WEBVTT 00:01.010 --> 00:06.790 PROFESSOR: So today's lecture is about the claim that we've 00:06.790 --> 00:11.360 been exploring in the context of Aristotle's ethics, that 00:11.360 --> 00:16.590 the way to cultivate virtue is by cultivating in ourselves 00:16.590 --> 00:18.750 certain sorts of habits. 00:18.750 --> 00:23.360 And I want to start by showing you a picture of a T-shirt 00:23.360 --> 00:29.370 which was popular at MIT in the mid-'90s when my husband 00:29.370 --> 00:31.140 was a graduate student there. 00:31.140 --> 00:35.790 And what it said on the T-shirt was, "Gravity: It's 00:35.790 --> 00:45.830 not just a good idea, it's the law." 00:45.830 --> 00:49.110 Now, if you guys were MIT students, you would be rolling 00:49.110 --> 00:49.830 on the floor. 00:49.830 --> 00:52.450 [laughter] 00:52.450 --> 00:56.000 As it is, social beings that you are, you're rolling on the 00:56.000 --> 00:58.650 floor at the thought that other beings are rolling on 00:58.650 --> 00:59.800 the floor at the thought of this. 00:59.800 --> 01:02.020 [laughter] 01:02.020 --> 01:05.640 But what's interesting about this T-shirt is that it brings 01:05.640 --> 01:10.180 out a distinction between two kinds of laws. 01:10.180 --> 01:13.510 Because gravity isn't a law that tells you how you ought 01:13.510 --> 01:18.490 to behave. It's a law that tells you how things do 01:18.490 --> 01:19.660 behave. 01:19.660 --> 01:23.780 And philosophers make a distinction between 01:23.780 --> 01:26.410 two kinds of laws. 01:26.410 --> 01:30.880 There are, on the one hand, normative laws, oughts, things 01:30.880 --> 01:34.390 that tell you how you how you should do things, things that 01:34.390 --> 01:38.580 express, as the name indicates, norms. Those are 01:38.580 --> 01:43.730 things like, "look both ways before crossing the street." 01:43.730 --> 01:45.230 That's something you ought to do. 01:45.234 --> 01:48.054 It wouldn't be funny have a T-shirt that said, "Look both 01:48.050 --> 01:50.430 ways before crossing the street: It's not just a good 01:50.430 --> 01:52.220 idea, it's the law." Right? 01:52.220 --> 01:55.770 It could be the law, and the T-shirt, for lots of reasons, 01:55.770 --> 01:57.500 wouldn't be funny. 01:57.500 --> 01:59.860 It wouldn't be funny to have a T-shirt that said, "Don't eat 01:59.860 --> 02:03.340 in the library: It's not just a good idea, it's the law." 02:03.340 --> 02:06.840 Because it could be a law in the library that you not eat. 02:06.840 --> 02:09.560 And it wouldn't be funny to have a T-shirt that says, "65 02:09.560 --> 02:12.380 miles per hour: It's not just a good idea, it's the law," 02:12.380 --> 02:15.980 because in fact, it is a normative law. 02:15.980 --> 02:21.300 So normative laws express summative judgments about the 02:21.300 --> 02:23.620 way things ought to be. 02:23.620 --> 02:28.640 They are laws in the sense that you find over at the Yale 02:28.640 --> 02:30.660 Law School. 02:30.660 --> 02:35.290 But in addition, there are laws of a very different kind, 02:35.290 --> 02:38.580 spread around the rest of campus. 02:38.580 --> 02:41.030 Spread around, in fact, everything that you ever do. 02:41.030 --> 02:43.100 And those are descriptive laws. 02:43.100 --> 02:46.690 They tell you the way things actually are. 02:46.690 --> 02:51.320 So it would be sort of funny to have a T-shirt, "If a car 02:51.320 --> 02:52.750 hits you, you will die. 02:52.750 --> 02:56.650 It's not just a bad thing, it's the law." Because "If a 02:56.650 --> 03:00.430 car hits you, you will die" is a description of the 03:00.430 --> 03:02.130 way the world is. 03:02.130 --> 03:07.340 It's a fact about the world that is a law in the sense 03:07.340 --> 03:10.990 that it is in a position to allow you to make predictions 03:10.990 --> 03:14.560 about the future on the basis of the past. It tells you 03:14.560 --> 03:19.130 about law-like relations between things in the past and 03:19.130 --> 03:20.940 things in the future. 03:20.940 --> 03:26.520 Likewise, it's a law of biology plus chemistry plus 03:26.520 --> 03:30.960 physics, roughly, that crumbs cause book decay. 03:30.960 --> 03:36.690 That's a description of a fact about the world to which the 03:36.690 --> 03:40.020 normative law, don't eat in the library, might correspond. 03:40.020 --> 03:43.660 But they are nonetheless very different claims. 03:43.660 --> 03:49.240 And finally, whereas it's a speed limit on your car that 03:49.240 --> 03:53.970 you drive 65 miles an hour, it's a speed limit on 03:53.970 --> 03:57.660 everything than it not go faster than 03:57.660 --> 04:00.900 186,000 miles per second. 04:00.900 --> 04:06.820 The speed of light expresses a descriptive law about how fast 04:06.820 --> 04:12.250 you can go, whereas the speed limit "65 miles an hour" 04:12.250 --> 04:18.980 expresses a normative law about how fast you may go. 04:18.980 --> 04:25.520 Now, why did I start out this lecture on Aristotle and habit 04:25.520 --> 04:29.850 with a bunch of remarks about the difference between 04:29.850 --> 04:33.090 normative and descriptive laws? 04:33.090 --> 04:36.750 The reason is this. 04:36.752 --> 04:44.032 Habits are tools for turning oughts into ises. 04:44.034 --> 04:49.944 Habits are ways of taking normative commitments that we 04:49.940 --> 04:57.560 have about the way we want things to be, and making use 04:57.560 --> 05:04.040 of the fact that we are psychological, biological, 05:04.040 --> 05:11.520 chemical, physical beings in whom patterns of descriptive 05:11.520 --> 05:18.770 law-like relations can be created by repeating the same 05:18.770 --> 05:22.380 activities over and over. 05:22.380 --> 05:26.330 So when Aristotle says, "We learn a craft by producing the 05:26.330 --> 05:29.310 same product that we must produce when we've learned it. 05:29.310 --> 05:32.400 We become builders by building, harpists by playing 05:32.400 --> 05:35.350 the harp, in the same way we become just by doing just 05:35.350 --> 05:38.540 actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by 05:38.540 --> 05:46.420 doing brave actions," he is explaining to us the utility 05:46.420 --> 05:52.120 of recognizing the connection between normative laws on the 05:52.120 --> 05:56.630 one hand--ways we think we want to be--and descriptive 05:56.630 --> 06:00.160 laws on the other--ways that we find 06:00.160 --> 06:03.820 ourselves naturally becoming. 06:03.820 --> 06:07.300 Remember, when he describes for us how it is that we 06:07.300 --> 06:11.910 cultivate virtues, he contrasts that to two cases 06:11.910 --> 06:14.850 where merely descriptive laws apply. 06:14.850 --> 06:19.440 He said, it's not like trying to train a rock to stay in the 06:19.440 --> 06:22.660 air, because that's a case where a 06:22.660 --> 06:25.870 descriptive law applies. 06:25.870 --> 06:30.090 Nor is it like a case of watching a plant unfold when 06:30.090 --> 06:34.110 given water and light, because that, again, is a case where 06:34.110 --> 06:37.270 merely descriptive laws apply. 06:37.270 --> 06:41.620 What's interesting about the middle realm on which almost 06:41.620 --> 06:45.210 the entirety of the Nicomachean Ethics focuses is 06:45.210 --> 06:49.470 that it's the domain where the principle that I've just 06:49.470 --> 06:51.080 articulated holds. 06:51.075 --> 06:55.325 It's the domain where it's possible for us to think about 06:55.330 --> 07:00.420 the ways we want things to be, to act as if things were 07:00.420 --> 07:05.940 already that way, and in a self-fulfilling manner, to 07:05.935 --> 07:10.235 have things become that way. 07:10.240 --> 07:15.990 So Aristotle's basic insight is that if you want to become 07:15.990 --> 07:24.760 something, act as if that is what you already were. 07:24.760 --> 07:30.460 If you want to become instinctively brave, act as 07:30.460 --> 07:33.510 the brave one does. 07:33.510 --> 07:38.220 And then it will become natural to you. 07:38.220 --> 07:45.320 If you want to become a piano player, train your fingers to 07:45.317 --> 07:49.597 act as the piano player's fingers do. 07:49.600 --> 07:55.410 You learn the craft of piano playing by producing the 07:55.410 --> 07:57.480 product that you must produce when you have 07:57.480 --> 07:59.100 learned to piano play. 07:59.100 --> 08:02.960 That is, you learn to become a piano player by 08:02.960 --> 08:07.350 practicing the piano. 08:07.350 --> 08:11.860 So patterns of behavior that are initially under conscious 08:11.860 --> 08:19.300 control can, through a process of repeated practice, become 08:19.299 --> 08:20.869 automatized. 08:20.870 --> 08:24.650 So initially, when you learned how to drive a car, you had to 08:24.650 --> 08:27.930 think very carefully about what to do with each of your 08:27.930 --> 08:29.760 feet and each of your hands. 08:29.760 --> 08:33.700 Any of you who went to dancing school in junior high know 08:33.700 --> 08:35.790 that when you learn how to dance, you start off by 08:35.790 --> 08:39.190 counting: "One and Two and..." I won't dance on stage, 08:39.190 --> 08:41.200 because this is going forever on the Internet. 08:41.195 --> 08:42.035 [laughter] 08:42.040 --> 08:45.100 But those of you who learned how to dance in middle school 08:45.100 --> 08:48.060 know that behavior that was initially under conscious 08:48.060 --> 08:51.430 control became automatized, such that those of you who 08:51.430 --> 08:54.690 were trained to do waltz and tango will now, upon hearing 08:54.690 --> 08:57.880 the music of waltz and tango, have a kind of motor routine 08:57.880 --> 09:00.840 activated in your feet. 09:00.840 --> 09:05.670 The fact that this happens inevitably to biological 09:05.670 --> 09:10.740 beings like ourselves gives us a tool for turning normative 09:10.740 --> 09:13.910 commitments into descriptive laws. 09:13.910 --> 09:18.090 So it has because the case for me that though it begin as a 09:18.090 --> 09:22.070 norm, "look both ways before crossing the street," it's now 09:22.070 --> 09:25.780 a description of me: that I look both ways before crossing 09:25.780 --> 09:26.430 the street. 09:26.430 --> 09:29.630 And any of you who has ever been to England or 09:29.630 --> 09:34.330 Australia--countries in which people drive on the left, 09:34.330 --> 09:38.410 rather than the right--know how incredibly difficult it is 09:38.410 --> 09:40.840 to overcome that ingrained habit. 09:40.840 --> 09:44.510 In fact, when I'm in England, I look both directions about 09:44.510 --> 09:47.990 thirty times, because I'm so disoriented by the fact that 09:47.990 --> 09:50.990 my routine doesn't fit the situation in 09:50.990 --> 09:52.610 which I find myself. 09:52.610 --> 09:55.270 If you grew up driving a standard shift car or an 09:55.270 --> 09:59.340 automatic car and switch to the other, it's incredibly 09:59.340 --> 10:02.220 difficult to make the changes. 