Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Annotated Bibliography | Class on Nature of Mind
These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
|
Selective Behavior Other psychologists
contributed, directly or indirectly, to the connectionist model of the brain.
In the 1920s behaviorist scientists such as the Russian physiologist Ivan
Pavlovand the US psychologist Burrhus
Skinnerwere influential in emphasizing the simple but pervasive law of
learning through conditioning: if an unconditioned stimulus (e.g., a bowl of
meat) that normally causes an unconditioned response (e.g., the dog salivates)
is repeatedly associated with a conditioned stimulus (e.g., a bell), the
conditioned stimulus (the bell) will eventually cause the unconditioned
response (the dog salivates) without any need for the unconditioned stimulus
(the bowl of meat). Behaviorists came to believe
that all forms of learning could be reduced to conditioning phenomena. To
Skinner,all learned behavior is the
result of selective reinforcement of random responses. Mental states (what
goes on in our minds) have no effect on our actions. Skinner did not deny the
existence of mental states, he simply denied that they explain behavior. A
person does what she does because she has been "conditioned" to do
that, not because her mind decided so. Skinner noticed a similarity between
reinforcement and natural selection: random mutations are "selected"
by the environment, and random behavior is also selected by the environment. A
random action can bring reward (from the environment) that will cause
reinforcement and therefore will increase the chances that the action is repeated
in the future. An action that does not bring reward will not be repeated. The environment determines
which behavior is learned, just like the environment determines which species
evolve. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Inside The Brain" | Back to the index of all chapters |
| 
| 
| 
|
