FREE ESSAY ON SKINNER'S OPERANT BEHAVIOUR

SKINNER'S OPERANT BEHAVIOUR

B.F. Skinner's
OPERANT BEHAVIOURISM 
and 
SELECTION BY CONSEQUENCES
~ a critical assessment ~
Reproduction was itself a first consequence, and it led, through natural selection, to
the evolution of cells, organs, and organisms which reproduced themselves under
increasingly diverse conditions. What we call behavior evolved as a set of functions
furthering the interchange between organism and environment.
-B.F. Skinner, Selection by Consequences-
PHIL 225/02-1
First paper - 00/10/19
Known to some as the most influential American psychologist, B.F. Skinner was born in
1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Attempting to further psychology's quest for an
accurate and comprehensive science of the mind, he produced some very rational and
innovative writings; tackling problems that have stumped mankind since the beginning. We
will examine his philosophies on the evolution of behaviour through selection by
consequences.
Around 1920, behaviourists seemed to have established what they thought made sense of
human behaviour by composing them into two laws. The first explains the unconditioned
reflexes that produce involuntary reactions by our bodies. Direct actions that bypass
consideration, also known as biological wiring. The second law explained the phenomena of
conditioned reflexes that, although aren't part of our original reflexes, can be learned
and stored into memory. Similar to the first law but it included new reflexes such as
Pavlov's dog salivating when the associated bell was rung. 
Although these laws made perfect sense, they were found to be lacking. They didn't, and
couldn't, explain manifestations of new responses to old stimuli. How did they plan on
explaining new inspiration or goal-oriented action of any kind if all we do is react in
the same way to stimuli every time? How did a soccer player first conceive of trying to
put a corner kick directly into the net if it had never been done before? How did
Beethoven write music if he had no stimuli to respond to? Why did Ghandi go on a hunger
strike if his natural response was to eat when he was hungry? Skinner thought that by
examining these phenomena from an evolutionary standpoint we could better make sense of
the psychology of behaviourism. 
The law of survival of the fittest best conveys this relation of evolution to behaviour.
All humans born with an evolutionary advantage over others would lead easier and more
successful lives, would therefore die at a slower rate than the rest, and eventually
become the majority and replace the old. They would pass on their genes, which were
better suited to survival under those circumstances. Through this process of selection,
all species evolve, allowing only the strongest to survive.
In the same way that nature evolves, Skinner postulated that our behaviour evolves, both
directly and indirectly. First, by natural selection people who are born with a behaviour
more suited to surviving, with characteristics such as foresight, skepticism, diplomacy
and persistence, will most likely survive better than people born with characteristics
like close-mindedness, weak impulse control and laziness for example. 
Second, by recognizing the effects of our responses to stimuli as desirable or
undesirable, and therefore reinforcing our responses, those positive consequential
responses would become more frequent and likely in the future, and those negative
consequential responses would become less popular. Imagine that a small child throws his
dish on the floor and his mother proceeds to scold him with harsh words in a strong and
unpleasant tone of voice. The child will then associate throwing the dish on the floor
with his mother's reaction. His association will strengthen every time he throws his dish
on the floor until the day he remembers her reaction before throwing his dish and stops
himself to avoid her response. (Being somewhat of a stingy idealist, Skinner was against
negative reinforcement and would not have used this example)
With this in mind Skinner added a new variable to the two original laws of behaviour: the
consequential response. He used the term operant to define the response to stimuli in
terms of past memory of consequences to similar responses to similar stimulus. He
therefore tried to explain (and succeeded in my opinion) that response to stimuli could
be an involuntary reflex or a learned reaction based on memory. 
This result goes to justifying reaction to a new stimulus as well. If the subject does
not recognize the stimulus, he (meaning he or she) will be confused and perhaps not be
clear on how to react. But the next time a similar situation arises, he will remember the
consequences of his response the last time and make a better, more educated, decision.
Estimating the probability of certain responses over others using this reinforcing
stimulus concept, he believed he could better predict the outcome of a given situation. 
