So Zen's central notion of the individual-inseparable-from-the-world is consistent with behavior analysis and evolutionary biology. When contingencies are the units of analysis, the individual is part of an interactive context. Just as important, behavior analysis and Zen preserve no subject–object distinction. To step back from agency accounts ( Vargas, 1996) and explanations “that appeal to events taking place somewhere else, at some other level of observation, described in different terms” ( Skinner, 1950, p. 193) is to step toward Zen. Whether behavior analysts find these issues interesting or not, one thing is certain: Mentalism is uniquely ill suited for dealing with Zen's extreme parsimony. The goal is not to create a reductionist or operationalist thesaurus but rather to discover what grows in the estuary made by Zen and behavior analysis rather than Zen Buddhism and radical behaviorism. Unlike most other analyses of Eastern philosophy, this one will not follow the formula “their term X = our theoretical term Y” (e.g., Jung, 1959 Rosen & Crouse, 2000) or “our neurological event Y” (e.g., Austin, 1998 Bagchi & Wenger, 1957 Kasamatsu & Hirai, 1966 West, 1987). The unique repertoire called Enlightenment has been reported for 2,500 years and, if Zen Enlightenment results from behavioral processes, behavior analysis must apply. 1977): “Everything you know is wrong.” What I've learned since is that in Zen's case, anything you know is wrong. And that reminded me of something Richard Malott said at the start of his principles of behavior lectures (ca. There was antimatter, a parallel universe where verbal distinctions move one farther from Zen, not closer to knowledge, as with behavior analysis. 2 Zen took me outside not just culture-bound distinctions but also distinctions themselves. I'd barely begun luxuriating in the comfortable notion that verbal behavior is epistemology's headwaters when years of meditating yielded a complementary insight, Samādhi. Digesting his remarks led me to the giddy epiphany that Verbal Behavior (1957) was the unified field theory of academe-Skinner's analysis accomplished for human behavior what Einstein had sought for physics. In what followed, he redirected my attention to verbal behavior, of which philosophy is a subset. She called his adjoining office and said “Someone here would like to meet you.”Īfter I nervously posed my questions, he leaned back, looked up for about 5 seconds, resumed a normal posture and said “I don't care much for isms.” I told her I had a question for Skinner regarding behaviorism. Dissatisfied with answers that professors, books, and journals provided, my wife and I drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I hiked to the 7th floor of William James Hall and knocked on Skinner's door (actually his secretary's door). I was struggling to find good answers for epistemological questions (e.g., were private events, in some important way, dualistic, possibly epiphenomenal? Did Richard Rorty's, 1965, eliminative materialism fit a behavioral view better than other monistic accounts being given?). A more profitable approach to the relation between Zen and behavior analysis was implied in a conversation I had with B. Philosophies, especially philosophies of science, are foundations built under existing logical structures (e.g., Mach's positivism addressed Newtonian mechanics logical positivism and operationalism, Einstein's relativity theory etc.) and contribute little to the field per se. 1 Discussion regarding the Eightfold Way, reincarnation, free will, and so on are about Buddhism, but they are not Zen any more than About Behaviorism ( Skinner, 1976) is applied behavior analysis. Zen is neither of those things it is the outcome of Zen practices. Should that conversation be continued? I will argue the affirmative with, it seems to me, the greater profit going to the behavior analyst.īehavior analysts have addressed Buddhism broadly defined (e.g., Baum, 1995 Diller & Lattal, 2008 Williams, 1986) as a philosophy or religion. Conversely, a behavior analyst might argue that understanding Hamlet's statement requires a functional analysis of the conditions under which it was learned and used, and there is nothing special about the or neither. If Shakespeare had been a Zen Buddhist, Hamlet's famous soliloquy might have begun “To be or not to be, or neither.” How is such a statement to be understood?Ī Zen monk might say that Hamlet's first two options exemplify the illusory distinctions cultures regularly transmit, but adding the or neither shows that he has moved beyond a verbally framed normal-life worldview and is edging toward Zen-and thus, possibly, Enlightenment.
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