Selection by Consequences as a Causal Mode in a Science of Behavior. Jay Moore UW-Milwaukee

Transcription

1 Selection by Consequences as a Causal Mode in a Science of Behavior Jay Moore UW-Milwaukee

2 As a causal mode, selection by consequences was discovered very late in the history of science indeed, less than a century and a half ago and it is still not fully recognized or understood. Skinner (1988, p. 15)

3 The facts for which it is responsible have been forced into the causal pattern of classical mechanics, and many of the explanatory schemes elaborated in the process must now be discarded. Skinner (1988, p. 15)

4 I must begin by saying what I take a science of behavior to be. It is, I assume, part of biology. The organism that behaves is the organism that breathes, digests, conceives, gestates, and soon. Skinner (1978, p. 69)

5 Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Dobzhansky (1974, p. 125)

6 1859: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life 1871: The Descent of Man 1872: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

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8 Selection as a process Population Varying characteristics or properties Either discrete or continuous Differential interaction with environment Natural selection Sexual selection Either saltatory or gradual-- continuous Differential transmission and replication Transmission to, expression in future Either saltatory or gradual-- continuous

9 Post-Darwinian comparative psychology 1870s early 1900s If morphology, why not something else? Mental continuity Behavioral continuity Anecdotal anthropomorphism

10 Post-Darwinian comparative psychology 1870s early 1900s G. J. Romanes ( ) L. T. Hobhouse ( ) C. L. Morgan ( )

11 Extensions to Behavior Analysis and a Science of Behavior Phylogenic level Lifetime of species Innate repertoires: from respondents to released behavior Contingencies of survival Ontogenic level Lifetime of individual organism Acquired repertoires Contingencies of reinforcement Cultural level Lifetime of group Cultural practices

12 Implications Struggle for existence: Malthus, fitness, competition/cooperation relative to environment Lineage: Descent with modification, emerging from minimal units Not purposeful design or creation; not fixed, a priori essential types Variability within population: Basis for selection, not nuisance error around fixed, a priori essential types Selection as causal mode antecedent causation

13 Phylogenic level Species-specific, released behavior Uncommitted behavior Susceptibility to reinforcers Nervous system that changes with experience; Baldwin effect Behavioral genetics, ethology

14 Ontogenic level Reinforcement selects behavior from uncommitted behavior Repertoires emerge from minimal units Behavior analysis

15 We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement. Skinner (1953, p. 430)

16 Darwin s finches

17 Many Frequency Few Selection by consequences

18 Many Frequency Few Selection by consequences

19 Cultural level Reinforcement in form of solving problems selects cultural practices Interlocking contingencies, macrocontingencies, metacontingencies Behavior analytically informed social cultural anthropology

20 Progression Speciation Foundations Orderly relations Synthesis Behavior

21 Progression Foundations Orderly relations Synthesis Speciation Darwin (1859) Mendel, devries (1880s) Behavior J. D. Watson + F. Crick (1953)

22 Progression Foundations Orderly relations Synthesis Speciation Darwin (1859) Mendel, devries (1880s) Behavior J. B. Watson (1913) Skinner (1938)? J. D. Watson + F. Crick (1953)

23 It is the function of a science of behavior at the present time to give neurologists their assignments, as it was the function of genetics prior to the discovery of DNA to give modern geneticists their assignment with respect to the gene. I look forward to a comparable development in behavior, though I do not expect to see it. Skinner (1988, p. 60)

24 History: Behaviorism vs Mentalism Structuralism, functionalism: Introspection of mental life Rise of classical behaviorism: S R Can t adequately explain flexibility of behavior in terms of observable S R relations Invoke unobservable O to mediate relation between S and R Rise of mediational neobehaviorism: S O R Operational definitions of O made it all acceptable

25 History: Behaviorism vs Mentalism Mediation: An external stimulus triggers internal act, state, mechanism, process, that in turn triggers observable behavior; behavior a function of mediator; not reducible to discriminative control Antecedent causation: Explanation in terms of prior, temporally contiguous cause Theories/Explanations: Specifying the operating characteristics of the O mediator on the evidence of observable data From Tolman, Hull, to present day

26 From Tolman (1938) S => O => R

27 A theory, as I shall conceive it, is a set of intervening variables. These to-be-inserted intervening variables are constructs which we, the theorists, evolve as a useful way of breaking down into more manageable form the original complete function. Tolman (1938, p. 9)

28 In addition to the stimulus, I had called the conditions of which reflex strength was a function third variables, but Tolman called them intervening. That may have been the point [i.e., during the 1930s] at which the experimental analysis of behavior parted company from what would become cognitive psychology. Skinner (1989, p. 109)

29 History: Behaviorism vs Mentalism Commitment to S O R antecedent causation O mediators as proxies for mental causes Mentalism: causal explanation in terms of mental act, state, mechanism, process Methodological behaviorism: Restricting theories and explanations to publicly observable variables, but using operationally defined hypothetical constructs to admit mental variables and circumvent restriction Theories and explanations in traditional psychology appeal to O variables from some other domain, at some other level of observation, measured if at all in different dimensions Institutionalized mentalism

30 Summary and Conclusions: Scientific epistemology Many current debates about theories and explanations can be set aside in favor of analyses in terms of contingencies of survival, contingencies of reinforcement, and selection by consequences

31 I came to behaviorism, as I have said, because of its bearing on epistemology, and I have not been disappointed. Skinner (1978, p. 124)

32 [E]xperimental psychology is properly and inevitably committed to the construction of a theory of behavior. A theory is essential to the scientific understanding of behavior as a subject matter. Skinner (1972, p. 302)

33 Summary and Conclusions: Scientific epistemology Effective theory/explanation: A statement about organizations of facts; an abstract and formal representation of the data reduced to a minimal number of terms; concern with functional relations Ineffective theory/explanation: A statement about observed facts that appeal to causal acts, states, mechanisms, processes taking place in some other domain, at some other level of observation, described in different terms, and measured, if at all, in different dimensions Cognitive theory/explanation = Antecedent causation of O mediators = ineffective theory/explanation

34 Linguistic practices Mental theories & explanations Social-cultural: Folk psychology Inappropriate metaphors Sources of control over mental theories & explanations

35 Cognitive science is the creation science of psychology, as it struggles to maintain the position of a mind or self. Skinner (1990, p. 1209)

36 Summary and Conclusions: Scientific epistemology Cognitive theories Insufficient control by tact relation Control instead by intraverbal, echoic, textual relations Results in control by social reinforcement: conformity, obeying authority

37 Summary and Conclusions: Scientific epistemology An effective theory/explanation will deal with selection and contingencies at the levels of phylogeny, ontogeny, and the culture, rather than Supposed antecedent and mediating states or processes from a mental or cognitive domain.

38 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms [of behavior] most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, [selected]. cf. Darwin (1859, p. 490)

39 Thank you Correspondence: