May 2017
About Behaviorism, Chapter 7: Thinking, Quote 13
“Explicit ways of making it more likely that original behavior will occur by introducing “mutations” are familiar to writers, artists, composers, mathematicians, scientists, and inventors. Either the setting or the topography of behavior may be deliberately varied.” (p. 127) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 7: Thinking, Quote 12
“. . . at first glance, there seems to be no room for chance in any completely determined system . . . Yet the biographies of writers, composers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, and inventors all reveal the importance of happy accidents in the production of original behavior.” (pp. 126-127). Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 7: Thinking, Quote 7
“Abstracting and forming concepts are likely to be called cognitive, but they also involve contingencies of reinforcement. We do not need to suppose that an abstract entity or concept is held in the mind; a subtle and complex history of reinforcement has generated a special kind of stimulus control.” (p. 117) Subscribe to RSS […]
About Behaviorism, Chapter 7: Thinking, Quote 6
“What is involved in attention is not a change of stimulus or of receptors but the contingencies underlying the process of discrimination . . . Discrimination is a behavioral process: the contingencies, not the mind, make discriminations. (p. 117) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 7: Thinking, Quote 5
“Covert behavior is also easily observed and by no means unimportant, and it was a mistake for methodological behaviorism and certain versions of logical positivism and structuralism to neglect it simply because it was not “objective.” It would also be a mistake not to recognize its limitations.” (p. 115) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 12
“The origin of behavior is not unlike the origin of species . . . There are many behavioral processes generating “mutations,” which are then subject to the selective action of contingencies of reinforcement.” (p. 112) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 11
“A child does seem to acquire a verbal repertoire at an amazing speed, but we should not overestimate the accomplishment or attribute it to invented linguistic capacities. A child may “learn to use new word” as the effect of a single reinforcement, but it learns to do nonverbal things with comparable speed.” (p. 111) […]
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 10
“The transformational rules which generate sentences acceptable to a listener may be of interest, but even so it is a mistake to suppose that verbal behavior is generated by them . . . This is a linguist’s reconstruction after the fact. (p. 110) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 8
“A characteristic feature of verbal behavior, directly attributable to special contingencies of reinforcement is abstraction. It is the listener, not the speaker, who takes practical action with respect to the stimuli controlling a verbal response, and as a result the behavior of the speaker may come under the control of properties of a stimulus to […]
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 6
“. . . meaning is not properly regarded as a property either of a response or a situation but rather of the contingencies responsible for both the topography of behavior and the control exerted by stimuli.” (pp. 100-101) Subscribe to RSS feed here
About Behaviorism, Chapter 6: Verbal Behavior, Quote 5
“Apart from an occasional relevant audience, verbal behavior requires no environmental support. One needs a bicycle to ride a bicycle, but not to say “bicycle.” As a result, verbal behavior can occur on almost any occasion.” (p. 100) Subscribe to RSS feed here