Notes from a Radical Behaviorist: Dave Palmer, the Ultimate Hippy, Behavior-Analytic Intellectual

Rather than work on my talk for BAAM due this Friday, I got sucked into Sigrid Glenn's behavioranalysishistory. More specifically  this (Check them out and for a little context, see the footnote [1].)

I listened to / watched Sigrid's interview of Dave. It's great and did confirm my feeling that Dave is the exemplary hippy, intellectual in our field. A hippy who "flunked" out of college, took a one-year bike ride across the continent, and discovered Skinner--all of Skinner, through the Walden II fantasy. And in the process of completely mastering Skinner and behavior analysis, in all it's complexities, he was forced into getting a PhD. And now I'm forced to add him to my list of favorite behavior-analytic dream chasers. He's into doing theoretical behavior analyses of such complex issues as memory and language. He goes much deeper in the defense of a behavior analytic approach to verbal behavior (aka language) than almost all other behavior analysts. He doesn't say Skinner's VB provided all the answer, and Chomsky just didn't understand stimulus generalization. He recognizes that Chomsky's concern about our lack of an adequate treatment of grammar is a serious concern. He says Skinner's VB contains many valuable nuggets that will help with the answer, but we ain't there yet, by a long ways. And, in fact, he took Chomsky so seriously that he's taken many courses in linguistics, to come to grips with Chomsky's mentalistic, naturistic view, as he (Dave) works to develop a behavioristic account of how grammar works, how it is that Sigrid Glenn can answer Dave's question about a casual comment he'd made 30 minutes earlier. In fact, Dave lays it out so well in this interview, that I'm going to require it of my new MA students in our Behavioral Bootcamp. (Kelly, can you wire it in?)

Again, check it him out.

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(1) Our names are Rachel Dove and Lars Halvorsen, and we are graduate students at UNT doing a project on the history of behavior analysis.  We are currently working on a project to collect video recordings from individuals who have had an influence on the field of behavior analysis. We are specifically interested in the way behavior analysis developed at your University. Dr. Glenn oversees the development of a wiki page that provides information about the history of the field of behavior analysis. We intend to make the interviews available by adding them to this wiki page. Access is available on the web at behavioranalysishistory.pbworks.com.  After we have collected the interviews we plan to summarhize them to provide a synopsis of the events that have influenced behavior analyses as we know it today.

Comments

[Jennifer Mrljak]

Dick (aka, Dr. Malott),

That I took so much pleasure at being called the exemplary hippy intellectual behavior analyst perhaps only confirms my right to the title, for I aspire to no other. That I should be awarded that title by you, my own candidate for the status of exemplary hippy behavior analyst, means much more to me than you can imagine. The author of PoB loves truth, and his praise is correspondingly precious.

Dave