Éthique naturalisée et philosophie béhavioriste

Paul Mengal

Resumen


Naturalized ethics and behaviorist philosophy

The scientific and philosophical project of Behaviorism runs close to Darwinism inasmuch as, following natural selection, environment is a causal factor that modifies conduct. In addition, its intercrossed usage of the animal-human as a continuum, may lead us to think that Behaviorism would sustain a naturalized ethics grounded in evolutionism, where the ethical human behavior would be rooted on animal emotional and cognitive conducts. This positioning, however, never took place. Behaviorism withholds any stance on ethics, any answer to what constitutes the good life, since any inquire about conduct ruled by norms was substituted by conduct ruled by circumstances; the purpose now was to control, within behavioral engineering, the conditionants that generate conducts.

  When Skinner wants to go Beyond Freedom and Dignity, he is sustaining that wisdom and common sense have never been efficient principles to govern human’s affairs, and that “anything significant was always local and contextual”. Furthermore, in rebutting any idea of psychological development, upholding instead mere conditioning, Behaviorism is incapable to understand the development, as in Piaget or Kant, that goes from the exogenous to the endogenous, from heteronomy to autonomy, to dignity and self-esteem as the foundations of liberty and morality.

 

Key words: Behaviorism, Skinner, naturalized ethics, behavioral engineering, ethical behavior, development, dignity, liberty.


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Referencias


J. Watson, « Psychology as the behaviorist views it », Psychological Review 20, 1913, 158-177.

B. F. Skinner, Behavior of Organisms, New-York, Appleton Century Crofts, 1938.

B.F. Skinner, Walden Two, Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 1948, réédition 1976 avec une préface « Walden two revisited ».

Thoreau H. D., Walden, Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1854, trad. franç., Walden ou la vie dans les bois, Paris, NRF, 1922.

Michel Foucault, « Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire », in Dits et écrits I, Paris, Gallimard, pp. 1004-1024.

Arnold Davidson, in Michel Foucault, Philosophie. Anthologie, établie et présentée par Arnold Davidson et Frédéric Gros, Paris, Gallimard, p. 381.

B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, NY, A.A. Knopf, 1972.

F. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bösel, Leipzig, C.G. Neumann, 1886.

Jean Gayon, « Nietzsche and Darwin », in J. Maienschein & M. Ruse, Biology and the Foundation of Ethics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 191. 10 Jean Gayon, op.cit. p. 191.

B. F. Skinner, « Cognitive science and behaviourism », British Journal of Psychology, 76, 1985, p. 291-301.

J. Piaget, Le jugement moral chez l’enfant, Paris, Alcan, 1932.

Voir sur ces questions P. Mengal, Histoire du concept de récapitulation. Ontogenèse et phylogenèse en biologie et sciences humaines, Paris, Masson, 1993 et P. Mengal, « L’histoire du concept de récapitulation : théologie, philosophie de l’histoire et biologie », Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France, 119, 2, 1994, p. 109-116.

H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1958. Trad. franç., La condition de l’homme moderne, Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1961, p. 80.


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