## Video Content & Description  ## Transcript **0:00** · All right, I'm going to try a little experiment in the history of this book club thing because I suspect we're going to be doing a lot more book clubs and uh I want to make them accessible and I want to figure out the best way for both others and myself to participate and learn the most and um have it be a good time. So, what I'm going to do is read the assigned reading this week, which is chapters four to six BF Skinner about behaviorism. **0:23** · And uh keep in mind that like I might be a little bit out of practice reading aloud, but another uh thing here is I want to practice my articulation, my vocabulary, and my ability to read out loud smoothly because that's I think something I'd want to be doing with like kids one day. **0:41** · Um good habit for anyone to pick up. Uh but yeah, if you don't like uh listening to me read because it's kind of choppy at first, absolutely no problem. Um, there will probably be I'm I'm going to try to have like also a discussion, but I'm going to read this out loud and I'm also going to kind of go over my observations as I go. Um, and if you would kind of rather like a more barren uh reading of it on our our Jellyfin server, we do have just like the plain audio book. **1:09** · Um, but I kind of find it easier to for technical manuals like this just read along um in the ebook. **1:18** · Okay. So, uh, chapter four, operant behavior. The process of operant conditioning described in the preceding chapter is simple enough. When a bit of behavior has the kind of consequence called reinforcing, it is more likely to occur again. A positive reinforcer strengthens any behavior and produces it that produces it. A glass of water is positively reinforcing when we are thirsty. Uh, and if we draw and drink a glass of water, we are more likely to do so again on similar occasions. A negative reinforcer strengthens any behavior that reduces or terminates it. **1:49** · When we take off a shoe that is pinching, the reduction in pressure is negatively reinforcing and we are more likely to do so again when a shoe pinches. The process supplements natural selection. Important consequences of behavior which could not play a role in evolution because they were not sufficiently stable features of the environment are made effective through operant conditioning during the lifetime of the individual whose power in dealing with his world is thus vastly increased. **2:13** · That is fascinating. Like we can't we can't evolve all of these uh behaviors, but we've evolved kind of like a mechanism that like allows us to learn to do things and like therefore yeah that that is really cool. The vastly increased um yeah okay the feeling of reinforcers feelings of reinforcers. The fact that operant conditioning like all physiological processes is a product of natural selection throws light on the question of what kinds of consequences are reinforcing and why. **2:43** · It is commonly said that a thing is reinforcing because it feels, looks, sounds, smells or tastes good. But from the point of view of evolutionary theory, a susceptibility to reinforcement is due to its survival value and not to any associated feelings. **2:59** · The point may be made for the reinforcers which play part in the conditioning of reflexes. **3:05** · Salivation is elicited by certain chemical stimuli on the tongue as other secretions are elicited by other stimuli in later stages of digestion because the effect is contributed to the survival of the species. A person may report that a substance tastes good but it does not elicit salivation because it tastes good. Similarly, we pull our hand away from a hot object but not because the object feels painful. The behavior occurs because appropriate mechanisms have been selected in the course of evolution. **3:34** · The feelings are merely collateral products of the conditions responsible for the behavior. **3:41** · That is interesting to think about that. So you're not doing something because of the feeling. You're doing something because it has been reinforced or punished. The feeling is just collateral. **3:56** · I'm not sure like I fully buy that yet, but let's go on. Uh the same thing may be said of operant reinforcers. Salt and sugar are critical requirements and individuals who are especially likely to be reinforced by them uh have more effectively learned and remembered where and how to get them and therefore been more likely to survive and transmit the susceptibility to the species. It has often been pointed out that competition for a mate tends to select the more skillful and powerful members of the species, but it also selects those more susceptible to sexual reinforcement. **4:27** · As a result, the human species, like other species, is powerfully reinforced by sugar, salt, and sexual contact. This is very different from saying that these things reinforce because they taste or feel good. **4:42** · Gotcha. I see. Yeah, I I see what he's going for. I think um like obviously if you weren't reinforced by sexual re like sexual reproduction you wouldn't pass your genes on. So um feelings have dominated the discussion of rewards and punishment for centuries. **5:02** · One reason is that the conditions we report when we say that a taste, odor, sound, picture or piece of music is delicious, pleasant or beautiful are part of the immediate situation. whereas the effect they may have in changing our behavior is much less salient and much less likely to be seen. **5:22** · Um let me one reason that the conditions we report when we say that a taste, odor, sound picture or piece of music is delicious, pleasant or beautiful. That's I I feel like that's a little too many examples and it crowds out my ability to think but okay. So like all the things we experience and the feelings we have about them are part of the immediate situation whereas the effect they may have in changing our behavior is much less salient and much less likely to be seen **5:52** · because the verbal environment cannot establish good contingencies and contingencies are the relationship between a behavior and its consequences. **6:01** · So, I guess what he's saying there is like it's tough to know like like it's it's you see a painting and you're like, "Shit, dude, that's a fire painting." and you immediately experience that as good, but it's kind of less obvious that you've been like kind of programmed a tiny bit to like um **6:23** · seeing a certain kind of painting or um and and like the delay there is like um is like bigger I guess and also the verbal environment cannot establish good contingencies like um I'm not sure what he means by verbal environment. **6:43** · and much less likely to be seen because the verbal environment cannot establish good contingencies. Yeah. Um I'm not totally sure what he means. Like I'm going to move on. I'm assuming he's just talking about like uh I would The reason I'm confused is I think this would also extrapolate to like seeing a painting or something like the contingencies aren't immediately clear. It's like it's not like you received food when you were hungry, you know? It's not like a really strong primary reinforcer. **7:14** · It's kind of like a more fuzzy, you know, like I don't need to see a painting to survive, but like um the feeling I have maybe is influencing me in a subtle way that's hard to predict just because of like the delays and it's like not super not a super strong reinforcer. Okay. Okay. So according to the philosophy of hedenism, people act to achieve pleasure and escape from or avoid pain. And the effects referred to in Edward