbal behavior would be useless), but they are not as different as the histories in a group discussion. (Skinner, 1988/1989, p. 46)

Like Peirce, Skinner's verbal behavior included selves inside and outside the skin. As for differences between Peirce and Skinner, the main difference between

habits and operants that Skinner (1989a) identified was size:

The main difference between an operant and a habit seemed to be one of size. Pressing a lever could have been called a habit, but so could running through a complicated maze, which was composed of many operants, each with its own stimulus, response, and consequence, (p. 125)

On this basis, Skinner may be said to have offered smaller units or more refined discriminations for operants than Peirce did for habits. Other differences were Peirce's greater emphasis on generality, his emphasis on conceivable practical applications, hard words, and listeners in a community of inquirers in-the-long- run. Emphasizing conceivability in a letter to William James of Dec. 6, 1904, Peirce said the concept of meaning "is nothing more than the concept of the conceivable practical applications of it" (cited in Perry 1936, pp. 432-433). For his part, Skinner emphasized the contingencies of behavior that had occurred as well as would occur to an individual. Hard words and meaning-in-the-long run were not special considerations.

Similarities with James Not all of Skinner's pragmatic similarities were to Peirce. Influences from

other pragmatists were cited by Skinner in personal communications: Leigland (1997) said, "John Dewey, and especially William James, have been cited as influential in Skinner's graduate training; Skinner, personal communication, 1984" (p. 19). However - regardless of Skinner's noted lack of concern to identify parallels with views similar to his own (Hilgard, 1939, p. 124; Staddon, 1993 p. 30) - Skinner may not have thought it was an advantage to write of ways his views were aligned with those of James. Russell (1935/1941) had linked James to "the modern cult of unreason" (p. 76) and to notorious figures: "Hitler accepts or rejects doctrines on political grounds, without bringing in the notion of truth or falsehood. Poor William James, who invented this point of view,



B. F. Skinner *s Pragmatic Meaning 757

would be horrified at the use which is made of it" (p. 77; also cf. Russell's, 1948/1992, pp. 439-440, linkage of pragmatism to Karl Marx and Mussolini's endorsement of James in the London Sunday Times of April 1926 cited in Perry, 1936, p. 575). Attacked from various sources, pragmatism was in decline in the psychology of the 1930s. Instead, "In the 1930s psychology assumed an epistemological orientation that was dominated by logical positivism" (Day, 1980, p. 235).

Nevertheless, from 1945 onward, Skinner made many word choices that are identical to word choices made by James for making similar points:

Verbal behavior is true if leads to behavior that is "effective" (Skinner, 1953, pp. 139, 255, 409; 1957, pp. 419, 422, 429, 451; 1969, p. 141; 1974, pp. 144, 235; see also Day, 1969, p. 318), "successful" (Skinner, 1945b, p. 293; 1953, p. 409; 1957, pp. 147, 418, 425, 427, 428, 430; 1972a; 1974, pp. 142, 144), "useful" (Skinner, 1953, pp. 422, 427, 428), "efficient" (Skinner, 1953, p. 14; see also Day, 1969, p. 319), productive of practical consequences (Skinner, 1957, pp. 421, 430), "expedient" (Skinner, 1945b, p. 292; 1957, p. 456; see, also, Day 1976, p. 99), "workable" (Skinner, 1945b, p. 294), or "productive" (Day, 1969, p. 319). (Zuriff, 1980, pp. 344-345):

Even Skinner's (1945) term radical behaviorism for distinguishing his brand of behaviorism from other behaviorisms is notably similar to James's term radical

empiricism for distinguishing his brand of philosophy. James also distinguished between two kinds of knowledge in a way that was to become fundamental for Skinner in distinguishing verbal from nonverbal behavior. James (1890/1983) said,

There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and

practically distinguishable: We may call them

respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge- about.... The. two kinds of knowledge are relative terms. ...the same thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about it in comparison with a simpler thought, or acquaintance with it in comparison with a

thought of it that is more articulate and explicit still. The grammatical sentence expresses this. Its "subject"

stands for an object of acquaintance which, by the addition of the predicate, is to get something known



758 Roy A. Moxley

about it.. . .when we know about it we seem, as we think over its relations, to subject it to a sort of treatment and to operate upon it with our thought.... our senses only give us acquaintance, (pp. 216-218)

The similarity between James's term operate and Skinner's term operant is interesting even if coincidental. Issues raised by the two knowledges are also addressed by James's (1911/1979) distinctions between percept and concept, perceptual experience and conceptual experience, perceptual knowledge and conceptual knowledge.

Although James (1911/1979) sees "concrete percepts as primordial and concepts as of secondary origin" (p. 58), he sees them in a close interrelation:

Perception awakens thought and thought in turn enriches perception. The more we see, the more we think; while the more we think, the more we see in our immediate experiences, and the greater grows the detail, and the more significant the articulateness of our perception, (p. 59)

James referenced Schiller (1906) for a comparable view:

For the true significance and value of our rational procedures surely lie in their power to enrich and improve direct perception, and to adjust and guide our actions. It is fortunate for us that our thoughts have this power to develop gradually into immediate perceptions, to abbreviate and finally to eliminate themselves... Their essential function is to promote and facilitate new responses adjusted to new situations, and the quicker and more unhesitating these responses can become the more valuable they are...[I]n actual knowing the mediation of the immediate and the perfecting into immediacy of the mediate form one continuous process... through the labor of reflective analysis. . .and is controlled throughout by the purpose of sustaining and enriching life. (p. 237)

James's knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about has a similar changing relation in which knowledge by acquaintance can lead to knowledge about and knowledge-about can lead to knowledge of acquaintance.

Later, Skinner (1980b) said oí Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description, "The distinction seems to be between behavior shaped by



B. F. Skinner^ Pragmatic Meaning 759

contingencies and behavior governed by rules (descriptions of contingencies)" (p. 184). At the time, Skinner (1980b) did not trace this distinction beyond Russell:

[In] Russell's Theory of Description: "All logic and all philosophy are inquiries into what makes it significant or nonsensical to say certain things. The sciences aim at saying what is true about the world [describing contingencies]; philosophy aims at disclosing only the logic of what can be truly or even falsely said about the world [rules]." (p. 185)

Russell (1912/1959) had adopted the terms Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description for the tide of Chapter V in The Problems of Philosophy, a book whose first third Skinner (1986a) said "greatly influenced" (p. 234) him. Skinner (1974, p. 138) also termed the distinction as to know how and to know about - a pairing similar to Ryle's (1949) knowing how and knowing that, but using about, as James did, instead of Ryle's that. Thus Skinner employed slight variants - Knowledge by Acquaintance and to know about - of each term in James's pairing - knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about - without reference to James.

In his own terminology, Skinner often referred to the kind of distinction that James made as contingency-shaped and rule-governed, and this was a fundamental distinction for Skinner (1988/1989; also cf. 1966/1969):

Science means knowledge.... Behaviorally speaking, it is a possession in the sense of being a bodily state which results either from reinforcement (when the behavior is contingency-shaped) or from responding to a particular kind of verbal stimulus (when the behavior is rule- governed).... Those who have been directly exposed to contingencies behave more subtly and effectively than those who have merely been told, taught, or advised to behave or who follow rules. There is a difference because rules never fully describe the contingencies they are designed to replace. There is also a difference in the states of the body felt.... everything scientists now do must at least once have been contingency-shaped in someone, but most of the time scientists begin by following rules. Science is a vast verbal environment or culture.

New sciences come only from contingencies.... The

contingencies always come first, (pp. 43-44)



760 Roy A. Moxley

Skinner eventually seemed to conclude that all of the listener's behavior was more adequately distinguished as being verbal-governed "when he suggested that rule- governed behavior might also be called verbal stimulus controlled behavior" (Hayes & Hayes, 1989, p. 159). Each kind of knowledge -

contingency-shaped and verbal-governed - was accounted for by Skinner's three-term contingencies, which were invariably a mix of verbal and nonverbal sources once verbal behavior was acquired. Thus the antecedents of behavior might be verbal and nonverbal and the consequences of behavior might also be verbal and nonverbal. In this way, Skinner extended the continuity of his behaviorism to include both verbal and nonverbal behavior.

