ABSTRACT
Classically three different sorts of criticism have been levelled against B.F. Skinner’s position. The first assimilates Skinner’s epistemology to a psychological version of Lamarckism. The foremost representative of this criticism is Jean Piaget. To him, Skinnerism is all genesis and no structures and, as such, the negative mirror-image of Gestalt which is all structure and no genesis. The second type of criticism is humanistic. It considers Skinnerism as an inauthentic substitute for love and will that puts humanity in the moral predicament of using tools such as the Skinner box on people it should have considered as total beings. The third sort of criticism has been expressed by Ivan Illich. It goes as follows: for today’s leaders, diseases caused by the industrial society can only be cured by remedies manufactured industrially by technocrats. In other words, in education, medicine, management, warfare or psychology the only recipe to the industrial-technocratic poison is more of that poison under new labels such as programmed education, self-tutoring, behavior modification, and positive reinforcement.