L. **7:40** · Thorndikeke's famous law of effect were feelings satisfied or annoyed. The verb to like is a synonym of to be pleased with. We say if you like and if you please more or less interchangeably. **7:53** · Some of these terms refer to other effects of reinforcers. Satisfying, for example, is related to satiation, but most refer to the bodily states generated by reinforcers. **8:06** · Okay? It is sometimes possible to discover what reinforcers a person simply reinforces a person simply by asking him what he likes or how he feels about things. What we learn is similar to what we learn by testing the effect of a reinforcer. He is talking about what has reinforced him in the past or what he sees himself going for. But this does not mean that his feelings are casually causally effective. Um uh I've lost my place. Damn scrolling. **8:40** · Uh his answers his answer reports a collateral effect. I'm gonna quickly there should be a definition. **8:53** · I kind of understand the word collateral. So, let me let me think of what I think collateral is before I look it up. So, collateral is like an effect uh but not like the main effect of something. It's like a kind of side effect that's maybe not intended. **9:11** · Something pledged as a security for repayment or Okay, that's one person having the same descent in family as another by a different addition but subordinate secondary. Okay, I guess that's kind of what I'm thinking of. **9:27** · Um, so what we learned is similar to what we learned by testing the effect of a reinforcer. He's talking about what he has reinforced, what has reinforced him in the past or what he sees himself going for. But this does not mean that his feelings are causally effective. His answer reports a collateral effect. **9:50** · Ah, right. Because the feelings you have are not like they they are a collateral effect of the behavior. Like you eat the carrot when you're hungry and you feel things about that, but it's not the feelings are collateral. You're not doing that because you feel a certain way. You're doing it and you feel a certain way. Like that is weird. That is that's a weird reframing to think of things. Like I I get what he's saying now and I'm still like not totally convinced. I don't know. **10:21** · Um I I have to think about my own examples here, I guess. Um the expression of I like Brahms. I love Brahms. I enjoy Brahms. **10:33** · And Brahms pleases me might easily be taken to refer to feelings, but they can be regarded as statements that the music of Brahms is reinforcing, right? Because sure, because the feelings are like collateral. They're kind of related. A person of whom the expressions are true will listen to the radio when it plays bronze rather than turn it off. Buy the buy and play records of Brahms and go to concerts where Brahms is played. The expressions have antonyms. I dislike Brahms. I hate Brahms. I detest Brahms and Brahms bores me. **11:04** · And a person for whom Brahms is thus aversive will act to avoid or escape from hearing him. These expressions do not refer to instances of reinforcement but rather to a general susceptibility or lack of it. **11:19** · Um, right. The illusion is what is the illusion to what is felt needs to be carefully examined. There we go, Skinner. Come on. Uh, feelings are especially plausible when the experience is directed toward a living person. The statement, I love my wife, seems to be a report of feelings, but it also involves a probability of action. We are disposed to do to a person we love the things he likes or loves to have done. **11:49** · We are not disposed to do to a person we dislike or especially to a person we hate the things he likes or loves to have done. **11:57** · On the contrary, we are disposed to do things we are disposed to do the things he dislikes or hates to have done. With respect to a person with whom we interact, then to love is to behave in ways having certain kinds of effects, possibly when accompanying um which may be felt interesting. Skinner just looks at things in such a different way. Like I would not it it it's it's really cool. **12:25** · He's kind of like the programmer of uh of humans and and just everything I guess animals too. Like he he looks at this in such a scientific um this is what love actually is. And uh I can't say that I disagree with him. Like there's definitely I think some kind of and he writes in the first chapters like misconceptions where this is like dehumanizing to talk about but I I really don't think so at all. **12:52** · It's like it's kind of like how we talk about like the scientifically like the the mating habits of some animal you know it's like we are just animals at the end of the day. Um we behave in certain ways and it it doesn't really make sense to not talk about it. Um, okay. Wants, needs, desires, and wishes. **13:16** · Some mentalistic terms refer to conditions which affect both the susceptibility to reinforcement and the strength of already reinforced behavior. **13:24** · We use want to describe a shortage. A hungry man wants food in the simple sense that food is wanting. I love how he uses uh the word wanting. I've seen that several times and I want to make sure I'm wanting. I mean, I It's It's interesting like the I guess like food is wanting. It's It's interesting to like give the u the verb to like inanimate object. **13:54** · But yeah, I haven't really heard that used before. **13:59** · But Skinner is wicked articulate from watching that video. He uh he Yeah, he's a kind of a language Chad. **14:08** · uh needs originally meant violence, force, restraint, or compulsion. And we will still make a distinction between wanting to act because of positively reinforced consequences and needing to act because not acting will have aversive consequences. But for most purposes, the terms are interchangeable. **14:26** · We say that a car needs gasoline and much much less idiomatically that gasoline is wanting. Nobody says that, Skinner. I'm sorry. That's uh nobody says gasoline is wanting. **14:40** · Let me make sure I know what idiomatic means. Using contained or denoted expressions that are natural to the native speaker, appropriate to the style of art or music associated with the particular using contained or denoted expressions that are natural um or much less idiomatically the gas. **15:02** · Okay. Okay. Okay. He is saying he's basically like, "Yeah, that would be \[ \_\_ \] weird if you said that gasoline is wanting." But to say that a person wants to get out suggests aversive control. The significant fact is that a person who needs or wants food is particularly likely to be reinforced by food and that he is particularly likely to engage in any behavior which has previously been reinforced with food. A person under aversive control is particularly likely to be reinforced if he escapes and to engage in any behavior which has led to escape. **15:34** · Okay. **15:36** · If we know the level of deprivation or aversive stimulation, we can make we can more accurately predict how reinforcing a given event will be um and how reinforcing a given event will be and how likely it is that a person will engage in relevant behavior. The knowledge has long used for purposes of control. People have been made hungry so that they will work for food and so that they can be reinforced with food as they have been made miserable so that they will act in ways which reduce their misery. Okay. Yeah, that's that's not great. **16:08** · Uh an event is not reinforcing because it reduces a need. Food is reinforcing when it does not satiate. **16:17** · Uh interesting. Wait, an event is not reinforcing because it