10:02.220 --> 10:07.100 When we become habituated to a certain pattern of behavior, 10:07.100 --> 10:11.190 something that was initially a normative rule for us becomes 10:11.190 --> 10:12.830 a descriptive one. 10:12.830 --> 10:17.530 And in fact, one of the main goals of parenting is to 10:17.530 --> 10:22.740 instill in one's children instinctive responses that 10:22.740 --> 10:25.690 accord with one's reflective commitments. 10:25.690 --> 10:30.980 I want it to be the case that when handed an item, without 10:30.980 --> 10:37.990 reflection, automatically, my children say, "Thank you." 10:37.990 --> 10:44.570 Now, the same capacity that allows us to turn normative 10:44.570 --> 10:48.760 commitments that we reflectively endorse into 10:48.760 --> 10:54.420 habitual practices can, of course, be deployed in the 10:54.420 --> 11:00.350 reinforcement of habits which we wish to get rid of. 11:00.350 --> 11:07.270 So for many of us, it is the case that upon opening one's 11:07.270 --> 11:13.990 computer, there is an immediate compulsion to open 11:13.990 --> 11:19.650 one's Internet browser, and an immediate compulsion to check 11:19.650 --> 11:23.040 one's Facebook page. 11:23.040 --> 11:26.800 Now, we talked already in the very first class about one of 11:26.800 --> 11:30.340 the ways of dealing with this, which is to eliminate the 11:30.340 --> 11:34.670 connection that takes you from the computer to 11:34.670 --> 11:35.920 the Facebook page. 11:35.920 --> 11:40.810 If you turn off your Internet browser, then no matter how 11:40.810 --> 11:46.310 instinctive the reaction is, you won't be able to respond 11:46.310 --> 11:48.220 to the compulsion. 11:48.220 --> 11:51.580 If you have an instinctive tendency to go down to your 11:51.580 --> 11:56.410 refrigerator at midnight and drink the full fat chocolate 11:56.410 --> 11:59.810 milk that's there in the fridge, if you take the milk 11:59.810 --> 12:03.740 away, then you don't have to change the habit. 12:03.740 --> 12:06.710 So one of the strategies for self-regulation involves 12:06.710 --> 12:12.620 limiting access to the response that you 12:12.620 --> 12:15.750 wish to get rid of. 12:15.752 --> 12:20.572 But sometimes either the response that we want to get 12:20.570 --> 12:23.110 rid of isn't something that we want to eliminate entirely. 12:23.110 --> 12:23.380 Right? 12:23.380 --> 12:26.610 I don't want to get rid of all the food in my kitchen. 12:26.610 --> 12:28.910 Some of you don't want to get rid of Internet access 12:28.910 --> 12:31.740 simpliciter on your computer. 12:31.740 --> 12:35.110 So the question that we're going to consider in lecture 12:35.110 --> 12:39.960 today, is what additional strategies are available for 12:39.960 --> 12:46.970 breaking the link between unwanted habits, or the link 12:46.970 --> 12:51.020 between cues and the unwanted habits to 12:51.020 --> 12:52.950 which they give rise. 12:52.950 --> 12:56.260 So let me ask you to take out your clickers. 12:56.260 --> 12:58.220 These are the only times we're going to use the clickers 12:58.220 --> 13:01.060 today, but I promise in later lectures we'll use them in 13:01.060 --> 13:02.950 less contrived ways. 13:02.950 --> 13:04.050 So I want to ask you. 13:04.050 --> 13:05.120 Which is true of you? 13:05.120 --> 13:08.030 That you have no habitual behaviors that you 13:08.030 --> 13:09.160 would like to change? 13:09.160 --> 13:11.100 Everything about you is perfect? 13:11.100 --> 13:13.960 You're like the figure in Alan Kazdin's opening chapter who 13:13.955 --> 13:16.305 wants to change everybody in the world, but who needs to 13:16.310 --> 13:18.470 change nothing in him- or herself? 13:18.470 --> 13:21.970 Or are you somebody who has at least one habitual behavior 13:21.970 --> 13:24.050 that you would like to change? 13:24.050 --> 13:29.160 And we'll keep polling open for another six, five, four, 13:29.160 --> 13:33.680 three, two, we've got 110 responses, and let's see how 13:33.680 --> 13:35.010 it comes out. 13:35.010 --> 13:36.080 OK. 13:36.080 --> 13:40.070 So 8% of you are perfect. 13:40.070 --> 13:41.500 I'm thrilled. 13:41.500 --> 13:44.530 I've always wanted to have a class full of perfect people. 13:44.530 --> 13:47.370 At least I have, I guess it's that back left-hand corner. 13:47.370 --> 13:47.550 [laughter] 13:47.550 --> 13:51.670 But 92% of you have at least one habit that you 13:51.670 --> 13:53.800 would like to change. 13:53.800 --> 13:57.580 For the 92% of you who have that habit that you'd like to 13:57.580 --> 13:59.450 change, a second question. 14:03.030 --> 14:08.430 So for any of you who has ever gotten rid of a habit and 14:08.430 --> 14:10.890 thought to do so, which is true of you? 14:10.890 --> 14:14.250 Were you able to change that habitual behavior just by 14:14.250 --> 14:15.750 saying to yourself, "You know what? 14:15.750 --> 14:18.460 I'm not going to check Internet in class anymore." 14:18.460 --> 14:19.170 "You know what? 14:19.170 --> 14:23.580 I'm actually going to practice my violin every morning at 14:23.580 --> 14:25.030 ten." "You know what? 14:25.030 --> 14:29.280 I'm not going to leave my bed unmade in the morning." So how 14:29.280 --> 14:31.480 many were able to change your habitual behavior just by 14:31.480 --> 14:34.330 talking yourself out of it, and how many of you were not 14:34.330 --> 14:36.610 able to change that habitual behavior by talking 14:36.610 --> 14:37.630 yourself out of it? 14:37.630 --> 14:43.090 And again, we'll cover this for another ten. 14:43.090 --> 14:43.360 OK. 14:43.355 --> 14:46.975 And let's see how the numbers come out. 14:46.980 --> 14:50.300 Four, three, two, one. 14:50.300 --> 14:51.550 OK. 14:54.070 --> 14:54.840 Oh my goodness! 