... ; almost all the words we use were originally metaphores.

As organized agencies induce people to behave 'for the good of others' 
more effectively, they change what is felt. ...  Conflicts among 
feelings,.., are really conflicts between contingencies of reinforcement.
    As the contingencies which induce a man to behave "for the good of others" become 
more powerfull, they over-shadow contingencies involving personal reinforcers.

Permissiveness is not, however, a policy; it is the abandonment of policy, & its 
apparent advantages are illusory.  To refuse to control is to leave control not to 
the person himself, but to other parts of the social and nonsocial environments.

We may hold, in fact that a man can APPRECIATE things only if he has worked for them.

The managed self is composed of what is significantly called selfish behavior--the product 
of the biological reinforcers to which the species has been made sensitive through natural 
selection.  The managing self, on the other hand, is set up mainly by the social 
environment, which has ITS selfish reasons for teaching a person to alter his behavior in 
such a way that it becomes less aversive & possibly more reinforcing to others.

Personal history asserts itself in self control or self-management in other ways.  The 
individual who refuses to "go under" in a concentration camp, who is not "broken" by 
efforts made to demean or destroy his dignity or identity, has transended his current 
environment.  To say that he is able to inject a different meaning into that environment 
is simply to say that he is under the more powerful control of his history.

A scientific analysis of behavior must,., assume that a person's behavior is controlled by his 
genetic & envir. histories rather than by the person himself as an initiating, creative agent;. 

Feeling free is an important hallmark of a kind of control distinguished 
by the fact that it does not breed countercontrol.

A culture so defined controles the behavior of the members of the group that practices it.

The social contingencies or the behaviors they generate, are the 'ideas' of a
culture; the reinforcers that appear in the contingencies are its 'values'.

The notion of a trigger which released stored behavior was suggested to Descartes ..

in a sick society, man will lack a sense of identity and feelings of competence; he will see 
the suspension of his own thought structures.. to enter into a more fruitful relationship 
with those around him as a betrayal; he will approach the world of human interaction with a 
sense of real dispair; and only when he has been through that despair & learnt to know 
himself, will he attain as much of what is self-fulfilling as the human condition allows.

Exposure to a unique contingency of reinforcement generates a special kind of 
knowing, & the feelings or introspectively observed states of mind associated with 
it differ widely from those produced when a person follows a rule or obeys a law.

We need not,., deny that abstract entities exist & insist that such responses 
are merely words.  What exist are the contingencies which bring behavior under 
the control of properties or of classes of objects defined by properties.

In an important sense all behavior is inherited, since the 
organism that behaves is the product of natural selection.

Why do people behave as they do?  Contingencies of reinforcement 
have the edge with respect to prediction & control.

Differences in thought processes have been attributed to the apparent differences 
between the laws of religion or government & the laws of science.  The first are said 
to be 'made', the second merely discovered, but the difference is not in the laws but in the 
contingencies the laws describe.  The laws of religions & governments codify contingencies 
of reinforcement maintained by social environments.  The laws of science describe 
contingencies which prevail in the environment quite apart from any deliberate human action.

Rule-following behavior is said to be the veneer of civilization, whereas behavior shaped by 
natural contingencies comes from the depths of the personality or mind.  Artists,.., sometimes 
follow rules (imitating the work of others, for example, is a version of rule following), but 
greater merit attaches to behavior which is due to a personal exposure to an environment.  
Unlike those who submit to contingencies arranged to support rules, a 'natural' artist,.., 
will behave in idiosyncratic ways & will be more likely to feel the bodily conditions, 
called excitementor joy, associated with 'natural' reinforcers.
  The planned or well-made work may suffer from the suspicion which attaches to any calculated 
behavior.  The intuitive mathematician seems superior to one who must proceed step by step.  
We naturally object to the calculating friend who has learned how to make friends & 
influence people.  Possibly that is why contingencies sometimes go unexamined or unreported; 
a description would destroy some of their effect.

The consequences described or implied in advice, warnings, instructions, & laws are the 
REASONS WHY a person takes advice, heeds warnings, follows instructions, & obeys laws.

All behavior, effective or not, is at first nonrational in the sense that the contingencies 
responsible for it have not been analyzed.  All behavior is at first unconscious, but 
it may become conscious without becoming rational: a person may know what he is 
doing without knowing why he is doing it.

behaving intuitively, in the sense of behaving as the effect of unanalyzed contingencies, 
is the very starting point of a behavioristic analysis.  A person is said to behave intuitively 
when he does not use reason.  Instinct is sometimes a synonym: it is said to be a mistake to 
'attribute to logical design what is the result of blind instinct,' but the reference is simply 
to behavior shaped by unanalyzed contingencies of reinforcement.  The blind instinct of the artist
is the effect of the idiosyncratic consequences of his work.  It is no 'betrayal of reason' to 
accept what artists teach us about life, nature, & society, since not to accept it would be to 
assert that contingencies are effective only when they have been described or formulated as rules.

Deliberate behavior proceeds through an analysis of reasons; impulsive behavior is the direct effect 
of contingencies.  Impulsive works were once called ecstatic, & carefully designed works euplastic.  
For the Greeks a prudent or reasonable person possessed sophrosyne; it was the mark of a temperate 
person--thatis, of a person whhose behavior has been tempered by an analysis of its consequences.

One meaning of 'to know' is simply to be in contact with, to be intimate with.  It is in this sense 
that a person is said to know sin, beauty, or sorrow, or a man to know a woman in the biblical sense of 
having carnal knowledge of her.  There is an implication, of course, that behavior is changed by the contact.
   We are said to know how to do something-...-if we can do it. ... If we can recite a 
poem ..without reading it, wea are said to know it 'by heart', a curious bit of phsiologizing.
         ...
All these forms of knowing depend on a previous exposure to contingencies of reinforcement, but we are also 
said to have a special kind of knowledge if we can simply state instructions, directions, rules, or laws.  
        ...
Knowledge which permits a person to describe contingencies is quite different from the knowledge 
identified with the behavior shaped by the contingencies.  Neither form implies the other.

We do not act by putting knowledge to use; our knowledge IS action, or at least rules for action.  As such 
it is power, as Bacon pointed out in rejecting scholasticism & its emphasis on knowing for the sake 
of knowing.  Operant behavior is essentially the exercise of power; it has an effect on the environment.
           ...
We also use 'know' to mean 'being under the control of,' 
           ...
,but we are more likely to say 'I think' with regard to a tentative hypothesis & 
to reserve 'I know' for the proven case.
                              Skinner 1 Skinner Skinner Quotes