Selection and B. F. Skinner: Comments on “successive Approximations to Selectionism: Skinner’s Framework for Behavior in the 1930s and 1940s,” by Leão and Neto.
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Skinner's views about selection evolved.Leão and Neto show convincingly that his selectionism was at best nascent in the 1930s and 1940s.Their arguments persuade me that no concept of selection by consequences may be found in Skinner's published writings in those decades.No one should be surprised by the authors' conclusions, because Skinner's project in the 1930s and 1940s was to establish the possibility of a natural science of behavior.He aimed to find methods and ontological commitments that would produce orderly and reliable data.To this end, he recognized the need to deal with the evident variability in behavior.Leão and Neto make the case that his initial characterization of stimuli and responses as "generic" did not necessarily assign a positive role to variability, as would be required for a selectionist account.Instead, he initially viewed variability as a problem for his project and attempted to explain it away by appealing to the impossibility of identifying all causal factors of behavior.
Author: William M. Baum
Language: English
Subfield: General Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2924433115