reduces a need. **16:22** · Food is reinforcing even when it does not satiate. And deprivation can be changed in ways which are not reinforcing. **16:32** · Deprivation can be changed in ways they're not like is like are you hungry and you eat like a a small pepper or something and you're like still hungry? **16:39** · I mean an event is not reinforcing because it reduces a need. Food is reinforcing even when it does not satiate. **16:50** · But is it possible for food to not satiate? I mean, like, I guess if you're eating celery, but like, isn't that satiating you a little bit? **16:59** · The relation between a state of deprivation and the strength of appropriate behavior is presumably due to survival value. If behavior leading to ingestion were strong at all times, a person would grossly overeat and use his energies inefficiently. **17:15** · Um I guess okay so maybe you're full you're eating food and you're not being satiated because you're already satiated and deprivation can be changed in ways which are not reinforcing. **17:32** · I'm not exactly sure what he means here. **17:37** · um behavior relating to ingestion are strong at all times a person. Yeah, I guess it it comes and goes. It is a mistake to say that food is reinforcing because we feel hungry or because we feel the need for food or that we are more likely to engage in food reinforced behaviors because we feel hungry. It is the condition felt as hunger which would have been selected in the evolution of the species as most immediately involved in operant reinforcement. **18:09** · I'm still okay. So, I I I'm like kind of still a little bit not sure what he's getting at here. I'm not sure I fully believe it. I need to see examples from my own life. I think um like I I believe it intellectually, like rationally, I think Skinner knows what he's talking about more than I know what I'm talking about, but um it's not like fully sinking in, if that makes sense. **18:31** · It is the condition felt as hunger which would have been selected in the evolution of the species is most immediately involved in operant reinforcement. **18:39** · So he's like all these feelings are an illusion. You're just doing things because it's for survival. **18:45** · The states associated with wanting and needing are more likely to be felt if no relevant behavior is at the moment possible. Interesting. The lover writes, "I want you or I need you when nothing else can be done." And if he is doing anything else aside from writing, it must be a matter of existing in the state which he describes with these expressions. If behavior then becomes possible, it is easy to say that it was caused by the want or need rather than by the deprivation or aversive stimulation responsible for both the behavior and the state felt. **19:16** · Okay, I'm starting to see that a little bit more with that example. like you you have this feeling that's kind of collateral of wanting like this person I want you or I need you to their lover when nothing else can be done. Um and you're just sitting around feeling that unless you like write that feeling down which is also kind of just feeling that. **19:45** · Um, if the behavior becomes possible, it is easy to say that it was caused by the want or the need rather than by the deprivation or aversive stimulation. **19:56** · Right. Right. Right. So, it's not like \[snorts\] I see. I see. So, it's not like you did this because you wanted to do it. It's because there is some behavioral stuff going on under the surface and then you those feelings have been reinforced. **20:13** · um I guess and then you kind of attribute the reason you're doing things to those feelings even though those feelings so like it's like real analysis under calculus like the behavior is what's actually making you act you think the feelings are what's making you act this is very very compelling um **20:33** · desiring longing hoping and yearning are more closely related to a current absence of appropriate behavior because they terminate when action begins I miss you can almost be thought of as a metaphor based on target practice equivalent to my behavior with respect to you as a person cannot reach its mark or I look for you and fail to find you. **20:52** · The lover in the arms of his beloved is not instantly free of wanting and needing her but he is no longer missing her or longing or yearning for her. **21:00** · Wishing is perhaps most exclusively a reference to a heightened state of deprivation or aversive stimulation when no behavior is possible. A person may wish that he could act or I wish I could go or he may wish for the consequences. **21:16** · I wish I were there. **21:19** · Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The effects of operant reinforcement are often represented as inner states or possessions. When we reinforce a person, we are said to give him a motive or incentive, but we infer the motive or the incentive from the behavior. We call a person highly motivated when all we know is that he behaves energetically. **21:40** · interesting are represented as inner states or possessions. **21:45** · So someone could be like just completely burnt out, but like if if their actions if their behavior on the surface um is the same, like how would you know? **21:56** · Depriving a person or something he needs or wants is not a forceful act and the effect builds up slowly. But states of deprivation are given a more dramatic role when they are called drives or urges. Freud saw men mercilessly driven by powerful biological forces dwelling in the depths of their mind or personality. We are said to be at the mercy of sex, hunger, hatred, even though they are said to supply the psychic energy needed for action. **22:24** · Freud's libido has been defined as emotional or psychic energy derived from primitive biological urges. These metaphors are based on aversive control. **22:34** · The coachman does drive his horses by whipping them until they move forward. **22:39** · And in the case of hunger at least, strong internal stimulation may have a similar function, but deprivation is not a driving force in is not as such deprivation as such is not a driving force. That's really interesting. Like so you could like behaviorally modify, you could use this field to uh apply like kind of modifiers to other people. Um but also we we just have these inbuilt um deprivation mechanisms to make us act. **23:11** · Mentalistic terms associated with reinforcers and with the states in which reinforcers are effective make it difficult to spot a functional difficult to spot functional relations. For example, the statement the term aggression should be restricted to behavioral motivation uh to to behavior motivated by the wish to injure is intended to make a useful distinction between behavior which is merely aggressive in form um and any part of such behavior which is omitted because it injures another person. **23:39** · But nothing is gained by speaking of the wish to injure or in particular of being motivated by a wish. When the utilitarians held that pleasure and pain were the motives influencing human behavior. They were referring to the feelings associated with consequences rather than the motives. The experimental analysis of contingencies of reinforcement puts these matters in better order. Cool. Because I am slightly confused. I'm excited for that. **24:09** · Um idea and will. The consequences would shape and maintain the behavior called an operant are not present in the setting in which a response occurs. They have become part of the history of the organism are not present in the setting in which a response