FUNDAMENTALS

What’s the meaning of life? What’s the purpose of life? Every freshman trudges off to college hoping to find the evasive answer (in addition to an improved social life and the skills and/or diploma [union card] needed for that high-paying executive position).

But those students with enough intellectual and self-management skills to make it into their sophomore year find no answer to this question. And by the time they graduate from college, they have learned that a search for the meaning of life is appropriate only for the same greenhorn freshman they now send off in search of sky hooks, left-handed monkey wrenches, and snipes. The graduating senior knows life has no purpose, no meaning.

Well, the humble authors of this book never gave up the search for sky hooks,
left-handed monkey wrenches, snipes, or the purpose of life. And now that we’ve recently discovered that purpose, we’ll stop to share it with you, before going on with our search for the left-handed monkey wrench and other illusive goals of the naive.

GOAL-DIRECTED SYSTEMS DESIGN^[1]

At first, it might seem that the “purpose” of all life is the promotion of its own
well-being. As Darwin pointed out, the environment selects the surviving forms of life; and as a result species evolve in ways that support their own continued survival. The losers don’t evolve in surviving ways. So the survivors do survive, and the losers don’t. And thus we have biological evolution. However, their well-being or even survival isn’t the purpose of those surviving forms of life, any more than the purpose of a wave is to lap against the shore. That’s just the way it works.

But we human beings aren’t just any life form. We aren’t snails. We aren’t paramecia. We aren’t fungi (the plural of fungus). We’re thoughtful, reasoning life forms - at least sometimes. So, though our lives may not have a purpose, they can have.

 

THE WELL-BEING OF LIFE FORMS (HUMAN, NONHUMAN, AND PLANT)

Regardless of how humanity got here, whether through divine decree or cosmic accident, we suggest that humanity should select as its purpose the well-being of life in the universe. We suggest this, even though a careful analysis shows that purpose doesn’t logically follow from Darwin’s analysis of the evolution of life forms. We believe human beings can act intelligently enough to select their purpose; and we nominate the well-being of life as the purpose we human beings should select.

Regardless of whether we are now atheists, agnostics, or born-again true believers, most of us have grown up in the context of one or another of the world’s great religions. So most of us have acquired learned values (learned reinforcers and aversive conditions) that support the notion that we should work toward the betterment of life on earth.

 

 

In other words, most of us find it reinforcing to know life will survive, especially animal life, more especially human-animal life.

(In fact, hidden deep in our value structure is usually a learned bias for the well-being of the human animal that has the same skin color as ours, the same religion, the same nationality, the same profession, and even the same special orientation within that profession. But nowadays, many of us struggle to rise above such a narrow bias, to embrace all humanity, or even all life.)

Some need to resort to enlightened self-interest to justify their concern for nonhuman and plant life. For example, they argue we must care about the survival of the varieties of species in the Amazon rain forest because those species may ultimately help the survival of humanity. Others argue we must care, even if their survival isn’t in our self-interest. However, we’ve heard of few outside of India who argue for the survival of flies and mosquitoes.

So we’re willing to admit some arbitrariness about the ultimate goal of the well-being of life in the universe. We’re just saying we’ve been brought up to value that, and we bet you have, too. Here’s what B. F. Skinner said on a related theme. He said pity the culture that doesn’t convince its young that its survival is of great value, because that culture will be less likely to survive. We’re just expanding the concept of culture a bit to include all life. If you find that too much of a strain and want to reduce it to the well-being of humanity, you wouldn’t hurt our feelings.

RULES, RESOURCES, AND CONTINGENCIES

Suppose you agree that our ultimate value and goal should be something like the
well-being of life in the universe (perhaps with a special bias toward human life on earth). How do we achieve it? Just letting human nature (the direct-acting contingencies of reinforcement and punishment) take its course ends in wars and rumors of wars, threats of nuclear annihilation, starvation, pollution, destruction of our environment, crime, drugs, and on and on. Darwin’s survival of the fittest through natural selection works. But the largest creature fit to survive the havoc we are creating may be the cockroach.

So, in self-defense, we may need to provide guidance to our human nature, as wonderful and as horrible as it is. We may need to design systems that guide humanity toward our ultimate goal - the survival and well-being of life, including our human descendants. We may need to use goal-directed systems design.

