Skinner

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 11:15, jolly wrote:
> "The behaviourists saw all human actions (both
> physiological and psychological) in terms of stimulus and response. 
> That is  what behaviourism meant in the context of experimental
> science"


> That is another mostly incorrect and simplifed assumption. If you have
> managed to pass Psych. 101 or read Beyond Freedom and Dignity you
> learn that Skinner departed from Watson and Pavlov and strict S-R
> theory; Skinner postulated the "operant", which is sort of a range of
> possible responses to given stimuli within certain environments, which
> may differ  depending on environmental factors. 

including individual differences between subjects.

I thought Robert was allowing for variation in response from a given
stimulus. That's why I basically agreed with his statement. 

I can't even remember if I passed Pysch. 101. 

>  (Yet S-R still does account for much unconscious human action). 
> Skinner acknowledged that predicting consistent human operants, and
> conditioning the "proper" operant  could be very difficult. Yet with
> well-defined environmental controls and conditioning the behaviorist
> schema can be made to work quite effectively. -A behaviorist- oriented
> psychologist such as Jensen, who also took into account genetic
> factors, derived very accurate measurements of human performance,
> though his findings were not very  PC..
>  
>  
> "Respondent reactions like salivations and eye-blinks,
>  which can be dealt with reasonably well by classical
> conditioning theory, are indeed reactions which can
> be correlated with stimuli. But they are not, strictly
> speaking, actions; they are events that happen to us.
> When, however, we pass to Skinner's operants, to
> things done as instrumental to an end, we are entering
> the sphere of action proper. Such actions, at the human
> level at any rate, cannot either be described or ex-
> plained as mere movements exhibited at the reflex
> level." 
> 
> 
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