14:54.840 --> 14:58.640 35% of you can talk yourself out of habitual behaviors. 14:58.640 --> 15:02.590 But the other 65% of you are embodied human beings of the 15:02.590 --> 15:05.910 sort whom I took myself to be lecturing in this class. 15:05.910 --> 15:07.310 OK. 15:07.310 --> 15:10.730 It is very often the case, though obviously not always 15:10.730 --> 15:15.460 the case, that simply trying to talk yourself out of an 15:15.460 --> 15:19.630 unwanted behavior is extraordinarily difficult. 15:19.630 --> 15:22.640 And the chapter that we read from Jonathan Haidt, and in 15:22.640 --> 15:25.830 fact, the readings that we've been doing all semester long, 15:25.830 --> 15:29.600 explain why this is so. 15:29.602 --> 15:33.912 Part of the reason that at least 65% of you fall into the 15:33.910 --> 15:38.880 category of people who are unable to talk yourself out of 15:38.880 --> 15:42.210 an unwanted behavior is that we aren't 15:42.210 --> 15:45.920 just composed of reason. 15:45.920 --> 15:48.910 Plato gave us the metaphor of reason, spirit, and appetite. 15:48.910 --> 15:52.660 Haidt gives us the metaphor of the rider and the elephant. 15:52.660 --> 15:57.040 Every single one of the authors that we've read so far 15:57.040 --> 16:03.340 has talked about the ways in which we are fundamentally 16:03.340 --> 16:08.990 processing information at a rational level that may or may 16:08.990 --> 16:13.350 not reach down to the other aspects of what 16:13.350 --> 16:15.710 Plato calls our soul. 16:15.710 --> 16:20.410 So Aristotle, in those incredible closing five pages 16:20.410 --> 16:23.520 of the Nicomachean Ethics that I had you read for today, the 16:23.520 --> 16:27.220 very last bits of the last book, writes as follows. 16:27.220 --> 16:30.020 He says, "If arguments were sufficient in themselves to 16:30.020 --> 16:33.590 make people decent, the rewards they would command 16:33.590 --> 16:37.530 would justifiably have been many and large. 16:37.530 --> 16:42.340 But," he points out, "in a large majority of 16:42.339 --> 16:45.669 circumstances," simply saying to people, 16:45.670 --> 16:46.540 "Hey, you know what? 16:46.540 --> 16:51.880 You probably ought to pay your taxes by sometime mid-spring," 16:51.880 --> 16:56.790 doesn't cause them to act in keeping with what it is that 16:56.790 --> 17:00.490 they want, or you want, them to do. 17:00.490 --> 17:06.010 Arguments alone, appeals to rationality alone, work in 17:06.010 --> 17:08.420 exceptional cases. 17:08.420 --> 17:12.770 But they don't work all the time. 17:12.770 --> 17:16.640 Now, because I've been glossing over it in most of 17:16.640 --> 17:18.730 the material that we've been reading from the ancient 17:18.730 --> 17:22.060 authors, I want to point out that the intervening texts, 17:22.060 --> 17:25.710 the texts that I'm skipping over in the rest of 1179, is 17:25.710 --> 17:30.360 actually an expression of something that runs through 17:30.360 --> 17:33.970 every single one of the ancient Greek texts that we've 17:33.970 --> 17:37.700 been reading, which is an expression of a certain kind 17:37.700 --> 17:43.320 of cultural elitism about the difference between the 17:43.320 --> 17:47.190 well-born and the many. 17:47.190 --> 17:52.460 But I want to, right now, set aside what is, I think a 17:52.460 --> 17:55.590 legitimate ground for challenging some of what 17:55.590 --> 17:59.730 Aristotle's saying, and focus instead on what I think is 17:59.730 --> 18:04.760 true about what he goes on to remark, which is, that it is 18:04.760 --> 18:09.340 impossible to alter by argument what has long been 18:09.340 --> 18:13.160 absorbed as a result of one's habits. 18:13.160 --> 18:17.390 And Aristotle goes on then to discuss something that we'll 18:17.390 --> 18:20.650 talk about in about five weeks. 18:20.650 --> 18:27.300 Namely, given this fact about human beings, that early 18:27.300 --> 18:32.270 experience shapes subsequent behavior, and that pointing 18:32.270 --> 18:35.890 regulations in place can shape behavior in ways that is 18:35.890 --> 18:42.320 pro-social, it appears that there are implications for how 18:42.320 --> 18:44.860 societies ought to be structured. 18:44.860 --> 18:49.070 And when we got to the unit on political philosophy, we'll 18:49.070 --> 18:52.780 look yet again at these closing pages of the 18:52.780 --> 18:54.710 Nicomachean Ethics. 18:54.710 --> 19:00.370 What I want to point out to you now is that there it is an 19:00.370 --> 19:06.020 extraordinary connection between what Aristotle is 19:06.020 --> 19:09.690 saying in this ancient text-- 19:09.690 --> 19:13.790 here's a beautiful fifteenth century edition of the Ethics 19:13.790 --> 19:19.700 in Latin, here's the translation that we're using-- 19:19.700 --> 19:22.680 and it seems to me, and this is the point that I want to 19:22.680 --> 19:26.280 make in the remainder of today's lecture, that the 19:26.280 --> 19:31.290 fundamental insight of Aristotle's ethics is what 19:31.290 --> 19:35.950 lies behind the literature in a certain kind 19:35.950 --> 19:38.020 of therapeutic practice-- 19:38.020 --> 19:41.810 in particular, cognitive behavioral therapy-- 19:41.810 --> 19:46.600 and I want to show you how this plays out in a particular 19:46.600 --> 19:49.110 kind of self-help book. 19:49.110 --> 19:52.050 In particular, a parenting guide. 