occurs. **24:29** · The consequences of shape and maintain the behavior called an operant are not present in the setting in which a response occurs. **24:40** · They have become part of the history of the organism. The current setting may affect the probability of a response as we shall see in the next chapter, but it is not the only thing that does so. To alter a probability is not to elicit a response as in a reflex. **24:57** · Um, okay, there's a little bit of jargon here I'm getting caught up on. So, like what uh it it would be really nice to have the glossery on this stuff. Um, and I'm gonna kind of deliberately do a more shallow pass just for the sake of time on this one. But, um, I think the pattern for talking about these books, if anyone is listening, is like we're going to kind of read, uh, together and then like all throughout the week be talking about it and then like it'll be a very ongoing discussion. **25:27** · I want to really get deep into this stuff because I I can see there's a lot here and I'm a little confused on what he's saying there. **25:35** · um person may feel or otherwise observe some of the conditions associated with the probability that he will behave in a given way. For example, he may say that he feels like going and he wants to go and that he should like to go or that he wishes to go. Okay, Skinner, like chill out with the examples, bro. **25:55** · One of those would have been enough. The same terms are used to identify reinforcers as in saying, "I feel like a drink. I want a drink. I should like a drink." Or Like bro, \[laughter\] is he padding for words here? Uh, is it possible that the report I feel like going is close to I feel now as I have felt in the past when I have gone. **26:19** · Okay. And I want to go maybe a report of deprivation or a shortage. I wish is as we have seen probably closer to a report of a sheer probability of action. **26:32** · Whether or not a person feels or otherwise observes the likelihood of a response. The simple fact is that at some point a response occurs. **26:44** · Simple fact is that at some point a response occurs. **26:52** · person feels or otherwise observes the likelihood of a response. The simple fact is that at some point a response occurs. Gotcha. **27:03** · To distinguish an operant from an elicited reflex, we may say that the operant response is emitted. **27:10** · It may be better to say simply that it appears since emission may imply that the behavior exists inside the organism and then comes out. But this word need not mean ejection. Light is not in the hot filament before it is emitted. Okay. **27:26** · Um the principal feature is that there seems to be no necessary prior causal event. **27:35** · Okay. So, oh okay. Okay. So, to distinguish an operant from an elicited reflex, we say that the operant response is emitted. It might be better to say that it appears. Okay. Blah blah blah blah. We can get rid of the parenthetical phrase. **27:50** · um we say that the operant response is emitted. **27:55** · The principal feature is that there seems to be no necessary prior causal event. We recognize this when we say it occurred to him to go as if to say the act of going occurred to him. Idea uh is used to represent behavior in the sense we say the idea occurred to him. But in expressions like to get an idea or to borrow an idea, the word suggests an independent entity. Nevertheless, when we say I have an idea, let's try the rear door. It may be unlocked. **28:23** · What is had is the behavior of trying the rear door. When a person successfully imitates a dancing teacher, he may have said to get the idea, although what he gets is nothing more than the behavior similar to that of the teacher. **28:40** · Nor need we defer to a more than behavioral to more than behavior when we see that a person who laughs at a joke has got the point or that a person who responds appropriately to a passage in a book has got its meaning. **28:58** · H that is that's kind of interesting and a little blurry for me still but I'll read on. Um, the apparent lack of an immediate cause in operant behavior has led to the invention of an initiating event. Behavior is said to be put into play when a person wills to act. The term has a confusing history. The simple future as he will go takes on an additional meaning when we say he will go in spite of the danger. Willing is close to choosing, particularly when the choice is between acting or not acting. **29:29** · To will or to choose is evidently as unheralded as to act. **29:37** · By attributing otherwise unexplained behavior to an act of will or choice, one seems to resolve puzzlement. I don't I suspect Skinner is skeptical of this. **29:47** · That is perhaps the principal reason. **29:50** · How do you say this? **29:53** · Dare Dre. **29:55** · looking this up word hippo to be. **30:12** · Oh, to be No, no, no, no. **30:21** · Okay. **30:21** · Um that is perhaps the principal reason to be of the concept. Behavior is satisfactorily accounted for as long as we have no reason to explain the act of will. **30:41** · But the conditions which determine the form of probability of an operant are in a person's history. Since they are not conspicuously represented in the current setting, they're easily overlooked. It is then easy to believe that the will is free and that the person is free to choose. Okay. So he's saying um even though like there's not like a big old carrot to eat in front of you like you all the past times may be contributing to your behavior. Um the issue is determinism. **31:14** · The spontaneous generation of behavior has reached the same stage as the spontaneous generation of maggots and microorganisms in a pastor's day. **31:27** · What does that mean? **31:30** · Not sure what he's getting at there. Um, if someone's watching this and like wants to timestamp and like explain certain things, that would be a godsend for me. Um, freedom usually means the absence of restraint or coercion, but more comprehensively, it means a lack of any prior determination. All things that have come to be, except acts of will, have causes. Some theologians have been uh concerned for the freedom needed in order to hold a person responsible and they have not been so easily satisfied. **32:02** · So-called Armenian doctrine uh held that a person acts freely only if he has chosen to act and only if the choosing to act was brought about by another instance of choosing. Conspiciousness that causes an issue when reflex behavior is called involuntary. **32:20** · uh one is not free to sneeze or not to sneeze. The initiating cause is the pepper. Operant behavior is called voluntary, but it is not really uncaused. The cause is simply harder to spot. That is a \[ \_\_ \] brain scrambler. **32:35** · The critical clinical critical condition for the apparent exercise um of free will is positive reinforcement and the result of which a person feels free and calls himself free and says he does things as he likes or as he wants or is pleased to do. As we shall see in chapter 12, a more important point is that positively reinforced consequences do not generate avoidance or escape or any behavior designed to change the conditions in which it occurs. **33:04** · like idea will is used almost interchangeably with behavior or at least with the probability of behaving. A willingness is uh hold on my sister got home. Yeah. **33:20** · Yes. **33:24** · Whatever. I'll finish reading this chapter. **33:27** · Yeah. **33:30** · Yeah. But give me a sec. I have to finish reading a chapter. All right, that'll take care of her. **33:38** · God damn it. **33:41** · Yeah. **33:43** · Oh, sorry. I'm