NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/2113

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Date:         Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:58:05 -0500
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Subject:      Who's got the generative model?
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Subj:   Who's got the generative model?

[FROM: Dennis Delprato (930111)]

>Greg Williams (930109)

>>Bill Powers (930108.0800)

I believe the history of science shows that worthwhile new
ideas advance when they are contrasted to previous ones
that workers find of value.  For this reason, I am enthusiastic
about Greg Williams's recent attempts to push some basic
operant theoretical accounts to the limit vis-a-vis PCT.

>>But he [Skinner] was fixated on environmental control of
>>behavior, and was forced to conclude that behavior is controlled
>>by its consequences, even though the only CLEAR relationship he
>>could see was that of consequences being controlled by behavior.
>>I have always considered this to be his most intellectually
>>dishonest ploy.

>You have to remember that he construed current control of consequences by
>behavior (which he freely admitted) as itself having "come under the control"
>of the organisms' history -- of consequences in the past.

And through which mechanisms does this history operate?  The
operant theorist is forced to stay descriptive.  Fear of mysterious
nonspatiotemporal inner processes leads them to posit no
underlying process.  Admirable perhaps when all that was
available was mysterious.  Wide open territory for PCT.

>>From another standpoint, the behaviorist COULDN'T characterize
>>the experimental setup correctly. To do so would be to see that
>>the stimulus is not an independent variable. The assumption is
>>that the stimulus varies, and as a consequence of that the
>>response varies. To measure the response, one arbitrarily varies
>>the stimulus, so the stimulus has a known value or pattern that
>>is independent of the behavior. If the stimulus is defined so it
>>depends on the response, it's impossible to perform this
>>manipulation (without breaking any actual feedback loop that's
>>present).

>I think you are putting words into the mouths of at least some behaviorists
>(including Skinner), but if you can produce some documentation to support your
>claim about what they say, I'm ready to be corrected. A while back, I posted
>some quotes from Skinner which contradict the notion that he thought a
>stimulus could not be affected by the responding organism. Note that even in a
>feedback situation, the stimulus can be manipulated to a degree, because
>control isn't perfect.

The trouble may be that they stop with a description of the
experimental set up (i.e., procedure).  They take the procedure
(e.g., S dee-Response-Reinforcer, coupled with deprivation or
the like) sufficient for explanation.  Incorporation of a
control system account requires that one go beyond the obvious
details of the procedure, including history of reinforcement and
verbal statements that "feedback is involved."

>>Skinner saw the reinforcer as a consequence of behavior. But
>>being unable to give up the idea that the environment controls,
>>he then treated this consequence as an independent variable, and
>>said that it controls the behavior. To be sure it controls only
>>FUTURE behavior, but with his blind spot he never saw the obvious
>>implication: that the BEHAVIOR which produces this consequence
>>controls ("controls" meaning influences) the future behavior via
>>the apparatus. To see this loop whole would have meant giving up
>>the concept that the environment determines behavior, and that,
>>above all, he was unwilling to do.

>Seeing the whole loop, with BOTH environmental and organismic influences on
>output, is EXACTLY the middle way between environmentalism and organismism
>which I was arguing for some time back.

Bill is right.  Skinner always came back to the environment as the
ultimate independent variable.  Although he and many followers have
verbally stated that environment determines response and response
determines environment (stimulus), in practice, this has amounted
to nothing.  True, some followers (e.g., Baum) have gone a bit
farther than did Skinner, but Bill can tell us about these.

>>No, the behaviorist will hell "Foul!" when I point out that the
>>so-called stimulus is not an independent variable.

>That's what I'm not so sure about. I wish we had a real behaviorist on the
>net. Maybe Dennis could speak to this issue?

Some behavior analysts are getting away from stimulus as true
independent variable and response as true dependent variable.
BUT, as with above comment, they do not go anywhere with this
thinking.  Close but so far.

In my opinion, the major stumbling block for behavior analysts
as far as PCT is the requirement to take S-R and R-S as
SIMULTANEOUS.  This is very difficult for two basic reasons:
(1) our culture teaches lineal thinking and (2) the damn
procedure (itself a product of lineal biases) is lineal
(ess D then R then reinforcer).  The only way to get S-R
and R-S simultaneous is via theory, then this poses the added
difficulty of changing the status of the response consequence.

Hope I've said something to help Greg.  My perspective suggests
there is a great opportunity for one to prepare an interesting
paper entitled something like "From Feedback Functions to
Perceptual Control Systems."

Dennis Delprato