19:52.050 --> 19:54.750 The claim I want to make is roughly that Aristotle's 19:54.750 --> 19:57.370 Nicomachean Ethics is the greatest 19:57.370 --> 20:01.060 parenting guide ever written. 20:01.060 --> 20:06.050 So those of you looking for a baby present for your newborn 20:06.050 --> 20:08.450 niece or nephew, look no further! 20:08.450 --> 20:10.680 [laughter] 20:10.680 --> 20:15.490 So what I want to do is to contextualize cognitive 20:15.490 --> 20:21.230 behavioral therapy by starting off with a discussion of the 20:21.230 --> 20:26.290 animal literature of which it is a part. 20:26.290 --> 20:31.730 Behavioral therapy exploits the fact that we are evolved 20:31.730 --> 20:36.840 beings, continuous with non-human animals, in the 20:36.840 --> 20:42.760 kinds of control over behavior which are available to us. 20:42.760 --> 20:46.450 So with apologies to those of you who have taken already 20:46.450 --> 20:51.210 Psych 110, a brief introduction to Pavlovian 20:51.210 --> 20:52.880 conditioning. 20:52.880 --> 20:53.470 Oh! 20:53.470 --> 20:54.420 Sorry. 20:54.420 --> 20:56.520 With no apologies to anybody, some 20:56.520 --> 20:59.500 more quotes from Aristotle. 20:59.500 --> 21:02.370 Just as Aristotle says, "We learn a craft by producing the 21:02.370 --> 21:04.790 same product that we must produce when we've learned it. 21:04.790 --> 21:08.590 We become builders by building, harpists by playing 21:08.590 --> 21:13.320 the harp," when Aristotle says that, what he is pointing out 21:13.320 --> 21:18.330 is the importance of structuring your experience in 21:18.330 --> 21:23.600 such a way that you have the opportunity to perform the 21:23.600 --> 21:27.320 behavior that you wish to cultivate. 21:27.320 --> 21:32.090 Give yourself the opportunity to do the things that you want 21:32.090 --> 21:35.220 have become habitual, and those 21:35.220 --> 21:37.840 things will become habitual. 21:37.840 --> 21:38.680 All right. 21:38.680 --> 21:41.080 Here's the dog. 21:41.080 --> 21:45.920 So I assume most of you know, but it's worth reviewing, 21:45.920 --> 21:50.640 there is a technique of regulating animal behavior, 21:50.640 --> 21:53.600 which has of course been known for thousands of years. 21:53.600 --> 21:57.110 You hear report of the training of domestic animals 21:57.110 --> 21:59.250 in the ancient Greek tradition, and in fact, 21:59.250 --> 22:02.420 Descartes has a long discussion of how you can 22:02.420 --> 22:05.300 train dogs. 22:05.300 --> 22:08.400 (Descartes had idiosyncratic views about animals. 22:08.400 --> 22:10.040 He thought that they were machines. 22:10.040 --> 22:15.430 But with regard to this hypothesis, that mistaken 22:15.430 --> 22:17.510 assumption doesn't make a difference.) 22:17.510 --> 22:21.670 So the way classical conditioning works, is that 22:21.670 --> 22:27.080 before the conditioning takes place, you identify an item-- 22:27.080 --> 22:28.940 say, food-- 22:28.940 --> 22:33.310 that produces in the being that you wish to condition a 22:33.310 --> 22:38.000 response of salivation, in this case, or excitement. 22:38.000 --> 22:43.440 So the dog sees the food, and goes, "wow!" 22:43.440 --> 22:48.070 So the food, in this case, is what psychologists call an 22:48.070 --> 22:50.490 unconditioned stimulus. 22:50.490 --> 22:55.130 It's something that, without intervention on our part, 22:55.130 --> 22:58.880 produces is in the being whom you're trying to condition, an 22:58.880 --> 23:00.600 unconditioned response. 23:00.600 --> 23:04.740 You show the food, and without any intervention on our part, 23:04.740 --> 23:07.750 the dog salivates. 23:07.750 --> 23:11.660 By contract, there are lots of things in the world-- bells, 23:11.660 --> 23:12.990 for example-- 23:12.990 --> 23:16.030 which produce in the dog no reaction at all. 23:16.030 --> 23:17.550 You ring a bell. 23:17.550 --> 23:20.040 Dog goes, "Big whoop. 23:20.036 --> 23:21.526 Who cares? 23:21.530 --> 23:26.980 It's a bell." So in that case, you present what called a 23:26.980 --> 23:29.880 neutral stimulus, and what you get from the dog is what is 23:29.880 --> 23:33.050 called, no response. 23:33.050 --> 23:36.720 Now here comes the conditioning. 23:36.720 --> 23:38.790 You take your dog, and you present him with, 23:38.790 --> 23:42.060 simultaneously, the bell and the food. 23:42.060 --> 23:46.470 And the presence of the food is sufficient to produce in 23:46.470 --> 23:48.970 the dog the Oh, wow. 23:48.970 --> 23:49.180 Right? 23:49.180 --> 23:50.730 The dog says, "Food! 23:50.730 --> 23:51.560 Salivate! 23:51.560 --> 23:52.090 Excellent! 23:52.090 --> 23:52.580 Yum! 23:52.580 --> 23:54.280 Something to eat." 23:54.280 --> 23:58.580 And so what you've done, is you've taken paired stimuli, 23:58.580 --> 24:04.310 the bell and the food, and produced, as a result of the 24:04.310 --> 24:08.430 introduction of the paired stimuli, an unconditioned 24:08.430 --> 24:11.600 response that is, at this point still, a 24:11.600 --> 24:15.310 response to the food. 24:15.310 --> 24:21.470 But animals are associative beings. 