Goal-directed systems design assumes that to achieve a goal, you should state that goal and consciously design your systems to achieve that goal. Systems are organizations - the United Nations, the United States, Michigan, Western Michigan University, the Psychology Department, this course, this book, your family, you, your car. Yes, we think of you as an organization and a system; and you can be chair of your board of directors, if you like.^[2]

If a system is to do more than float aimlessly through life, it needs a goal, an ultimate value. For example, the goal of the United Nations might be the well-being of life in the universe. Systems need resources to achieve their goals. For example, the United Nations may need fruit, vegetables, grain, and agricultural technology to prevent people from starving in some Third World countries. Systems also need rules for the use of those resources. For example, the food must go to the starving but powerless masses. And they need contingencies to ensure that food distributors follow those rules. For example, the local distributors of those resources will lose their privilege of distribution if they don’t distribute properly - if they put the food on the black market for the highest bidder.

The system must obtain each of those components - the resources, rules, and contingencies. So all systems, including the United Nations and you and your car, need subsystems. And those subsystems must in turn have clear goals, such as the production of food for the United Nations. And those subsystems also must in turn have resources, rules, and contingencies. On and on, unto to the lowest level: Like who buys the paper clips? Like whose turn is it to run over to the deli and pick up sandwiches for the office staff?

 

As we will see next, legal and moral control involves setting contingencies to get people to use the world’s resources (everything from food and other people down to paper clips) so as to contribute to the well-being of life in the universe. In other words, we suggest that legal and moral control is, or at least should be, part of a goal-directed systems design aimed toward the well-being of life in the universe.

QUESTIONS

1.    What do the authors suggest is the purpose of life?

 a. Why?

2.    Give a few examples of systems.

3.    Goal-directed systems design—define it and give a partial example.

 a. Point out the role of resources, rules, and contingencies.

CONTINGENCIES FOR FOLLOWING THE RULES OF GOOD RESOURCE USE

1.    Do you think religion is one of the most important aspects of people’s lives?

 a. yes

 b. no

 c. Why?

2.    Do you think it’s important to understand the role religion plays in people’s lives?

 a. yes

 b. no

 c. Why?

3.    Do you think it’s important to understand the role religion plays in people’s lives in terms of the principles of behavior?

 a. yes

 b. no

 c. Why?

Well, that’s what we’re going to try to do in part of this chapter. But it ain’t easy. What we are trying to do is understand how religion works from a behavioral perspective; but, in no sense, do we mean to offend anyone—Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Confuciusist, Taoist, agnostic, or atheist.

Concept

LEGAL-RULE CONTROL

Don’t dump your toxic waste here, buddy.

Goal: healthy life forms.

Resource: uncontaminated environment.

Legal rule: Don’t contaminate, or you’ll be fined.

Legal contingency: a fine — analog to a penalty contingency — punishment by the loss of a reinforcer (dollars).

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
Analog to Penalty

 

This is an example of legal-rule control - the use of added contingencies involving fines, jail, etc.

Definition: Concept

Legal Rule Control

Control by rules specifying added analogs to behavioral contingencies

and added direct-acting behavioral contingencies

based on material outcomes

 

Note that the legal contingencies are added to the ineffective natural contingencies. Most often the contingencies are analogs, though sometimes they’re direct acting (for example, all curfew violators will be shot on sight is direct acting).

 

Concept

MORAL (ETHICAL) RULE CONTROL

Ah, there ain’t nobody lookin’. So I’ll just dump this hazardous waste over here and . . .

STOP!

What? Who’s that? Who said that?

This is your conscience, brother. Even when the cops aren’t around, I’m always here to keep you on the straight and narrow.

Well, hee-hee, I was just kidding. I wasn’t really gonna’ . . .

Definition: Concept

Moral (ethical) rule control

□ Control by rules specifying added analogs to behavioral contingencies.

□ Such rules specify social, religious, or supernatural outcomes.

 

This is moral-rule control—the use of added contingencies involving excommunication, heaven, hell, reincarnation into a lower caste, etc.

 

Note that the moral contingencies are added to the ineffective natural contingencies. Sometimes moral rules are supplemented with direct-acting physical outcomes (for example, the time your mother boxed your ears when she heard you use the Lord’s name in vain).

Come on, conscience, it’ll cost a fortune to move all these barrels over to an authorized hazardous-waste dump.

Brother, you dump it here and you’ll be a polluter.

So?

Polluters are evil people who don’t care about anything but the fast buck.

Well, for sure I don’t want to be an evil person.