Although this did help the explanation of human behaviour it might not have been as
complete as he thought. Joseph Scandura, a professor in Structural Learning and
Instructional Science at the University of Pennsylvania, criticized Skinners confidence
in his predicting abilities when he said Skinner gets so involved in predicting specific
responses that he rarely (if ever) gets around to explaining why humans routinely learn
simultaneously to perform entire classes of totally different responses. This is true in
my opinion. Although we may learn which response is the best for a given dilemma, we also
learn from our actions (and the actions of others) that we have the option of making a
different decision for our own reasons. We might desire a consequence that may not be so
obviously positive. This is in agreement with Flanagan's criticism that Skinner too often
refuses to take into account mental causations of action. 
With a given stimulus, such as a drunk trying to start a fight with you in a bar, and
referring to past experience as a guide, you would most likely deduct that walking away
would give the best outcome. But the point is that depending on the events leading up to
this point, you may decide to stay and fight, or make friends, or perhaps do something
loony like stay but not defend yourself and take a beating. The mind selects a response
based on a desired consequence but without examining the mental state, the desired
consequence cannot be obviously determined. For example: even after the child has learned
that he will be punished for throwing his dish he may decide to throw anyway with desired
consequence of pissing off his mother. This point was well stated by Bo Dahlbom, a
professor in the Department of the Theory and Philosophy of Science at Umea University in
Sweden, when he said What good will the long neck do the giraffe if its teeth are not
strong enough to chew the leaves, or its stomach not strong enough to digest them?
Selection by consequences is not a process determined by the environment alone; it is the
combination of organism and environment that does the selecting.
To delve even further into the problem of response in the form of selection by
consequences, let us examine another objection to the simplicity of Skinners view.
Jonathan Schull, a psychology professor at Haverford College (book doesn't say where),
suggested that thought processes themselves involve selection by consequences; and are
selected by mental and environmental consequences; Schull explained that before acting
one experiments mentally within the situation and decides on a course of action depending
on the consequences which have been imagined. I agree. Selection by consequence is a
natural part of every function we perform, but it is not a straightforward case of
positive reinforcement resulting in good behaviour, as Skinner would have us believe. 
One could even go one step further and say that our mental capacities may once have had
no organized method of selecting one action over another, but overtime, by learning from
trial and error, the human brain opted for a successful system of consequential
selection. Which is to say that our brains consequentially selected to select by
consequences, adapting to a world of otherwise overstimulation, therefore giving us a
potential capacity for consideration and effective decision making.
This is all to say that Skinnerian psychology, although ahead of the behaviouristic
thinkings that preceded him, lack in grounded applicability to a species as mentally
complex as the human race is. 
(P.S. In relation to the quote at that precedes my analysis, I wholeheartedly disagree.
Behaviour is now a set of functions that primarily furthers the interchange between
organisms themselves, and secondarily furthers the interchange between organism and
environment. In his defense perhaps his view was more applicable at the beginning of
evolution)
Endnotes
1. Flanagan, p.83
2. Flanagan, p.105
3. Flanagan, p.105
4. Flanagan, p.105
5. Flanagan, p.108
6. Flanagan, p.108
7. Joseph M. Scandura - New wine in old glasses, 
p.267 from The Selection of Behavior
8. Flanagan, p.84
9. Bo Dahlbom - Skinner, selection, and self-control, 
p.30 from The Selection of Behavior
10. Jonathan Schull - Selectionism, mentalisms, and behaviorism, 
p.64 from The Selection of Behavior
Bibliography
1. The Science of the Mind (2nd Ed.). 
By Owen Flanagan, 1991, M.I.T.
2. The Selection of Behavior, The Operant Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner: Comments and
Consequences. 
Edited by Catani and Harnad, 1988, Cambridge University Press.
Bibliography
Bibliography
1. The Science of the Mind (2nd Ed.). 
By Owen Flanagan, 1991, M.I.T.
2. The Selection of Behavior, The Operant Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner: Comments and
Consequences. 
Edited by Catani and Harnad, 1988, Cambridge University Press.