Is free-will an illusion?

Did this author (or any other that you're aware of) even begin to claim, as you loudly do, Brian, that Chomsky was "COMPLETELY WRONG!!"?

The procedures of this study produced a number of behaviors that may be considered analogous to generative verbal behavior. One set of analogs has been presented here as examples, however, other kinds of verbal behavior, and perhaps other types of behavior, also may be analogous to the relations found in the study. Most importantly, however, the results of this research indicate that behavior analytic procedures can be combined to produce behavior that has often been considered beyond the scope of behavioral principles (Chomsky, 1959).

These observations have been suggested and supported by a variety of empirical work on stimulus equivalence (e.g., Sidman & Tailby, 1982), relational frames (e.g., Roche & Barnes, 1997), transfer (e.g., Ellis, 1965; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988), and transformation (e.g., Roche & Barnes, 1997).

Bargh, A., et al. Beyond Behaviorism: On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 925-945.

The whole enterprise of Relational Frame Theory is to complete the project on verbal behavior began by Skinner. The proponents of RFT come from a behavioral position and argue that Skinner’s aim was correct, but his actual project failed. Therefore, RFT is meant to complete Skinner’s failed project and finally build a behaviorist account of language and higher mental processes, despite decades of these areas being taken back over by the post-Chomskyan frameworks of investigation.

Let's take Libet experiments. Is that something you would be ready to look at and accept as scientific?

Now appeals to authority? Rolling Eyes

You don't just pursue illogic; you double down on it. Do you really think that the various dissenting published papers on particular points of evolution negate the entire theory of evolution? Do you really think that discoveries of more efficient or better practices in any branch of medicine negates the efficacy of the replaced practices? Is that really the logic you wish to apply here?

Here you go. I could download the whole article if anyone is interested.

Brain preparation before a voluntary action: Evidence against unconscious movement initiation.
By Judy Trevena and Jeff Miller
Duned in School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand
Consciousness and Cognition (Impact Factor: 2.31). 03/2010; 19(1):447-456. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.08.006
ABSTRACT

Benjamin Libet has argued that electrophysiological signs of cortical movement preparation are present before people report having made a conscious decision to move, and that these signs constitute evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously. This controversial conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the electrophysiological signs recorded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl (1983) are associated only with preparation for movement. We tested that assumption by comparing the electrophysiological signs before a decision to move with signs present before a decision not to move. There was no evidence of stronger electrophysiological signs before a decision to move than before a decision not to move, so these signs clearly are not specific to movement preparation. We conclude that Libet’s results do not provide evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/222027645_Brain_preparation_before_a_voluntary_action_Evidence_against_unconscious_movement_initiation._Consciousness_and_Cognition_19_447-56

Chomsky wrote a review all right. It was so off the mark that it was as if he hadn't read the work he was critiquing.

Finally. Thank you.

Finally? I posted a reference to that paper, and others, many pages back. You just chose to ignore them all.

Of course I'm sure you didn't do that of your own free will, since you have none. I shouldn't have used the word "chose." You were MADE to ignore those citations by some as yet unexplained forces, how's that?

[Skinner] utilizes the experimental results as evidence for the scientific character of his system of behavior, and analogic guesses (formulated in terms of a metaphoric extension of the technical vocabulary of the laboratory) as evidence for its scope.

This creates the illusion of a rigorous scientific theory with a very broad scope, although in fact the terms used in the description of real-life and of laboratory behavior may be mere homonyms, with at most a vague similarity of meaning

[W]ith a literal reading the book covers almost no aspect of linguistic behavior,...with a metaphoric reading, it is no more scientific than the traditional approaches to this subject matter, and rarely as clear and careful.

layman Any fool with a scientific background knows that! Just ask Brian. He's a real expert, not like this Chomsky chump.

MacCORQUODALE Chomsky had no data to disprove the thesis of Verbal Behavior, nor does he yet. This can be said in the face of rather frequent statements subsequent to the review which assert, for example, that "Chomsky's paper shows that verbal behavior cannot be accounted for by Skinner's form of functional analysis (Fodor and Katz, 1964, p. 546)." Chomsky showed no such thing; he merely asserted it. Chomsky's criticisms of Skinner are, then, necessarily methodological. The disagreement is fundamentally an epistemological one, a "paradigm clash" as Katahn and Koplin have put it (Katahn and Koplin, 1968). It is therefore most peculiar that Chomsky nowhere refers to Skinner's earlier book, Science and Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953), the source to which Skinner specifically sends the reader of Verbal Behavior for elaboration of general methodological matters (Skinner, 1957, pp. 11, 23, 130, 145, et seq.). It may be seen there, and in Cumulative Record (Skinner, 1959, 1961), that Skinner has never been reticent about his methodological convictions nor vague as to his reasons for maintaining them. By omitting all reference to these arguments Chomsky creates the highly erroneous impression that Skinner has innocently and impulsively blundered along unmindful of the difficulties inherent in what he was doing. This simply is not so. His application of the basic operant model to verbal behavior has been evolving since 1934 (Skinner, 1957, vii). It has survived explication, and criticism by informed but not universally convinced students, in the classroom intermittently since then, and in the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1947. The 1957 book is, then, hardly the result of a momentary enthusiasm. It deserves a more thoughtful hearing.