Brother, I knew you’d choose the moral path.

But still, I’ve only got a few barrels; and that won’t hurt much.

NO!

Why not, conscience, just a few barrels?

Because God won’t like you. There is no room in Heaven for polluters.

Are you sure, no room for just one or two?

No room for even the little toe of a single polluter. Never!

That’s heavy.

ANALYSIS

Yes, when you sin, the outcomes are sizable and certain, even if they are delayed.

Goal: healthy life forms.

Resource: uncontaminated environment.

Moral rule: Don’t contaminate or you’ll experience God’s wrath.

 

Moral contingency: an analogue to a penalty contingency—exclusion from Heaven or an analogue to a punishment contingency—time in hell.

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY: Analog to Penalty

 

 

This is another example of moral-rule control—the use of added contingencies involving excommunication, heaven, hell, etc.

We started out with this contrived example, but we’ll end with some serious questions.

 1.   Do you think most of the world’s religions (or at least yours) contain rules of conduct that are important for the proper functioning and even the survival of society?

  a.       yes

  b.       no

  c.       Why?

 2.   Do you think those religions also contain some sort of contingencies to support the following of those rules?

  a.       yes

  b.       no

  c.       Why?

 3.   Do you think our example of the polluter’s struggle with her conscience is a good illustration of such a rule and such a contingency?

  a.       yes

  b.       no

  c.       Why?

EXAMPLE OF MORAL-RULE CONTROL^[3]

The hungry Yanomamo hunter goes into the Brazilian forest and bags a monkey. Does he skin it, cook it, and eat it on the spot? No, he takes it back to the village to share with others. Why? Because he believes that if he doesn’t he will lose his hunting skills. In some hunting cultures, hunters even insist that everyone else get a piece of meat before they do, again to avoid losing their hunting skills.

This is an example of goals and their needed resources, rules, and contingencies. The goal is the nutritional support of the village. The resource is the scarce animal protein. The rule is share it. The contingency is punishment by the loss of hunting skills if you gobble it down all by yourself.

For another example, look at the Ten Commandments; for instance: Thou shalt not mess around with someone else’s husband or wife. The goal is the rearing of children. The resource is the family. The rule is don’t endanger it with hanky-panky. The contingency is punishment by the wrath of God, sometimes supported by physical stoning by your friends and neighbors.

LEGAL VS. MORAL CONTROL

Usually legal control works well as long as someone is around to observe the behavior and impose the contingency. But often nobody’s lookin’ at midnight polluters, or at solitary hunters, or at married people with roving eyes. Moral or ethical control comes in handy in such cases. So social systems need to arrange for individuals to observe their own behavior and apply the punishment and avoidance contingencies (perhaps automatically). That way the social system (society) can get the individual to follow the rules for the proper use of the system’s resources, even when no one’s looking. Then we can work toward our ultimate goal (the well-being of universal life) during all our waking days; or at least we can avoid working against that ultimate goal.

As we’ve seen, sometimes moral control works when legal control fails. But the reverse also applies. Sometimes legal control works when moral control fails:

Fellow citizens, you have a moral obligation to your country to preserve our scarce resources during these times of crisis. Therefore, to preserve our oil supplies, I ask that you not exceed 55 mph.

Lots of luck.

Fellow citizens, we have a new law in this great land of ours. Anyone caught exceeding 55 mph will get a traffic ticket. Collect a few of those tickets, and you’ll need to dust off your walking shoes, good buddy.

Fellow citizens, you have a moral obligation to your babies and toddlers under four to secure them in an infant or child restraint seat when driving.

Well, I meant to. Be reasonable. I drive carefully. Who are you to tell me what to do? I know what’s best for my child, don’t I?

Hear ye, hear ye, fellow citizens. It is now a law of the land that all children under the age of four must be buckled into an infant or child restraint seat.

When Society Cares about an Outcome of a Behavior
And the behavior is	Society uses
Observable	Legal control
Not observable	Moral Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

If society can’t observe the behavior or its outcomes, it doesn’t have much choice but to use moral control. For example, impure thoughts are not illegal, just immoral. If society can observe the behavior and cares about the outcome, it uses legal control. For example, letting your parking meter expire won’t cause you to go to confession, but it might cost you a buck or two. If sometimes society can observe the undesirable behavior and sometimes it can’t, then society often uses both moral and legal control. For example, stealing may send you both to the confessional and to jail.

