Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

Skinner addressed this problem by limiting his concern to experimental situations so simple that only immediate reinforcement history pfayed a context-determining role. This "implicit" limit enabled hirn to sidestep the fundamental issue, and to make inappropriate generalizations. It didn't matter how a rat related to his mother six months earlier if you could make hirn "food-deprived" enough. The (short-term) fact of the food deprivation, for example, overrode individual rat differences-at least in the experimental condition under questionand could therefore usefully be ignored. Similarly, if you starve human beings, you can be reasonably sure that they will become concerned with food. However, even in this extreme case, you cannot predict how this concern will manifest itself, or what (ethical) considerations might play an intermediate, or even determining, role. Alexander Solzhenitsyn examined this very problem during the time he spent in the Soviet "Gulag Archipelago" (the Soviet prison camp system):