It was assumed that the universe designed by the author of nature would be as logically perfect as humans thought it should be. Because of these views he was accused of impiety, of “casting a reflection upon the wisdom of the author of nature.” (p. 212, note 11) Newton himself may be counted among the dissenters, for he regarded even the solar system as imperfect, and consequently as likely to perish. However, there were dissenters, including Newton: This scientific or “physical determinism … became the ruling faith among enlightened men” (p. 212). This proposition, ‘All clouds are clocks,’ may be taken as a brief formulation of the view which I shall call ‘ physical determinism’” (p. 210). Popper said that almost everybody thought, “The Newtonian revolution the following staggering proposition: All clouds are clocks-even the most cloudy of clouds. He asked us to consider “a very disturbed or disorderly cloud … on the left on the other extreme of our arrangement, on its right … a very reliable pendulum clock, a precision clock” (p. 207). Popper's “clouds … represent physical systems which, like gases, are highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable” (p. 207). He distinguished indeterminisms and determinisms along a clouds-to-clocks continuum. To clarify these issues, the following outlines some ultimate realities-roughly along Popper's continuum, as explained below-as well as behavioral positions on them.Īlthough not a clear taxonomy for all determinisms ( Honderich, 1988, p. 5), Popper's (1965/1979) organizational outline was vivid. Further, in his later years, Skinner appeared to advance an evolutionary reality without any reliance on determinism. However, neither Skinner nor all other behavior analysts have consistently supported a shared understanding of determinism in any definite sense. Rakos referred to “what unquestionably is the central philosophical and conceptual unifier among committed behavior analysts: a shared understanding of the deterministic nature of human behavior and its implications for cultural design” (p. 153). Nevertheless, behaviorists have been presented as believing in determinism, one of these ultimate realities (e.g., Chiesa, 2003, p. 243 Neuringer, 1991a, p. 46 Rakos, 2006, p. 153 Watson, 1924/1970, p. 183). Inasmuch as ultimate realities are highly speculative, a behavior analyst might reasonably think they are not of vital concern.
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