I'm reading a chapter right now. Um the call. **33:50** · No, my phone is muted. **33:56** · Okay. Do you mind waiting for me to finish this chapter? **34:05** · God damn it. Crosshouse conversations are the worst. Um like idea will is almost used interchangeably with behavior at least with the probability of behaving. A willingness is a readiness or likelihood. A health authority has said that the important thing is maintaining a regiment of exercise or diet uh is willpower. All he means is that the important thing is that a person continues to exercise or diet. A leader's will to power suggests behavior reinforced by economic, religious, or governmental accelerations in power. **34:36** · The statement that some people do not will because they are not afraid seems to refer to nothing more than the fact that they do not behave because they are afraid. the biological statement that the girl he was infatuated with, infatuated with, with whom he had never met, was a destructive agent, paralyzing his will, presumably um means that she paralyzed some parts of his behavior. **35:06** · Okay. A very different role uh of the will follows from its seemingly spontane spontaneity and mystery which suggests the consequences may be produced without physical action. It was with the magic of his own will that Brahman Brahma created whatever is it is by the act of will that is a p that a person is supposed to influence the fall of the dice in psychokinesis. **35:34** · What is psychokinesis? **35:36** · I mean kinetics is like I don't know psycho kinesis there's a really cool by the way um like edmology map I forget the no no no no no no no I have this project downloaded locally Actually, let me just go to my projects and list it out. Um, oh, edit tree. Check this out. This is really, really cool. So, we're on local host 2000. **36:27** · Basically, you paste the word. Oops. Um, and then you search and it shows like what it come like all the room breakdowns. Um, I think it was Matt in the server that recommended this to me and you can locally host it which is awesome. The movement of physical systems. **36:51** · Uh, this supposed ability to move objects by mental effort alone. Oh, can like telekinesis psychokinesis. That's awesome. But how is it different? **37:00** · Telekinesis. **37:03** · I'm going down a completely different etmology rabbit hole. Telinesis like what? What's the root? Ta. Ta over a distance. Oh, like telegraph. Telekinesis. Psychokinesis. Cool. Learn learn something new every day. Uh, possibility, purpose, and intention. **37:32** · Possibility, no change. **37:35** · Uh, possibly no charge is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or intention. A stimulus response formula has no answer. But operant behavior is the very field of purpose and intention. By its nature, it is directed towards the future. A person acts in order that something will happen and that order is temporal. Purpose was once commonly used as a verb and now we use propose. **38:04** · I propose to go is similar to I intend to go it instead uh if instead we speak of our purpose or intention in going. It is easy to suppose that the nouns refer to things. A good deal of misunderstanding has arisen from the fact that early representations of purpose were spatial. **38:24** · The racer's purpose is to uh reach the goal. And we play part cheesesy wow dated reference uh with the purpose of bringing our pieces home. In the mazes in which purpose behavior was once studied, organisms moved toward the place where reinforcement was to occur. **38:43** · To use a goal for purpose, what is his goal in life? is to identify it with a terminus. But it is meaningless, for example, to say that the goal, let alone the purpose of life, is death. Even though the ultimate termination is death, one does not live in order to die or with the purpose of dying. What's your very depressed whether we are speaking in terms of natural selection or operate conditioning? Goals and purposes are confused in speaking of purpose and are homing the advice. **39:12** · A mission reaches its target when its course is appropriately controlled in part by information coming from the target during its flight. Uh such a device is sometimes said to have purpose built into it. But the feedback used in guidance, the heart of cybernetics uh is not reinforcement and the mission and the missile has no purpose in the present sense. Feedback may be used in a kind of explicit goal seeking behavior as discussed in chapter eight. **39:41** · Not all consequences are reinforcing and much of the effect of those which are depends on the contingencies. Psychoanalysts have often said that a gambler's true purpose is to punish himself by losing. That is weird. It is almost always the case that the gambler eventually loses and the behavior therefore has that consequence. But it is not therefore reinforcing. **40:09** · Gambling can be demonstrated in many other species and is examined by a special schedule of reinforcement to be noted in a moment. The ultimate loss, the negative utility does not offset the effect of the schedule. The utilitarians proposed that it might be possible to measure quantities of pleasure and pain in such a way that the pleasure generated by a socially objectionable uh behavior could be offset by calculated amount of pain in the form of punishment. **40:40** · Unfortunately, the condition generated by a reinforcement and felt as pleasure is relatively insignificant in determining the quantity of behavior produced compared with the schedule of reinforcement. Okay, that's a that's a beefy sentence. **40:55** · Utilitarians proposed that it might be possible to measure quantities of pleasure and pain in such a way that the pleasure generated by socially objectionable behavior could be offset by a calculated amount of pain in the form of punishment. Unfortunately, the condition generated by a reinforcer and felt as pleasure is relatively insignificant in determining the quantity of behavior produced compared with the schedule of reinforcement. **41:23** · So, it's more Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I think I get what he's saying. Like, it's much more it it influences you much more like what uh how like close the contingencies are for like a given operant. like if you do something and it's immediately pleasurable uh like or the the feedback loop is more important the scheduling of things than the raw amount of pleasure. **41:50** · For instance, like say that you uh I guess this is a good example with like working out or brushing your teeth, you know, they're like not the most um I guess working out not not the most pleasurable thing unless you really grow to enjoy it. Um, but let's be honest, like running is kind of uncomfortable. **42:11** · We'd rather lie around. Um, but I guess like the the reinforcer is so detached there that like it's much easier to get into scrolling Instagram reels because like the schedule like while the overall pleasure isn't isn't greater, it's like much more tightly uh the schedule is is much better. um well much much more reinforcing. **42:40** · A valid distinction lies back in the statement motives and purposes are in the brain and heart of man whereas consequences are in the world of fact removes the gratuitous psychoanalyzing no \[snorts\] psychologizing. What exactly does that mean? Uh I usually horribly misspel uh psych physio wait physio physiologizing. **43:10** · Jesus physiologizing. **43:21** · That's not even coming up in my dictionary. Is it gonna come up in this physiologizing? Phys physiologizing. Jeez, it's archaic. Okay. To inquire into or theorize on natural phenomena. Physiologize because like logic physical formulate theories are explanations in accord with physiology. Uh geez that's a that's a beefy one. **44:02** · \[snorts\] Whereas consequences are in the word of fact removes the gratuitous physiologizing and the point is made that motives and purposes are in people while contingencies of reinforcement are in the environment. But motives and purposes are at best the effects of reinforcements. **44:20** · The change wrought by I love the word rot by reinforcement is often spoken of as the acquisition of purpose or intention and we are said to give a person a purpose by reinforcing him in a given way. These are convenient expressions but the basic fact is that when a person is aware of his purpose he is feeling or observing introspectively a condition produced by reinforcement. **44:44** · \[snorts\] Seeking or looking for something seems to have a particularly strong orientation towards the future. We learn to look for an object when we acquire behavior which commonly has the consequence of discovering it. Thus, to look for a match is to look in a manner previously reinforced by finding matches. **45:05** · To seek help is to act in the ways which have in the past led to help. If past consequences have not been very explicit, we are likely to look in vague and unproductive ways. so relatable. **45:17** · People can usually say what they are looking for and why they're looking for it in a given place, but like other species, they may also not be able to do so. Many features of the debate about purpose and human behavior are reminiscent of the debate about purpose and evolution. As the Colombia Encyclopedia puts it, "A still prevalent misunderstanding of evolution is the belief that an animal or plant changes in order to adapt to its environment, better adapt to its environment." **45:43** · Um, eg that it develops the uh that's like a Latin thing but uh I I wanna what exactly does that mean? **45:57** · Like there's id est which is that is uh and then eg for example it stands for exemplatia. **46:14** · Okay. **46:16** · Um, damn. Lots of \[ \_\_ \] open. Get out of here. Get out of here. Dainci Resolve is open. **46:27** · Um, uh, eg that it develops an eye for the purpose of seeing. Since mutation is a random process and since most mutations are harmful rather than neutral or beneficial to the organism, it is evident that the occurrence of a variation itself is a matter of chance and that one cannot speak of a will or purpose on the part of the individual to develop a new structure or trait that might prove helpful. That's very interesting. **46:53** · I always kind of thought like it'll evolve to be more fit to the environment, but I guess what they're saying is no, it evolves randomly and what is more fit to the environment will just be preserved and that's how it's working. **47:10** · Feelings associated with schedules of reinforcement. The probability that a person will respond in a given way because of a history of operative reinforcement changes as the contingencies change. Associated bodily conditions can be felt or observed introspectively and they are often cited as the causes of the states or changes in probability. When a given act is almost always reinforced, a person is said to have a feeling of confidence. A tennis player \[laughter\] that is so cool, dude. This is like a whole new frame on reality. **47:38** · A tennis player reports that he practices a particular shot until he feels confident. The basic fact is that he practices until a certain proportion of his shots are good. Frequent reinforcement also builds faith. A person feels sure or certain that he will be successful. He enjoys a sense of mastery, power, or potency. The infant is said to acquire a sense of infantile omnipotence. Frequent reinforcement also builds and maintains an interest in what a person is doing. **48:09** · In all this, the behavior is erroneously attributed to the feeling rather than to the contingencies. is responsible for what is felt. **48:19** · Interesting. **48:21** · When reinforcement is no longer forthcoming, a behavior undergoes extinction and apparently and appears rarely if at all. A person is then said to suffer a loss of confidence, certainty, or sense of power. Instead, his feelings range from lack of interest through disappointment, discouragement, and a sense of impotence, impotence, um, and a possibility a possibly deep depression. And these things are said are then said erroneously to explain the absence of the behavior. **48:47** · For example, a person is said to be unable to go to work because he is discouraged or depressed although he is not going together with what he feels is due to lack of reinforcement either in his work or in some other part of dude that is just a gold piece of uh perspective change for me because like when I'm really burnt out like I know this deep down but I keep having this like rationalization of Oh, I'm not I'm not acting. I'm not doing what I want. I'm not engaging in this because I don't feel like it. **49:17** · And it's like, oh, it's my feelings. It's like it's uh just a bipolar tendency to get burnt out once in a while, but it's it's all because of contingencies, dude. It's always all because of contingencies. It's because what I'm doing is no longer reinforced or rewarded. Um it's like when you're burnt out on a project, it's like not because you feel burnt out. **49:39** · It's like because of the contingencies and like man once you could start to like this is why behavior is so exciting you know you could start to see that's not reinforcing how do I modify that so that it is like this is this is wicked cool it's like the real analysis of of the human experience **50:03** · this is this is getting good this is getting juicy uh frustration is a rather different condition which induces a tendency often characteristic of a failure to be reinforced to attack the system. Thus, a person who kicks the vending machine which has failed to deliver cigarettes. **50:20** · I love how he's dating himself or balls out his wife balls. \[laughter\] This guy is a he's an old boomer, but he's uh he's correct. Um forgotten to buy them is said to be doing so because of frustration. The expression of frustrated expectations refers specifically to a condition produced by the termination of accustomed reinforcement. A different kind of feeling is associated with the lack of an appropriate occasion for behavior. **50:53** · Different type of feeling is associated with the lack of an appropriate occasion \[snorts\] for the behavior. The archetypical pattern of which uh is homesickness. Different kind of feeling is associated with the lack of an appropriate occasion for a for behavior. The archetypical pattern of which is homesick. That's interesting. Archetypes make an appearance. Again, when a person has left home for the first time, much of the behavior appropriate to that environment can no longer be emitted. **51:21** · The condition felt may be similar to depression, which is said to be common in people who have moved from one city to another. It is often called nostalgia. Literally, the pain generated by a strong tendency to return home. **51:34** · return is impossible. **51:36** · Literally, the pain generated by a strong tendency to return home. Wow. A similar condition prevails when one is simply lost and the word is forloren. A loveloren person, this is so juicy, dude. Oh my god, I feel my brain expanding reading this paragraph. A loveloren person is unable to admit behavior directed toward the person he loves. Love Lauren. I got