 

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF MORAL CONTROL

Moral Control Is Hard to Establish and Maintain.

For example, to establish and maintain something that even approximates moral control, the Jewish culture needs the Old Testament and the Christian culture needs both the Old and New Testaments. These cultures also need the continuous efforts of the rabbis with their synagogues and the priests and ministers with their churches.

Religion battles eternally with harmful direct-acting contingencies—those that lead to the misuse of resources (often human resources), direct-acting contingencies that will destroy the temple of our bodies—drugs of a rapidly increasing variety, from caffeine and nicotine through alcohol and on to crack. Religion battles eternally to prevent the powerful from exploiting the powerless (except when a representative of religion has been bought by the powerful; then religion’s function reverses).

Moral control is hard and costly to establish, hard and costly to maintain, and often fails. But when no one else is looking but you and your conscience or you and your God, moral control earns its keep. The world would be in an even greater mess if we didn’t have these moral contingencies.

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF LEGAL CONTROL

For moral control to work, the social system must establish a special learned aversive condition—the thought of the wrath of God or the thought of the wrath of your parents. And those thoughts must be aversive, even when no one’s looking. Such an effective aversive condition is hard to establish and hard to maintain.

Getting people to memorize the specific commandments or rules is easy. The hard part is putting teeth in the bite of those commandments. The hard part is arranging learned aversive outcomes for noncompliance with those rules. Don’t be selfish. That’s easy for people to memorize. If you are selfish, you will be no more likely to pass through Heaven’s gates than would a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Getting people to accept that rule is the hard part, especially when being selfish generates so many sizable, probable reinforcers.

Sometimes it’s easier to establish legal control because it’s fairly easy to establish the fear of legal outcomes as learned aversive conditions: Steal this, buster, and we’re throwing your rear in jail. Children needn’t go to Sunday school for 6 years to establish the possibility of jail as an aversive condition. And the parents needn’t go to church the rest of their lives to maintain the possibility of jail as an aversive condition. As long as jail is a highly probable outcome, rules involving it control behavior well. Of course, it all falls apart when jail is improbable.

However, there’s a tradeoff. True, it takes most of the efforts of organized religion to establish and maintain our sensitivity to the reinforcing and aversive values of religious outcomes. But all it takes is God or our conscience to monitor compliance with those moral rules, once religion has established a conscience or a belief in God. And we needn’t pay taxes to support God or our conscience (though we must financially support religion’s efforts to maintain our sensitivity to the reinforcers and aversive conditions associated with religious moral rules).

But we do pay heavy taxes to support the police and the judges. Also it may not cost us much to establish the thought of jail as an aversive condition, but the jails and prisons themselves add a heavy tax burden. By contrast, we don’t have to pay taxes for the maintenance of Heaven and hell; we just have to support religion’s efforts to establish and maintain our belief in them.

	Drawbacks	Benefits
Moral Control	Aversive control is hard to establish and maintain.	Easy for God to monitor compliance with moral rules.
Legal Control	Expensive to monitor compliance with rules. Getting caught is often improbable	Easy to establish jail as an aversive condition.

 

RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLE’S VIEWS

We have three different but overlapping groups of readers for this book—believers, atheists, agnostics, and behaviorists; some behaviorists are believers and some are atheists or agnostics. We want to remain friends with all of them.

We have the greatest respect for and appreciation of religion. In no way are we criticizing organized religion. We are simply analyzing one of the crucial contributions of organized religion. We are trying to understand the contribution of religion to the material well-being of humanity; others have written more effectively than we could about the contribution of religion to the spiritual well-being of humanity. Some of our best students think we should not include an analysis of the behavioral processes underlying the material contributions of religion; other of our best students think this is the most important part of our book. It ain’t easy; but we’re doing our best to keep everyone happy without shirking our responsibilities to point out this important intersection between behavior analysis and religion^[4].

On the one hand, we are not challenging traditional views of Jesus, God, the devil, Heaven, and hell. On the other hand, we are not endorsing them. Challenging or endorsing these views is not the point of this chapter. We are simply looking at part of the profound impact these religious views have on humanity. And we are simply trying to understand the psychological (behavioral) processes through which these views have their impact.

Also, some behaviorists may be suspicious of our use of the mentalistic term conscience. We may seem to be losing touch with our behavioristic base. No. We just mean self-observation, self-evaluation, and rule control. We’re using poetic license only to keep things flowing. Just consider us to be scientists trying to get across complex concepts and analyses without putting our readers to sleep.

