RESOURCES | The Empowered Parrot

FAVORITE LINKS, QUOTES, AND ARTICLES

• "Freedom denotes a history of learning that results in an [individual] who engages in a wide range of skilled behaviors that obtain reinforcers. In short, freedom is competency" (WISABA, 2016).

• “It does not help in the solution of a practical problem to be told that some feature of [an individual’s] behavior is due to frustration or anxiety; we also need to be told how the frustration or anxiety has been induced and how it may be altered” (Skinner, 1953. Science and Human Behavior, p. 167).

• “The practice of looking inside the organism for an explanation of behavior has tended to obscure the variables which are immediately available for scientific analysis. These variables lie outside the organism, in its immediate environment and in its environmental history” (Skinner, 1953, Science and Human Behavior, p.31).

• “When an organism acts upon the environment in which it lives, it changes that environment in ways that often affect the organism itself. Some of these changes are what the layman calls rewards, or what are generally referred to technically as reinforcers: when they follow behavior in this way, they increase the likelihood that the organism will behave in the same way again” (Ferster & Skinner, 1957, Schedules of Reinforcement, p. 1).

• “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another” (Carl Sagan, 1980, Cosmos, p. 339).

• “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe “(Carl Sagan, 1980, Cosmos, p. 218).

• “If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence” (Will Cuppy, Journalist, 1884-1949).

• “In a gentle way, you can shake the world” (Gandhi).

• “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it” (Gandhi).

• "For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary" (Einstein, 1941, Science and Religion).