An operant analysis of the zen buddhist conception of "thinking" By 1419 in 1419's Diary Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 08:16:29 AM EST Tags: zen buddhism, behavior analysis, thinking, b.f.skinner (all tags)
	Zen posits that thoughts arise and we should strive for non-attachment to them. But what does this mean? Behavior Analytic/Radical Behaviorist analysis ensues.

I remember calling through the phone book for listings under "Meditation" when I was a teenager. The first person who answered told me about Transcendental Meditation. I asked about it and they mentioned I needed to bring fruit, a handkerchief and a small donation. Hmm. I was not inclined to donate if I didn't have to. I kept calling. I got to a listing for a Zen Center and spoke to someone who told me about their meditation schedule. It was at 5 in the morning typically, but I should come on down on a Saturday morning around 10am and they'd give me a walk through. "How much is it?" I asked. "It's free!" he said. Free was the price I could pay. So I hopped on my motorcycle (a Yamaha 650XS circa 1972) and found myself there. Over the course of many years of on again and off again ventures into the world of zen buddhism (first Rinzai and then later Soto) I was introducted the idea of "thoughts" or "thinking" and the correct response or attitude towards them. It goes something like this. In meditation you are to sit and observe your breathing. You are to keep your eyes open and look forward and slightly down. You aren't to focus on anything. You simply breath and let the world in. Thoughts will occur to you but you aren't to cling to them. This idea of buddhist non-attachment occurs in many places, but this is one of them. You aren't to be attached to your thoughts. But what is "attachment"? As a teenager I was aware of the teachings of the psychologist B.F.Skinner. I was aware that he broke with Methodological Behaviorism insofar as he recognized thinking as a phenomenon worthy of study (the M.B.'s didn't). He broke with Watsonian "reflex" psychology in that he didn't see it as sub-vocal speech, or reflexive in nature either. It wasn't until years later that Skinner's conception of operant behavior and the zen buddhist conception of "thinking without attachment" became to sort of blend into each other. Skinner speaks of ourselves as "listeners". We can act as our own audience he says. Buddhism says that we have thoughts, but we aren't to engage in them. In a way, we are to listen, but not respond. Skinner says that covert verbal behavior ("thinking") obeys the laws of operant conditioning. The four-term operant analysis includes a discriminative stimulus - which indicates an occasion for reinforcement - and a response - which is controlled by its consequences. Buddhism says we think without control over that thought. Thoughts come to us "unbidden". We can then choose to engage these thoughts or not. We might think about how we need to go shopping (an unbidden thought) but then make a shopping list (a response). Buddhism says we can't stop the thought that we need to go shopping. We can, or should, control making a shopping list. Skinner's analysis says that the Sd "sets an occasion" for reinforcement. This causes us to emit strong responses in the presence of the Sd. The Sd doesn't control behavior in the sense of reinforcement, but it does control it as an occasion might control it. We can't control thinking in the sense of "unbidden thought". These are thoughts as discriminative stimuli. We, as the observer or audience or listener, have these thoughts come to us in an almost unpredictable fashion. While we read, watch television, drive, make love, thoughts come to us - and not always appropriately. Thus, to use the operant analysis for zen, we have two selves. One self is more or less uncontrolled. It generates thoughts almost at random, under very subtle, and perhaps highly generalized reinforcement. These thoughts are discriminative occasions for successful compositional thinking. A second self, "a listening self", responds to these thoughts and can emit responses. These responses can be managed in the Skinnerian sense of self-control (a controlling and controlled response set). In Zen Buddhism the practice that is to control thinking is to use motoric or non-"verbal" thinking by focusing on the breathing. Alternately there is Koan practice. Koans operate on the same principle. By creating an unsolvable puzzle you emit a large volume of unreinforced responses towards the Koan and thus achieve a state of verbal extinction in the listener. Zen practice is typically done in the morning. Five fifteen or so finds many monks groggily attempting their zazen. "When the body is tired the discriminating consciousness is tired." I recall hearing at one lecture. Since the goal is to exhaust the response set through Koan practice or in an "empty mind" through non-issuance of responses this makes sense. Dreaming, as a sort of response class where our dreams - weak stimuli from our experiences jumbled together combined with our cover responding - act much like the kind of discriminating consciousness we are trying to avoid. The Zen monk or resident is cutting short the nights dream sleep to engage in more systematic non-responding. Why become caught up in your dreams if you don't want to be caught up in your waking thoughts? The processes of discrimination, extinction and so on are detailed elsewhere and I won't go into them here. Extinction is, in terms of emotions, a rather unpleasant process. This would account for some reactions of crying and becoming quite upset which I've heard about in the Zen meditation process. Zen meditation doesn't exclusively rest on extinction though. There is a practice of "incompatible responding" which is encompassed in focusing on breathing. While eating meals at one Zen center several tables were segregated for those who didn't want to talk while eating. One resident told me about her silence practice where she wouldn't talk for days. Vows of silence in monks in the Christian tradition must serve the same purpose. If you talk you risk being reinforced for what you say and thus have it come back to revisit you while you are praying, meditating and so on. I've noticed that I will have my own conversations - either me or the other persons speech - played back to me while I am doing something like walking and so on. I can only assume that the adventitious reinforcement provided in a conversation make for the weaker response echoes while I am thinking. Thus "their voice" which I hear in my head actually represents "my listening response" which is then "re-emitted" when I am alone.  This leads to the subtle (solipsistic? phenomonelogical?) position of having the universe being played to you as your act of responding towards it. Although this would account for the concept of "listening". We typically don't "listen" to more than one person at a time, and this might be the problem of the capacity of our covert listening responses. However, I did know someone who was, through practice, able to listen to several conversations at once (it was rather annoying, but an interesting trick).

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