layman on Chomsky: "Analogic guesses" and "metaphoric extension," eh? He thinks science is about guesses!? What a fool. Skinner is a scientist, NOT a speculative philosopher. Everybody knows that.

MacCORQUODALEChomsky's only real argument for his conclusion that the terms of the theory do not in fact apply to verbal behavior is given in the quotation above. It depends upon the amazing possibility that "real-life" and laboratory behavior may be different, as if somehow nature maintains two sets of natural laws, one for laboratories and the other for the rest of the world so that any law observed in the laboratory is prima facie suspect when applied to events outside. Entrancing though this idea is, it seems unparsimonious to suppose it. That really does not sound like nature.

MacCORQUODALE Reinforcers seem in fact to have only one universal property: they reinforce, and no amount of dissatisfaction will either add a correlated property nor disprove the fact that they do reinforce..Chomsky seems convinced that Skinner claims that "slow and careful" reinforcement applied with "meticulous care" is necessary for the acquisition and maintenance of verbal behavior (Chomsky, 1959, pp. 39, 42 [twice], 43). Chomsky does not cite Verbal Behavior in this context, and the fact is that Skinner does not say or imply that the reinforcement for verbal behavior must be carefully arranged or that differential reinforcement must be "careful", applied with "meticulous care", and "slow and careful" (Chomsky, 1959, p. 42). The idea is preposterous and the implication that Skinner said it is both careless and false.

MacCORQUODALE I conclude that Chomsky's review did not constitute a critical analysis of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. The theory criticized in the review was an amalgam of some rather outdated behavioristic lore including reinforcement by drive reduction, the extinction criterion for response strength, a pseudo-incompatibility of genetic and reinforcement processes, and other notions which have nothing to do with Skinner's account. Chomsky misunderstood the intent of Verbal Behavior, evaluating it as an accomplished explanation of verbal behavior rather than a hypothesis about the causes of verbal behavior. His review rejected in principle the products of Skinner's methodology without having come to terms with his rationale, especially as it concerns the necessity for theoretical mediating variables. The review took a view of extrapolation of laboratory findings that would bring any scientist's methodology to a dead stop. It rejected without discussion the logic of reductionism. It criticized Verbal Behavior for not having been about something else, that is, a theory of verbal behavior rather than verbal behavior itself.

MacCORQUODALE But the review, however approximate, has had an enormous influence in psychology. Nearly every aspect of currently popular psycholinguistic dogma was adumbrated in it, including its warlike tone; the new look is a frown. It speaks of itself as a "revolution", not as a research area; it produces "confrontations", not inquiries. So far there have been no telling engagements in the revolution. The declaration of war has been unilateral, probably because the behaviorist cannot clearly recognize why he should defend himself. He has not hurt anyone; he has not preempted the verbal territory by applying his methods to verbal behavior; he has not used up all of the verbal behavior nor has he precluded other scientists from investigating it to their heart's content, with any methods and theories which please them; he need not be routed before they do so.

MacCORQUODALE "in the flush of their initial victories, many linguists have made extravagant claims and drawn sweeping but unsupported conclusions about the inadequacy of stimulus-response theories to handle any central aspects of language behavior . . . The claims and conclusions so boldly enunciated are supported neither by careful mathematical argument . . . nor by systematic presentation of empirical evidence to show that the basic assumptions of these [stimulus-response] theories are empirically false. To cite two recent books of some importance, neither theorems nor data are to be found in Chomsky (1965) or Katz and Postal (1964), but one can find rather many useful examples of linguistic analysis, many interesting and insightful remarks about language behavior, and many ba(dly formulated and incompletely worked out arguments about the theories of language learning." (Suppes, 1968, pp. 1-2.) Just so.

Chomsky misunderstood the intent of Verbal Behavior, evaluating it as an accomplished explanation of verbal behavior rather than a hypothesis about the causes of verbal behavior.