Similarities with Natural Selection Although neither Peirce, James, nor Dewey said their pragmatism was

derived upon natural selection, their thinking was far from free of it. Peirce saw Darwin's natural selection as analogous to other processes. Peirce (1871/1992) said, "The law of natural selection. . .is the precise analogue in another realm of the law of supply and demand" (p. 105; also cf. Marx, 1979, p. 157; Schweber, 1977, pp. 278n-279n); and Peirce (1986) saw a close parallel between habit and natural selection: "Habit plays somewhat the same part in the history of the individual that natural selection does in that of the species; namely, it causes actions to be directed toward ends" (p. 46). As noted earlier, Peirce (1931-1958) applied "a Rational Threeness which consists in A and B being really paired by virtue of a third object, C" (2.86) to natural selection.

James (1890/1983) found Darwin's view "quite convincing" (p. 1275), and he (1880) suggested the evolution of new conceptions in analogy with Darwin's natural selection:

[N]ew conceptions, emotions, and active tendencies... are originally produced in the shape of random images, fancies, accidental outbirths of spontaneous variation in the functional activity of the excessively unstable brain, which the outer environment simply confirms or refutes, adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, - selects, in short, just as it selects morphological and social variations due to molecular accidents of an analogous sort. (p. 456)

For James (1907/1978), Darwin introduced a new way of looking at how events may occur: "Darwin opened our minds to the power of chance-happenings to bring forth 'fit' results if only they have time to add themselves together" (p. 57).

Dewey (1909/1977) noted how Darwinian evolution had challenged belief in "the superiority of the fixed and final" which had treated "change and origin as signs of defect and unreality" (p. 3). Darwinian thinking was different: "[In]



B. F. Skinner's Pragmatic Meaning 761

treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge" (p. 3). Applying Darwinian thinking to human behavior, Dewey (1918/1988) said, u[T]he psychologist. . .must take for his object a certain event studied in its context of other events - its specific stimulus and specific consequences" (pp. 13-14); and one term needed to be understood in relation to the others: "[W]e are aware of the stimuli [emphasis added] only in terms of our response [emphasis added] to them and of the consequences [emphasis added] of this response" (Dewey, 1925/1988, p. 253; also cf. 1933/1989, pp. 225-231; 1916/1966, pp. 15-16, 29-33). Dewey's three terms were remarkably similar to terms that Skinner would also use for his early three-term contingency.

Skinner (1957) also saw similarities between his views and those of natural selection: "There is a parallel between natural selection and operant conditioning" (p. 462). Although favorable references to Darwin and natural selection do not appear in Skinner's writing until after Skinner's virtual declaration for a pragmatic position in 1945, Skinner (e.g., 1953, pp. 90, 430; 1963/1969, p. 132; 1966/1969, p. 174; 1974, p. 205; 1981; 1984/1987; 1990, p. 1208) then spent more time drawing parallels and linking his views with natural selection and Darwin than linking his views with Peirce or any other pragmatist. Skinner was more interested in publicly linking his views with science and advancing a science of human behavior.

Some Implications of Skinner's Views on Meaning Among the implications for Skinner's later views on meaning, the first is that

the meanings of words vary in every single use. The meanings vary as the contingencies for the speaker and listener change, and some variation in the contingencies (however slight) must occur for each occasion of the word. Most of the details of these variations are negligible, but not all. As with natural selection, some variations may lead to a newly recognized sense, some may not.