THE AVERSIVE BASIS OF MORAL AND LEGAL CONTROL^[5]

THE MODEL OF RELIGIOUS CONTROL.

We should note that the contingencies described in this chapter are generalized forms of moral and legal control and that cultures vary in the specifics of moral control. The use of heaven and hell as a form of moral control comes from Judeo-Christian traditions. And we write within this context because most of the readers of this text are familiar with the concepts of Heaven and hell. However, in some cases, aspects of moral control may be more complex and subtle than we indicate here. Even agnostics and atheists are affected by the moral contingencies in their cultures. Although they may not believe their behavior has religious consequences, their morality is usually similar to that of their religious peers. Agnostics and atheists refrain from stealing, lying, killing, etc., just as the religious do.

 

WHY DO WE NEED HELL TO HAVE MORAL CONTROL?

Why aren’t the promises of Heaven enough to produce moral behavior from believers? Why do we need the threat of hell, as well? Why must aversive control play such a large role in our moral contingencies?

To be functional, it may help that religion invokes the threat of hell. Here’s the problem with using rule-governed analogs to reinforcement based on the promise of rewards in an afterlife such as access to Heaven. Procrastination! We can always postpone that difficult walk on the razor’s edge that leads to Heaven. We can always sin today and struggle up the straight, narrow, and steep road to Heaven tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow. But rule-governed analogs to punishment and avoidance often control our behavior more reliably than rule-governed analogs to reinforcement. Why? Because they don’t let us procrastinate our lives away in sin.

For example, this rule won’t control our behavior very well: Perform many good deeds and you will spend eternity in Heaven. Why not? Because the statement of that rule does not make noncompliance a very aversive condition. It allows us to cop out and procrastinate. It allows us to say, I am too busy to perform any good deeds right now, but I will perform them when I get time. This is an ineffective rule-governed analog to reinforcement by the presentation of a reinforcer.

 

INEFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:

ANALOG TO REINFORCEMENT BY THE PRESENTATION OF A REINFORCER

 

But what about this rule? Commit a single mortal sin and you will definitely spend eternity in hell. The statement of that rule does make noncompliance a most aversive condition (for believers). This is an effective rule-governed analog to punishment.

 

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:

ANALOG TO PUNISHMENT

 

 

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF HEAVEN IN MORAL CONTROL?

But, you might say, moral control isn’t all that aversive. People think of Heaven as an afterlife rich with reinforcers. We would agree that Heaven, rich with reinforcers, is crucial to moral control, but not because Heaven is the end result of procrastination-tolerating reinforcement contingencies.

Then what role does Heaven play in supporting our moral behavior? Heaven gives us something to lose! If you do too many evil deeds (sins of commission), you will not get the reinforcers of Heaven (a rule-governed analog to punishment by the prevention of the presentation of reinforcers). And if you fail to do enough good deeds (sins of omission), you also will not get the reinforcers of Heaven (a rule-governed analog to avoidance of the loss of reinforcers). And with analogues to avoidance come the deadlines that battle procrastination.

For example, at one time, parents instructed their children to perform the following prayer: If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. The parents said or implied to their children something like this: Say your prayers every night before you go to bed (deadline); so you will avoid harm to your soul, should you die before you wake.

A similar precautionary rule might be: Always do good deeds every day (deadline) to ensure the salvation of your soul, because you never know when you may die. But this is similar to the analogue to reinforcement contingency we discussed earlier; so why would this analogue to avoidance contingency control behavior when the simple instruction to perform many good deeds, analogue to reinforcement, wouldn’t? Because the daily-deed rule contains a deadline.

 

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:

ANALOG TO AVOIDANCE OF THE LOSS OF

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A REINFORCER

 

 

Deadlines that fight procrastination may also be established in other ways. When an opportunity to do a good deed is presented to a person, it sets up a deadline for doing that good deed. For example, if you’re driving along the highway at night and you see a stranded motorist, you have the opportunity to help that motorist and thus to avoid losing the opportunity to enter heaven when you die. But that opportunity has a deadline. You need to help the motorist now. If you come back next week to help the motorist, it will be too late - the motorist will be gone and you will have lost that opportunity to enter Heaven.

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:

ANALOG TO AVOIDANCE OF THE LOSS OF A THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A REINFORCER