24:21.470 --> 24:26.180 And eventually, this unconditioned response, the 24:26.180 --> 24:30.780 oh, wow that results as a matter of hard-wiring from the 24:30.780 --> 24:37.960 introduction of the food, comes to be paired with the 24:37.960 --> 24:39.720 neutral stimulus. 24:39.720 --> 24:43.720 And when that happens, when the bell is in a position to 24:43.720 --> 24:48.720 produce in the dog the response of salvation, one has 24:48.720 --> 24:53.220 thereby conditioned the stimulus to produce in the 24:53.220 --> 24:56.850 animal a conditioned response. 24:56.850 --> 25:00.740 Now, it's not just with animals that this sort of 25:00.740 --> 25:02.730 thing is possible. 25:02.730 --> 25:06.970 In the opening pages of the Alan Kazdin textbook that you 25:06.970 --> 25:12.380 read, we heard the story of poor Baby Albert who used to 25:12.380 --> 25:18.860 think white rabbits were no big deal, until the neutral 25:18.860 --> 25:23.950 stimulus of a white rabbit got paired with the unconditioned 25:23.950 --> 25:27.850 stimulus of a loud noise that produced terror in him. 25:27.850 --> 25:33.170 And when that happened, Albert came to associate what had 25:33.170 --> 25:36.420 previously been neutral, the white rabbit, with 25:36.420 --> 25:39.870 a feeling of fear. 25:39.870 --> 25:46.920 Human beings are capable of coming to have associations 25:46.920 --> 25:51.700 that have valence, either positive or negative, 25:51.700 --> 25:55.260 associations that produce in them positive or negative 25:55.260 --> 25:57.260 emotional responses. 25:57.260 --> 26:00.760 And they are capable of coming to have those associations 26:00.760 --> 26:09.130 with entities that previously had no value to them. 26:09.130 --> 26:15.860 So with that fact in mind, psychologists began thinking 26:15.860 --> 26:23.040 more generally about the relation between objects and 26:23.040 --> 26:28.540 behaviors, on the one hand, and outcomes that those 26:28.540 --> 26:34.030 objects or behaviors are associated with, on the other. 26:34.030 --> 26:37.870 So whereas classical conditioning is concerned with 26:37.870 --> 26:42.470 the passive consumption of some item in the world-- 26:42.470 --> 26:45.350 food is presented to you, a rabbit is presented to you, 26:45.350 --> 26:48.240 and a certain association arises-- 26:48.240 --> 26:53.760 operant conditioning is concerned with the relation 26:53.760 --> 26:59.360 between behaviors that you yourself perform and the 26:59.360 --> 27:05.900 outcomes to which those behaviors typically give rise. 27:05.900 --> 27:10.910 So we have, in our behavioral repertoire, a bunch of things 27:10.910 --> 27:13.990 we do that are desired behaviors. 27:13.990 --> 27:17.710 It's a desired behavior that you do your reading, that you 27:17.710 --> 27:20.790 go to the gym, that you're polite to your roommates, that 27:20.790 --> 27:23.710 you call your parents at least once a week. 27:23.710 --> 27:27.620 And we also have undesired behaviors. 27:27.620 --> 27:31.450 Things that we wish we didn't do. 27:31.450 --> 27:38.010 The bad habits that 92% of those of us in this room have. 27:38.010 --> 27:44.590 And what psychologists noticed is that we have resources 27:44.590 --> 27:49.600 available to us using the mechanisms that conditioning 27:49.600 --> 27:56.630 provides for increasing differentially various types 27:56.630 --> 27:59.240 of behavior. 27:59.240 --> 28:04.310 In particular, if we are attentive to the consequences 28:04.310 --> 28:09.370 that behaviors typically give rise to, and if we intervene 28:09.370 --> 28:13.940 to control those consequences, we can increase the incidence 28:13.940 --> 28:18.010 of certain kinds of behavior, and decrease the incidence of 28:18.010 --> 28:20.550 other kinds of behavior. 28:20.550 --> 28:25.210 So if there's a desired behavior that you wish to have 28:25.210 --> 28:32.290 more of, you can pair with that behavior as a consequence 28:32.290 --> 28:35.560 some sort of reinforcer. 28:35.560 --> 28:38.870 You can pair with it a positive reinforcer. 28:38.870 --> 28:44.650 I can reinforce your efforts on writing a paper by 28:44.650 --> 28:48.170 providing you with the positive reinforcer of a 28:48.170 --> 28:51.070 letter on your transcript that has signaling 28:51.070 --> 28:54.310 value to future employers. 28:54.310 --> 28:58.200 So I can provide you with positive reinforcement for 28:58.200 --> 28:59.830 desired behavior. 28:59.825 --> 29:04.315 Or one can reinforce a desired behavior through what is 29:04.320 --> 29:07.180 technically known as negative reinforcement. 29:07.180 --> 29:10.080 The removal of an aversive stimulus. 29:10.080 --> 29:15.370 If there's noise in the room, you are negatively reinforced 29:15.370 --> 29:19.790 in your tendency to put in earplugs if the putting-in of 29:19.790 --> 29:24.990 the earplugs reduces the aversive consequence of being 29:24.990 --> 29:27.000 in a noisy room. 29:27.000 --> 29:35.550 So we can increase behaviors that we want to increase bye 29:35.550 --> 29:41.840 associating with them consequences that serve to 29:41.840 --> 29:45.660 increase the value, subjectively, that that 29:45.660 --> 29:49.970 behavior has to the individual, as the result of 29:49.970 --> 29:54.650 pairing something that the individual likes already with 29:54.650 --> 29:57.360 the behavior. 