Behaviourism, Humanism...

[Ander]

First of all I'm not going to pretend I know much about what I'm talking about. I only started taking a psychology course for high school last week so I'm very new to this. Today we learned about three main schools: Behaviourism, Humanism, and Biology.

I've seen many people with Transhumanist or humanist or whatever in their personal labels and I was wondering if humanism is related at all to leftism? My teacher said that Behaviourism says that society is always right and there is only right or wrong. Humanism says that society is not always right, etc.

Some one please explain all of this to a bewildered young lad! Maybe I can even impress my teacher with what I know. ;)

[Mare]

Humanism claims all people are equal, have worth, deserve respect, etc. What is subjective about humanism, however, is that it bases a lot of its reasonings on rationalism. Who is to say what is "right" and "wrong"? Humanism also attempts to find the "truth" in things that may or may not have any "truth" at all. Also there are several forms of humanism; and one I'm not very fond of being religious humanism.

[Avtomatov]

I hate humanism. Only superhumans deserve respect.

[Ander]

Hmm. I think I'm not smart enough for this class :(

[liberationjunky]

Here's a pretty basic way to sum up the whole thing

Humanism is based on the belief that in nature there are right choices and wrong choices, and that morality is more than just something that humans created. It is the belief that some people are accually better than others because they choose to make decision that people generally consider right.

Behaviorism is the belief that the way people behave comes from forces such as the genes they were born with and past experiences in their life. Because of this, nothing people do can really be considered wrong. We neither control our genes or what information has been exposed to us through are lives.

There's obviously alittle more depth to the whole issue but that's the general ideas as far as im aware of. I personally am a behaviorist but you should make up your own mind on the issue. Also, I am not aware of humanism being connected to leftism.

[Hit The North]

Humanism certainly is connected to the Left - and some would argue it is central to both Marxism and Anarchism.

Marx was a humanist to the extent that he saw history as being shaped by creative human activity (Praxis) but he also argued that the natural, social and historical mileaux place limits on the freedom of human action.


Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. (Marx, 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon)

In that respect his general theory, Historical Materialism, straddles both the assumptions of humanism and the assumptions of behaviourism or (in sociology) structuralism.

Some links you might find informative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_humanism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Praxis_School

[liberationjunky]

Citizen zero, although Marx agreed with humanism i still dont understand its association with any of the ideology of leftism in general, for instance anarchism.

If there is any contradicting point to being an anarcho-behavourist I would love to know because then I would have to rethink my situation

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 10:00 PM
Citizen zero, although Marx agreed with humanism i still dont understand its association with any of the ideology of leftism in general, for instance anarchism.

If there is any contradicting point to being an anarcho-behavourist I would love to know because then I would have to rethink my situation
LJ:

These terms can be very slippery and I'd be loathed to label any political ideology as "behaviourist" - particularly given its narrow specialised meaning within psychology. You'd have to explain what you mean by "anarcho-behaviourist" before I could form an opinion.

As for Anarchism and humanism. Well, first off, I'm not an anarchist but Anarchism is militantly atheistic, rejects mystical explanation, resists the 'determinism' of the social order and puts human self-activity at the centre of social transformation. In that sense it is a humanism. But again the term is so broad and has attenuated meanings within different academic disciplines and I'm not clear how it is applied in psychology or by your teacher.

[liberationjunky]

I accually learned it as a philosophical doctrine and not as a psycology term which i guess is where it originated but its still the same idea. Also it's intresting that you bring up the determinism because i also have believed in predestiny for years and they are closely related. And, to believe in determinism you must also believe in humanism.

Both of these do reject the idea of the mystical so i dont understand how rejecting mystical exporation contradicts my belief. Unless your getting into "intelligent design"?? Anyways im sorry but i still dont understand how it contradicts any leftism believes other than marxism ideology. And does believing in determinism mean that I am not an anarchist?

[Lord Testicles]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2006, 09:34 PM
I hate humanism. Only superhumans deserve respect.
Like superheros? spiderman and all that?

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 11:01 PM
I accually learned it as a philosophical doctrine and not as a psycology term which i guess is where it originated but its still the same idea. Also it's intresting that you bring up the determinism because i also have believed in predestiny for years and they are closely related. And, to believe in determinism you must also believe in humanism.

Both of these do reject the idea of the mystical so i dont understand how rejecting mystical exporation contradicts my belief. Unless your getting into "intelligent design"?? Anyways im sorry but i still dont understand how it contradicts any leftism believes other than marxism ideology. And does believing in determinism mean that I am not an anarchist?
Sorry, LJ, I'm not following you. Perhaps if you briefly explain what your beliefs are re. the designation "anarcho-behaviourist" this would clear things up.

[liberationjunky]

My first post where i wrote "anarcho-behavourist" was just a stupid spontanious misuse of the prefix anacho.

I learned the term behaviourism in philosophy and not psycology as I said, so realize that is the basis of my knowledge on the subject.

My question is still how does behaviourism (or determinism) conflict with the ideology of anarchism or even (non-marxist) communism beliefs.

[Hit The North]

My short response is that I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between behaviourism and anarchism.

But you'll have to ask an Anarchist (or a behaviourist) to be sure.

[hoopla]

Marx may have been a linguistic behaviourist :huh: