"Organism - environment" or "Personality - society"?

​​​​​​​ The simpler the animal, the easier it perceives its environment. For the smartest mouse, the library of the Academy of Sciences is not a treasure trove of knowledge, but only the environment. This is its ecosystem: "organism-environment", or "simple being in simple circumstances of life". And the ecosystem of a high-culture person is different – "person-culture", "person - society". You can say it in another way:"a complex being in difficult circumstances of life."

To survive in the "organism – environment" system, it is enough for an animal to have intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to adapt to the environment, to the present circumstances of life.

The mouse was in an unfamiliar place – how should it behave here? Look around or run, immediately or later, left or right, faster or slower? If you don't get your bearings, you'll be lost in obscurity. Circumstances change, and you need to take them into account. You need to think!

This is intelligence.

And for a person, just intelligence is no longer enough. Life in society requires the ability to think, requires intelligence, the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes and understand what they think of me.

If I write to a loved one: "I miss you!", will he raise or lower me in the eyes of a loved one? How will the boss react if I put a statement about my departure-will he raise my salary or sign this statement?

These tasks are more difficult, there is not enough ordinary intelligence here. The ability to think is the ability to take into account the ability to think of the person in front of you in your calculations. People can be smart, right?

But then-how legitimate is it to extend the methods of behavior management through positive and negative reinforcement to the lives of smart people?

The answer is not legitimate.

Training is suitable for dogs, and it is more appropriate to talk to people.

What a rat does in a cage is determined by the experimenter, and the behavior of free people is determined by their principles, goals, and values.

Reinforcement techniques work well for people in two cases: when people are happy with it, or when people don't notice it. And if you notice? Even when you train a dog, sometimes it doesn't want to listen to you. What happens if a man feels, even suspects, that his woman is trying to train him? - The man will say: "No!" Free men in captivity do not breed and do not tolerate training.

John Watson and Berres Skinner are great psychologists, but their methods work primarily for children, as long as they are little different from animals, and for adults who are put to live in cages: in a psychiatric hospital and in prison. These methods are in demand where you can't talk to a person normally and you can't really agree with them. Yes, they are relevant there.

Really, explain to the psychopath that among people it is necessary to restrain yourself elementary, you brute! Convince the recidivist of the inadmissibility of theft! Make an agreement with a small child not to pee!

No way. In such cases, ordinary words work poorly, but rewards and punishments, negative and positive reinforcers-Yes, they work.

The opposite is also true: in a society of free and reasonable people, it is customary to discuss and negotiate all issues. Gentlemen talk, not wave their fists. Gendarmes are not allowed in decent society.

There are tools that are adequate to the "organism – environment" level. And there are tools that correspond to the level of "man-society". If we want to be adequate, we don't need to confuse these levels. Each level has its own tools.