29:57.360 --> 30:03.970 We can, in addition, decrease the likelihood of an 30:03.970 --> 30:07.580 undesired, or in fact of a desired, behavior by 30:07.580 --> 30:12.250 associating that behavior with some consequence that is a 30:12.250 --> 30:14.270 negative consequence. 30:14.270 --> 30:20.420 So we can take away something that you like if you act in a 30:20.420 --> 30:22.730 way that we don't want. 30:22.730 --> 30:27.650 And we will, in the final two lectures before, or just after 30:27.650 --> 30:32.070 March break, talk about punishment and how it works. 30:32.070 --> 30:38.260 So behaviors can be associated with positive consequences, or 30:38.260 --> 30:42.250 they can be associated with negative consequences. 30:42.250 --> 30:46.080 And sometimes, that happens naturally. 30:46.080 --> 30:51.740 So when I eat chocolate cake, that is associated with the 30:51.740 --> 30:56.520 positive consequence of the flavor that it provides me. 30:56.520 --> 31:02.320 It is positively reinforced, because the behavior, eating 31:02.320 --> 31:07.690 the cake, gives rise to a natural consequence, the taste 31:07.690 --> 31:10.310 of the cake. 31:10.310 --> 31:15.840 But it may not be so salient to me that the behavior also 31:15.840 --> 31:20.210 gives rise to a consequence which I don't evaluate so 31:20.210 --> 31:21.470 positively. 31:21.470 --> 31:26.530 It increases the amount of arterial blockage on the way 31:26.530 --> 31:29.050 to my heart. 31:29.050 --> 31:34.530 Making salient to people what the natural negative 31:34.530 --> 31:40.060 consequences of their behaviors are is one of the 31:40.060 --> 31:44.240 ways one can make use of this paradigm. 31:44.240 --> 31:48.590 So we can take behaviors that occur, that we want to have 31:48.590 --> 31:51.080 more of and associate them with positive consequences. 31:51.080 --> 31:53.630 We can take behaviors that occur that we want to have 31:53.630 --> 31:56.740 more of, and associate them with negative consequences. 31:56.740 --> 32:01.560 We can help make people aware of the positive or negative 32:01.560 --> 32:04.930 consequences that these behaviors already have. And 32:04.930 --> 32:10.190 finally, we may discover that unbeknownst to ourselves, a 32:10.190 --> 32:16.480 certain kind of reinforcer is, in fact, preserving a behavior 32:16.480 --> 32:20.100 for us that we wish to get rid of. 32:20.100 --> 32:24.320 So a parent may discover that the reason a child is 32:24.320 --> 32:29.110 continuing to whine is because whining, an undesired 32:29.110 --> 32:33.160 behavior, is in fact associated with a reinforcer, 32:33.160 --> 32:35.660 parental attention. 32:35.660 --> 32:39.140 And one might come to recognize that the removal of 32:39.140 --> 32:43.440 that reinforcer will reduce the behavior. 32:43.440 --> 32:47.990 So in this regard, operant conditioning takes our 32:47.990 --> 32:53.720 capacity for association and uses it in familiar ways to 32:53.720 --> 32:59.130 increase desired behaviors and decrease undesired behaviors. 32:59.130 --> 33:04.210 But, of course, behaviors don't arise out of nowhere. 33:04.210 --> 33:08.360 And the third thing that operant conditioning attends 33:08.360 --> 33:15.050 to are the antecedents that gave rise to behaviors. 33:15.050 --> 33:21.040 So whether a behavior is likely to occur depends first 33:21.040 --> 33:24.330 of all on the setting event. 33:24.330 --> 33:30.670 On whether the reinforcer is likely to increase the 33:30.670 --> 33:33.310 probability of the behavior occurring. 33:33.310 --> 33:38.810 You will be more likely to drink chocolate milk late at 33:38.810 --> 33:44.390 night from your refrigerator if you are hungry. 33:44.390 --> 33:48.400 So if you drink a glass of water an hour beforehand, then 33:48.400 --> 33:50.810 that reinforcement that drinking the chocolate milk 33:50.810 --> 33:54.080 had won't be so great for you. 33:54.080 --> 33:58.460 You can set circumstances so as to make the reinforcers 33:58.460 --> 34:01.480 more or less effective. 34:01.480 --> 34:06.930 You can also provide yourself or others with prompts. 34:06.929 --> 34:12.329 I want to help you do the reading, so I provide you with 34:12.330 --> 34:16.870 reading guides in which I direct you to the parts of the 34:16.870 --> 34:21.450 texts which I think are most important, and I thereby 34:21.449 --> 34:24.039 reduce the barriers to entry that the 34:24.040 --> 34:25.790 readings might provide. 34:25.790 --> 34:31.440 I help prompt the behavior by making the task more 34:31.440 --> 34:33.620 manageable. 34:33.620 --> 34:39.970 And finally, we can give rise to behavior differentially by 34:39.965 --> 34:43.135 the presence or absence of what are called discriminative 34:43.140 --> 34:46.780 stimuli, that indicate, in technical terminology, the 34:46.780 --> 34:49.310 availability of a reinforcer. 34:49.310 --> 34:53.260 So in the pages of Kazdin that we read today, Alan Kazdin 34:53.260 --> 34:56.690 points out that if the behavior that we're interested 34:56.690 --> 35:03.010 in is the answering of one's telephone, that the ringing of 35:03.010 --> 35:09.840 the phone is an antecedent that makes the behavior more 35:09.840 --> 35:14.030 likely to give rise to the reinforcer. 35:14.030 --> 35:16.960 The reinforcer is, being able to talk to somebody 35:16.960 --> 35:18.910 at the other end. 35:18.910 --> 35:22.270 So you're standing in front of your telephone. 