Re: The animal, not the environment, controls behavior.


Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
JGCASEY wrote:
Michael Olea wrote:
JGCASEY wrote:

...

I know it is a Skinnerian idea that seeing is behavior
but I have never been able to see that myself.
Yeah, it is not immediately intuitive. I was not advocating
anyone buy into the idea, just that it is worth taking out
for a test drive. Another vista, change of scenary...

Seeing does involve behavior as the eyes are moved about
to collect information and this may be guided by innate
and learned stimulus responses. But I see seeing as the
use of that collected information.
This is jonesing for a question - what is "the use of
collected information"? What information comes to be
collected, and how does this vary with experience?


The animal collects information that is useful to the animal
because the animal, not the environment, finds the information
collecting and the information collected as rewarding. The
animal, not the environment, uses that information to seek
further rewards. Without those changes in the animal nothing
happens.

It is the animal, not the enviromental, that decides what visual
cues to use to control eye movements along with any innate
determinates.


...

We also use our expectations and assumptions about
spatial relationships to decide where to look next.
Yes, and those expectations are, by and large, learned
- they have come under "stimulus control".

But it is not a one way control situation.

The environment alone does not predict the animal behavior.

Each animal, in the same environment, will behave and "come
under stimulus control" according to its internal makeup.

Sure you can see what parts of the environment the *animal
chooses to respond to* and then claim those parts of the
environment are controlling the animal. But then you have
to explain why environment e excerts one kind of control
on animal rat and another kind of control on animal pigeon.

You can claim that the dog is under "stimulus control" of
the whistle or you can claim that the dog has internally
associated the whistle with an internally determined reward.

If an animal seeks or avoids a particular stimulus it is the
animal, not the particular stimulus, that is determing the
behavior given a particular stimulus. The animal makes that
association and therefore is best seen as the controller.

--
JC



Semantic argument: depends on definition of "control."

You think of "control" as a asymmetrical relationship. I don't. But it
took me a while to realise that "A controls B" is equivalent to "B
controls A." I had the first glimmering when i was teaching driver
education. In the car.



Is this type of overly-simplistic generalization indicative of
behaviorist thinking? Maybe better to use Skinner's words "all
responsibility inheres to the environment", instead. No
overly-simplistic generalization there. Just the facts, mam.

.

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