A second implication is that the meaning of words is such that no verbal account of reality can ever be regarded with absolute certainty. Truth depends upon meaning and cannot be more certain than the meaning of what is held to be true. As the British pragmatist F. C. S. Schiller (1927) put it, "Meaning is prior to Truth, and if it cannot be grasped all logical questions become meaningless" (p. 98); and as put by Alfred Sidgwick, who accepted the logical method of pragmatism (Schiller, 1907/1969, p. 20n), "MEANING depends on consequences, and truth depends on MEANING" (cited by Ogden & Richards, 1923/1989, p. 162, with emphasis added). This does not mean that truth does not exist. Nor does it mean we cannot approximate, come nearer, or make improvements in some way on what is stated as true. Even though we may conceivably know the truth now as we may basically know it in the long run, we cannot be certain of this for anything we now hold as true (what we hold with



762 Roy A. Moxley

some degree of readiness to act on). According to Skinner (1974), an irreducible element of probability exists in the contingencies for any statement, "There is no way in which a verbal description of a setting can be absolutely true" (p. 136). Meanings or the contingencies of behavior in its setting (current and past) and its consequences are always probabilistic to some degree, and this includes the verbal behavior of scientists: "Sentences about nature range from highly probable 'facts' to sheer guesses" (Skinner, 1955-1956/1999, p. 6). Hard facts were not fixed and unchanging: "We may speak then of the evolution of facts... At issue is... the evolution. . .of a verbal environment or culture" (Skinner, 1986b, p. 121). For Skinner (1984/1988), the main issue was not truth but effective action: "So far as I am concerned, science does not establish truth or falsity; it seeks the most effective way of dealing with subject matters" (p. 241). This meant planning for change not permanency: "Regard no practice as immutable. Change and be ready to change again. Accept no eternal verity. Experiment" (Skinner, 1979/1984, p. 346). Like Peirce (e.g., 1898/1998, p. 51), Skinner's (1974) only concession to absolute truth was in verbal formulations that disregard empirical reality: "Absolute truth can be found, if at all, only in rules derived from rules, and here it is mere tautology" (p. 136).

A third implication is a sense in which what people mean is always right. The meaning is in the contingencies. It makes no sense to talk about people wrongly responding to the contingencies for their behavior; i.e., to the probabilistic causes of their actions. Toulmin (1997) quoted Wittgenstein to that effect: "I remember Wittgenstein once saying in class, 'What philosophers mean is always right.' The trouble is they use language that makes it impossible for other people to understand straightaway what they're saying" (p. 195). The primary problem in understanding someone else's meaning is understanding what the contingencies are for saying what was said. Another problem lies in determining what is useful in what was said. Will it lead to improved practice in some way? What are the consequences? What a person means then is always "correct" in the sense of being the product of operant contingencies, but what a person says may not always be "true" in the sense of being consistent with the range of meanings that a community of listeners have accepted for the words that the speaker says. If I say the speaker is "wrong" or being deceptive, I mean using words that way has problematic consequences (for others if not for the speaker). I cannot mean the speaker is wrongly responding to the contingencies for the speaker's own behavior.

And a fourth implication is that an analysis of meaning might continue indefinitely. Although an analysis of meaning can never be absolutely complete - contingencies of meaning extend indefinitely in detail - any interpretation may be sufficient for practical action; and much practical action does not need a conscious analysis of verbal behavior to proceed. Fortunately, we do not normally need to proceed directly from initial consideration to final determination in one step. We usually have many opportunities to get feedback




on thoughts, external actions, and revisions along the way.

Summary Skinner's theory of operant behavior follows from the pragmatic

epistemology he displayed in 1945 and its theory of meaning. This theory has striking similarities with Peirce as well as James and Dewey. In particular, Skinner's views on meaning may be seen as an extension and elaboration of Peirce's views on the meaning of habits. In accordance with the relations of Peirce's formulation for three-term contingencies, the meaning of what the speaker says lies in the AB-because-of-C contingencies for saying it. Meaning for the listener lies in the AB-because-of-C contingencies for what the listener thinks or does in response to what the speaker says (which entails the listener's personal history and everything else that belongs to the listener's setting). This is a causal account of meaning in terms of a probabilistic, three- term contingency.

Department of Educational Theory and Practice West Virginia University RAMoxley@mail .wvu .edu

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b. f. skinner's adoption of peirce's pragmatic meaning for habits

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