to use that. **52:04** · Oh my god, that is just like such a good vocab word. Geez. Reading for the win. A person who is alone may feel lonesome. **52:14** · Another great word. The essential condition is that there is no one with whom he can talk or behave in other ways. It's all about behavior. The behavior of the homesick for Lauren, love Lauren, or lonely is commonly attributed to the feelings experienced rather than to the absence of a familiar environment. Oh my god, this is so cool. **52:34** · It's like it's just so \[ \_\_ \] sick. Like when you learn a new vocab word like I I I've heard love Lauren before, but like and with a new behavioral framework like yo that guy is love Lauren. He can't engage in the behaviors which he desires to engage in and thus this feeling is arising. Man, I like reading \[ \_\_ \] is so fire, bro. \[laughter\] Um I'm being heavily positively reinforced by this right now. **53:06** · Um most reinforces occur intermittently and the schedules on which they are programmed generate conditions which are described with a wide range of terms. The so-called ratio schedules supply many good examples. When the ratio of responses to reinforcements is favorable, the behavior is commonly attributed to diligence, industry, or ambition. determination, stubbornness, staying power, or perseverance, continuing to respond long after periods of time without results. Excitement or enthusiasm, dedication or compulsion. **53:41** · The ratio of responses to reinforcements may be stretched until it becomes quite unfavorable. This has happened in many incentive systems such as the peace rate pay of home industries in the 19th century. Oh boy, if only you knew. The schedule generates a dangerously high level of activity and those interested in the welfare of workers usually oppose it. It is not unknown, however, in daily life. A writer who makes his living by writing one article or story after another is on a kind of fixed ratio schedule, and he is often aware of one result. **54:14** · The completion of one article is often followed by a period of resembling extinction during which he is unable to start a new one. The condition is sometimes called abula of abula. How do you pronounce that? **54:30** · Abula. **54:36** · Um, meaning will boole I kind of want to see where's my edit tree search absence of willpower abisiveness thoughtlessness or I I have this heavily abula That's really cool. Wait, what's this? Oh, you can download a picture of it. They better be using types to denote for that. Cool. Cool. **55:20** · Defined as a lack of willpower or neurotic inability to act. And this is often cited as the source of the trouble in spite of the fact that the schedule produces a similar effect in a wide range of species. A variable ratio variable ratio schedules in which reinforcement occurs after a given average number of responses but in which the next response to be reinforced cannot be predicted are particularly interesting. I completely zoned out that sentence. **55:45** · Variable ratio schedules in which reinforcement occurs after a given average number of responses but in which the next response to be reinforced cannot be predicted are particularly interesting. Okay. A favorable history in which the average is slowly enlarged is said to generate willpower together with large amounts of psychic energy or libido. It is said that Hitler prolonged the Second World War for nearly a year by an incredible exercise of willpower which all the others in Germany lacked. **56:16** · That's very interesting because like if you were just like I I know this for me I need to be continually reinforced in what I'm doing like I need to receive compliments and validation to keep going. And it's like it's very aversive for me. **56:31** · It's like a huge negative punishment to be criticized by people. It sucks up so much of my energy. Um but his behavior and hence his willpower can be plausibly attributed to an extraordinarily favorable program favored by Hitler disastrous for the world in which each of a series of reinforcing successes required an increasingly greater amount of effort. This kind of interpretation of a historical event can never be more than plausible, but it is better explanation than willpower. **57:01** · All gambling systems are based on variable ratio schedules of reinforcement, although their effects are usually attributed to feelings. It is frequently said, for example, that people gamble because of the excitement, but the excitement is clearly a collateral product. It is also sometimes said that people gamble to satisfy their sense of mastery, to dominate, to win, in spite of the fact that gamblers almost always lose. This inconsistency is explained by calling the gambler who ruins himself and his family compulsive or pathological. His irrational behavior, thus being attributed to an illness. **57:32** · His behavior is abnormal in the sense that not everyone responds with similar dedication to the prevailing contingencies. But the fact is simply that not everyone has been exposed to a program through which a highly unfavorable ratio is made effective. **57:48** · And the same variable ratio schedule uh affects those who explore, prospect, invent and conduct scientific research and compose works of art, music or literature. Bro gets it. In these fields, uh a high level of activity is usually attributed to dedication rather than compulsion or irrationality, right? **58:10** · That's very interesting that like gambling like creative output like the schedule of reinforcement is like kind of wacky. It's not like you immediately create and then get rewarded. It's like it it happens much later if at all. It is characteristic of intermittent reinforcement that behavior may be sustained over long periods of time with very little return. **58:34** · Um this has been explained by saying human beings are creatures of hope and not generic genetically designed to resign themselves. But there is nothing essentially human about the effects and it is not hope or resignation but the contingencies which are the conspicious and accessible cause. All right. Aversive stimuli and punishment. I \[snorts\] need blow my nose. \[snorts\] \[snorts\] There we go. **59:09** · Aversive stimuli which generate a host of bodily conditions felt or introspectively observed are the stimuli which function as reinforcers when they are reduced or terminated. They have different effects when related to behavior in other ways. In respondent conditioning, if a previously neutral stimulus such as a bell is frequently followed by an uh interval by a noxious **59:32** · stimulus, great word, noxious, such as an electric shock, the bell comes to elicit reactions primarily in the autonomic nervous system which are felt as anxiety. The bell has become a conditioning aversive stim conditioned aversive stimulus which may then have the effect of changing the probability of any positively reinforced behavior in progress. **59:55** · Thus, a person engaged in a lively conversation may begin to speak less energetically or more erratically or may stop speaking altogether at the approach of someone who has treated him aversively. On the other hand, his negatively reinforced behavior may not may be strengthened and he may act more compulsively or aggressively or move to escape. His behavior does not change because he feels anxious. It changes because the aversive contingencies which generate the conditions felt as anxiety. **1:00:23** · The change in feeling and the change in behavior have a common cause. **1:00:28** · Punishment is easily confused with negative reinforcement, sometimes