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For anyone really interested, operant conditioning describes being in the world. It was around long before humans existed. It's a selectionist system: neuronal

For anyone really interested, operant conditioning describes being in the world. It was around long before humans existed. It's a selectionist system: neuronal pathways are the genotype, stimulus-response conditioning is the phenotype. In simple terms. You will think of a frog because I just wrote frog. That's historical conditioning. Nothing simple about it either, in animals or humans. For example, a basic study allowed animals to self-administer cocaine. Other animals were administered the drug in the brain on the same schedule but without 'choosing' to take it. The findings showed that the areas of the brain affected differed depending on these two conditions. The role of behavior in this system of reinforcement is determinant. This is a study with rats, yet the effects of a seemingly small environmental/psychological difference changed everything about the reward experience. Another study on electrical brain stimulation showed that while animals would self-administer it, when it was automatically administered, the same animals would respond always to turn it off. Again, this is agency and it is demonstrated via a Skinnerian model.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Yes, but this only accounts for certain limited behaviors, like consumption of substances like food. Other complex behaviors, like learning, are governed by other mechanisms, probably computational models that have evolved. Again, as a basic example, operant conditioning can't explain how a newly born animal can operate extremely complex biological machinery like quadruped legs. Also, studying animal behaviors in the wild shows other mechanisms of learning, such as curiosity, self-directed play, or imitation. Imitation in particular can show one-shot learning of complex behaviors, without the need for reward mechanisms (for example, chimps and birds can learn how to operate certain mechanisms such as latches after observing someone operate it a single time). Bringing human learning into all this is mostly a red herring. We can refute operant conditioning as the complete model of how behavior is determined without mentioning humans even once. That is not to say that operant conditioning is not a piece of the puzzle - it absolutely is. But it is far from the final word.
- richardatlarge 5y ago
  I only reply here because I know some readers will be open minded and interested. There is a behavioral literature on what's called 'stimulus equivalence' - it shows how emergent, novel behavior evolves out of training the underlying relations (e.g., train a>b and b>c, then you get the emergent c>a). This happens with humans down to the level of mild retardation, but it's very hard to demonstrate it in animals. Such emergent behavior is a kind of variability - the same genotypic variability that the environment 'selects' from to reinforce complex stimulus-governed learning. If animals show observation learning, as you suggest, it's a mistake to conclude that it's not learned. As dozens of studies have shown, when the reinforcement is contingent, not of a fixed behavior, but on a conceptual behavior, that's what's learned (eg. an animal doesn't get food unless the sequence of three behaviors on a 3x3 grid are totally unique relative to the last 100 responses). Such contingencies are natural in all animal environments. An animal or person can't execute complete motor performances according to some computational scheme, unless by this you just mean neural-networks (which don't compute, they just respond). If you look at primitive reflexive responses in insects, you see that the underlying neural pathways are, at the micro level, different for each individual. In other words, the brain develops according to environmental feedback (the first matrix movie has much to teach us about this). This is not learning, but the same notion applies to learning: a four legged animal has to learn to walk, then run, and gallop, and that neuronal-based learning is governed by feedback between the organism and the environment. You don't have to call this operant conditioning, but that's all that's involved: a complex biological system adapting from environmental feedback. We overlook the power of conditioning because we think in simple terms of behavior being reinforced. As noted here -- https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-08385-002 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-08385-002 -- behavior is not what's reinforced. What is selected is a stimulus-response relationship. Think of memory. Memories are not stored, if they were, the brain would have to remember where they were stored, ad infinitum. Memory is just a tendency to respond based on history: we see a movie, we remember a movie. It's all about remembering (a kind of behavior), and you won't think of what was the first car you owned if you don't read this sentence. Without stimuli, including interior/private thoughts, memories don't really exist. Sensory deprivation shows this impact of removing stimuli. A problem with Skinner was he often simplified things too much. But not always. As seen here -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759371 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759371 -- his offering of a 'selectionist' model where the operant was the constructed product of cultural conditioning, anticipated a number of influential philosophers that few would think to tie to Skinner. As well as a number of post-modern philosphers

tsimionescu 5y ago

Yes, but this only accounts for certain limited behaviors, like consumption of substances like food. Other complex behaviors, like learning, are governed by other mechanisms, probably computational models that have evolved. Again, as a basic example, operant conditioning can't explain how a newly born animal can operate extremely complex biological machinery like quadruped legs. Also, studying animal behaviors in the wild shows other mechanisms of learning, such as curiosity, self-directed play, or imitation. Imitation in particular can show one-shot learning of complex behaviors, without the need for reward mechanisms (for example, chimps and birds can learn how to operate certain mechanisms such as latches after observing someone operate it a single time). Bringing human learning into all this is mostly a red herring. We can refute operant conditioning as the complete model of how behavior is determined without mentioning humans even once. That is not to say that operant conditioning is not a piece of the puzzle - it absolutely is. But it is far from the final word.

richardatlarge 5y ago
I only reply here because I know some readers will be open minded and interested. There is a behavioral literature on what's called 'stimulus equivalence' - it shows how emergent, novel behavior evolves out of training the underlying relations (e.g., train a>b and b>c, then you get the emergent c>a). This happens with humans down to the level of mild retardation, but it's very hard to demonstrate it in animals. Such emergent behavior is a kind of variability - the same genotypic variability that the environment 'selects' from to reinforce complex stimulus-governed learning. If animals show observation learning, as you suggest, it's a mistake to conclude that it's not learned. As dozens of studies have shown, when the reinforcement is contingent, not of a fixed behavior, but on a conceptual behavior, that's what's learned (eg. an animal doesn't get food unless the sequence of three behaviors on a 3x3 grid are totally unique relative to the last 100 responses). Such contingencies are natural in all animal environments. An animal or person can't execute complete motor performances according to some computational scheme, unless by this you just mean neural-networks (which don't compute, they just respond). If you look at primitive reflexive responses in insects, you see that the underlying neural pathways are, at the micro level, different for each individual. In other words, the brain develops according to environmental feedback (the first matrix movie has much to teach us about this). This is not learning, but the same notion applies to learning: a four legged animal has to learn to walk, then run, and gallop, and that neuronal-based learning is governed by feedback between the organism and the environment. You don't have to call this operant conditioning, but that's all that's involved: a complex biological system adapting from environmental feedback. We overlook the power of conditioning because we think in simple terms of behavior being reinforced. As noted here -- https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-08385-002 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-08385-002 -- behavior is not what's reinforced. What is selected is a stimulus-response relationship. Think of memory. Memories are not stored, if they were, the brain would have to remember where they were stored, ad infinitum. Memory is just a tendency to respond based on history: we see a movie, we remember a movie. It's all about remembering (a kind of behavior), and you won't think of what was the first car you owned if you don't read this sentence. Without stimuli, including interior/private thoughts, memories don't really exist. Sensory deprivation shows this impact of removing stimuli. A problem with Skinner was he often simplified things too much. But not always. As seen here -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759371 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759371 -- his offering of a 'selectionist' model where the operant was the constructed product of cultural conditioning, anticipated a number of influential philosophers that few would think to tie to Skinner. As well as a number of post-modern philosphers