Name: Walden Two
ISBN: 9780024115102

Burrhus Frederic Skinner

A Utopian community organized around behaviorist principles offers provocative alternatives to a society lacking direction

Walden Two

B. F. Skinner

A reprint of the 1976 Macmillan edition. This fictional outline of a modern utopia has been a center of controversy ever since its publication in 1948. Set in the United States, it pictures a society in which human problems are solved by a scientific technology of human conduct.

Nelson Zagalo

B. F. Skinner was a professor of psychology, recipient of multiple awards and honours for his work, and went down in history as one of the greatest proponents of the behaviourist psychology in which he proposed the so-called "radical behaviourism," a proposal that sees individuals as systems of behaviour — human responses to stimuli from the environment — in which everything we feel is just a reflection of the way we behave. In this way Skinner believed that by shaping the environment we could shape individuals, he believed in the possibility of "behaviour engineering" through "cultural engineering". The book "Walden II" (1948) is a novel that follows the Socratic method (philosophical inquiry through dialogue) and serves the presentation of these engineerings based on a utopian community. It is not a great novel, but it is an excellent presentation of the author's ideas, which makes it an excellent read for anyone interested in the subject. 

About its scientific foundation, Chomsky answered Skinner this way, in 1971: "At the moment we have virtually no scientific evidence and not even the germs of an interesting hypothesis about how human behavior is determined".
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...A análise complete em Português encontra-se publicada no blog VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

This fictional outline of a modern utopia has been a center of controversy ever since its publication in 1948. Set in the United States, it pictures a society in which human problems are solved by a scientific technology of human conduct. It is now widely recognized that great changes must be made in the American way of life. Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while acknowledging the violence and chaos in which we live.The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardizing the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same. -Back cover.

Walden Two

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