Recent Issues. Chapter 11: A New Preface to Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Quote 4

“Natural selection prepares an organism only for a future that resembles the selecting past. That is a serious limitation, and to some extent it was corrected by the evolution of a process through which a different kind of consequence could select additional behavior during the lifetime of the individual. The process is called operant conditioning and the selecting consequence a reinforcer.” (pp. 114-115)