Why Skinner is difficult.
Skinner’s language evolved—use the timeline or you’ll teach the wrong philosophy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Moxley (1998) looked at why new readers find Skinner hard. The paper says his words shifted over 50 years. If you read only one book you miss the drift.
The author traced three slow turns in Skinner’s language. Each turn matched new data and new goals. The paper is a map, not an experiment.
What they found
Skinner started with mechanical push-pull talk. He ended with Darwin-like selection talk. Same man, different lens.
Later terms such as “selection by consequences” only make sense if you see the timeline. Snapshots create confusion.
How this fits with other research
Imam (2001) zooms in on one year: 1945. That paper says the big switch to selectionism happened in Skinner’s verbal behavior article. Moxley (1998) sees a longer slope, not one sharp moment. The two views fit together like a zoom lens versus a wide lens.
Moxley (2002) adds C. S. Peirce to the story. It shows Skinner’s selectionism matches pragmatist philosophy. This extends Moxley (1998) by giving the idea an older family tree that includes Peirce, not just Darwin.
Schoneberger (2025) looks forward instead of back. It says Skinner’s lexical definition and RFT’s definition can live side by side. This echoes Moxley (1998): read Skinner in context and the fights fade.
Why it matters
If you teach verbal behavior, track the year of each Skinner quote. Tell staff and parents when the words were written. This small habit stops “he said, he said” arguments and keeps programs anchored to the same philosophical sea floor.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Skinner's views are commonly misrepresented. One reason for this difficulty is that changes in the way that Skinner formulated his views occurred in a gradual evolution over time throughout Skinner's career, and the changes and their significance were not as conspicuously marked as they might have been. Among these changes were a movement from a two-term necessity to a three-term contingency; a movement from discriminative stimulus to setting as the first term in his three-term contingency; and a movement from determinism to random variation as a foundational principle in his selectionist behaviorism. When not seen in their historical development over time, a sample reading of Skinner's views may readily result in misleading or inaccurate interpretations, particularly in respect to his later work. Seen in historical context, however, the accounts that survived after the changes Skinner made are well integrated in a selectionist theory of behavior.
The Behavior analyst, 1998 · doi:10.1007/BF03392781