35:22.270 --> 35:26.550 If the phone rings, there's reason to pick it up. 35:26.550 --> 35:30.820 If the phone doesn't, there isn't.. 35:30.820 --> 35:36.650 So what the framework of operant conditioning provides 35:36.650 --> 35:43.200 is a way of cashing out the Aristotelian suggestion that 35:43.200 --> 35:47.350 what we want to do is to structure our lives in such a 35:47.350 --> 35:51.810 way that the behaviors we want to have become part of our 35:51.810 --> 35:55.950 repertoire, become habitual. 35:55.950 --> 36:00.350 And one of the most effective ways to do that is to 36:00.350 --> 36:06.680 structure experience so that the thing we don't want to do 36:06.680 --> 36:10.130 is incompatible with an alternative behavior that we 36:10.130 --> 36:12.490 put in its place. 36:12.490 --> 36:19.620 So in the context of, for example, parenting, Alan 36:19.620 --> 36:22.530 Kazdin says, "instead of thinking as your child's 36:22.530 --> 36:24.980 behavior in terms of what you don't want"-- right? 36:24.980 --> 36:28.580 I don't want to have him whine; I don't want the 36:28.580 --> 36:31.440 siblings to be fighting; I don't want my children to be 36:31.440 --> 36:33.360 staying up past midnight-- 36:33.360 --> 36:38.600 "Start thinking in terms of the behavior that you do want, 36:38.600 --> 36:42.040 and reward that opposite." 36:42.040 --> 36:44.160 So instead of saying to yourself, "I don't want to 36:44.160 --> 36:48.050 spend the evening talking to my roommate and ended up 36:48.050 --> 36:52.550 having to stay up all night," say to yourself, "what is the 36:52.550 --> 36:56.850 behavior that I wish to cultivate and reinforce? 36:56.850 --> 37:01.300 What is the alternative that will preclude my acting in the 37:01.300 --> 37:05.040 ways that I don't want, and encourage me to act in the 37:05.040 --> 37:07.430 ways that I do?" 37:07.430 --> 37:17.180 In so doing, you open up for yourself the most profound and 37:17.180 --> 37:21.830 lasting form of human self-control. 37:21.830 --> 37:26.730 The form of human self-control that leverages the difference 37:26.730 --> 37:31.260 between what reason commits you to and what spirit and 37:31.260 --> 37:34.850 appetite may be pulling you towards. 37:34.850 --> 37:40.250 You come to associate a behavior that was previously 37:40.250 --> 37:45.210 unreinforced for you with positive consequences. 37:45.210 --> 37:48.070 "When you get rid of a behavior by rewarding its 37:48.070 --> 37:51.790 opposite," says Kazdin, the effects are stronger, "and 37:51.790 --> 37:56.150 last longer than if you punish the undesired behavior. 37:56.150 --> 37:59.740 The best way to build the behavior you want is through 37:59.740 --> 38:02.360 reinforced practice." 38:02.360 --> 38:06.530 Now, "the best way to build the behavior you want is 38:06.530 --> 38:11.080 through reinforced practice" is something that presumably 38:11.080 --> 38:12.710 you've heard before. 38:12.710 --> 38:15.480 In fact, you've heard it before three 38:15.480 --> 38:18.960 times in today's lecture. 38:18.960 --> 38:22.460 "We learn a craft by producing the same product that we must 38:22.460 --> 38:24.380 produce when we have learned it. 38:24.380 --> 38:28.260 We become builders by building, we become harpists 38:28.260 --> 38:31.040 by playing the harp." 38:31.040 --> 38:36.580 So what we try to do in Aristotle's challenge, and in 38:36.580 --> 38:40.210 the contemporary analogue of it, is to structure our lives 38:40.210 --> 38:44.170 in such a way that we can take normative commitments-- 38:44.170 --> 38:48.010 things that are good ideas-- 38:48.010 --> 38:53.440 and turn them into descriptions of behaviors that 38:53.440 --> 38:55.750 come naturally to us. 38:55.750 --> 39:00.290 We take them from being good ideas into being laws. 39:00.290 --> 39:05.000 And this provides, I think, new insight on the passage 39:05.000 --> 39:09.410 with which I closed the previous lecture, as well. 39:09.410 --> 39:11.650 Aristotle writes that "Abstaining from pleasure 39:11.650 --> 39:14.980 makes us become temperate, and that once we've become 39:14.980 --> 39:18.580 temperate, we are most capable of abstaining from pleasures. 39:18.580 --> 39:20.620 It is similar with bravery. 39:20.620 --> 39:24.190 Habituation in standing firm in frightening situations 39:24.190 --> 39:28.460 makes us become brave, and once we have become brave, we 39:28.460 --> 39:32.200 are more capable of standing firm." 39:32.200 --> 39:35.770 So this, I think, is an undeniable 39:35.770 --> 39:39.860 aspect of human nature. 39:39.860 --> 39:43.050 But it isn't the full story. 39:43.050 --> 39:48.000 And the two essays that we're reading for next class bring 39:48.000 --> 39:54.140 out a complication to the story that I told today, and 39:54.140 --> 39:58.890 they ask us stop to think about whether this entirely 39:58.890 --> 40:02.590 describes what it is that's required for bringing about 40:02.590 --> 40:05.590 the kind of change which we hope to achieve. 40:05.590 --> 40:07.530 And I look forward to talking to you about 40:07.530 --> 40:08.810 those texts on Thursday. 40:16.020 --> 40:19.650 We have a couple of minutes for questions, if somebody-- 40:19.650 --> 40:22.220 by my watch, we have three more minutes. 40:28.290 --> 40:30.680 I'll give you positive reinforcement if you raise 40:30.680 --> 40:34.570 your hand, then a query that you have will be answered! 40:40.320 --> 40:41.700 All right.