called aversive control. the same stimuli are used. Negative reinforcement may be defined as the punishment of not behaving. But punishment is designed to remove behavior from a repertoire, whereas negative reinforcement generates behavior. Right? Punishment contingencies are just the reverse of reinforcing. When a person spanks a child or threatens to spank him because he has misbehaved, he's presenting a negative reinforcer rather than removing one. So punishment. **1:00:59** · And when a government finds an offender or puts him in prison, it is removing a positive reinforcer or a situation in which behavior has occasionally been positively reinforced rather than presenting a negative one. **1:01:14** · If the effect were simply the reverse of the effect of reinforcement, a great deal of behavior could be easily explained. But when behavior is punished, various stimuli generated by the behavior on the occasion are conditioned in the response pattern and the punishment behavior is then displaced by incompatible behavior conditioned as escape or avoidance. A punishment a punished person remains inclined to behave in a punishable way, but he avoids punishment by doing something else instead, possibly nothing more than stubbornly doing nothing. **1:01:43** · So that I've experienced firsthand for sure. Um which is why like positive reinforcement is kind of the much better tool. Um when a person feels that he is in a situation in which he has been punished or when he has engaged in a previously punished behavior depends upon the type of punishment and this often depends in turn upon the punishing agent or institution. I kind of botched that last sentence. It has been punished by his peers. He is said to feel shame. **1:02:14** · If he has been punished by a religious agency, he is said to feel a sense of sin. And if he has been punished by a government agency, he is said to feel guilt. If he acts to avoid further punishment, he may moderate the conditions felt to shame, sin, or guilt. **1:02:27** · But he does not act because of his feelings or because his feelings are then changed. He acts because of the punishment contingencies to which he has been exposed. The condition felt as shame, guilt, or a sense of sin is not due simply to an earlier occurrence of an aversive stimulus. A thunderstorm may set up conditions felt as anxiety. And during a storm, positively reinforced behavior may be weakened and negatively reinforced such as flight or concealment strengthened. **1:02:55** · Um uh but this condition is not felt as guilt. The point has been made by saying that a person cannot feel guilty if he has no object directed impulses to feel guilty about. More exactly, he feels guilty only when he behaves or tends to behave in a punishable way. **1:03:12** · Gotcha. So, yeah. Okay. A writer who says, "The more I read of the early and mid Victorians, the more I see anxiety and worry is the leading cling to understanding them is suggesting an explanation of behavior in terms of feelings generated by punishing circumstances where the feelings are inferred from the behavior they are used to explain. He is not claiming to have any direct information about feelings and presumably means understanding what they said and did." But anxiety and worry are useful clues if only if they can be explained in turn. **1:03:45** · The writer attempts to do this when he continues they were trying to hold together incompatible opposites and they were worried because they failed. They worried about immorality. They worried about sex. They worried about politics and money. These were external circumstances responsible for their behavior and the conditions felt as worry. The frequency, severity, and scheduling of punishment generate other aspects of behavior often attributed to feelings or traits of character. In many familiar instances, behavior is both punishing and reinforcing consequences. **1:04:18** · If behavior still occurs, but in a weakened form, it may be said to show inhibition, timidity, embarrassment, fear, or caution. Excessive punishment is said to make a shortage of positive reinforcement more crucial and leave a person more vulnerable to severe depression and to giving up. **1:04:36** · We treat what is felt not by changing the feelings but by changing the contingencies. For example, by evoking the behavior without punishing it so that the conditioned aversive stim stimuli may undergo extinction by evoking the behavior without punishing it. So the conditioned aversive stimuli may undergo. So that that's an interesting one. Is that like encouraging like for example encouraging someone to open up or something and not punishing it? **1:05:05** · uh behavior which is strong in spite of punishing consequences is said to show bravery, courage or possible possibly audacity. We encourage a person not by making him feel more courageous but by emphasizing reinforcing consequences and minimizing punishing. A fool rushes into dangerous situations not because he feels reckless but because reinforcing consequences have completely offset punishing. and we may attempt to correct his behavior by supplying other possibly verbal punishments. **1:05:35** · When punishment is particularly severe, the self-nowledge in chapter 2 may be affected. The behavior suppressed may include the behavior involved in knowing about association associated body conditions. **1:05:51** · \[snorts\] The result is what Freud called a repression. Freud, however, the process involves feelings rather than behavior and it took place in the depths of the mind. Feelings were repressed by other feelings and policed by a sensor from um whom they sometimes escaped in devious ways. It could continue to be troublesome, however, and man was said to be haunted by his repressed longings. **1:06:13** · I shall discuss some more behavioral aspects later. Okay, good. I'm a little lost on that. All right. Structuralism. Early studies of behavior were often said to be to confine themselves to form or structure, to treat behavior, for example, as nothing more than muscle twitches. The refusal to accept feelings and states of mind has caused uh an abiding concern for objectivity seemed to support such a view. Habit formation has a structuralist principle. **1:06:42** · To acquire a habit was merely to become accustomed to behaving in a given way. The contingencies of reinforcement were generating the behavior like the contingencies of survival which produced an instinct were neglected. Frequency theories of learning were also structural. They asserted simply that what has happened once will happen again. That an organism will tend to do what it has done most often in the past. I have noted behaviorism confines itself to the topography of political behavior. **1:07:11** · And structuralism in anthropology is often not far beyond the position that customs are followed simply because it is customary to follow them. Wow. Whopper sentence. Um confined itself to the topography. So topography I'm going to look this up, but I think this would be like the landscape features range of the natural and artificial physical features of an area. Detailed description or map of natural artificial features. **1:07:45** · Behaviorism confines itself to the topography of political behavior and structuralism in anthropology is often not far beyond the position that customs are followed simply because it is customary to follow them. Early Greek and Persian justice was simply and simple and swift because it was based entirely on the topography of a crime. Person who killed another was guilty of murder regardless of the circumstances. **1:08:08** · I shall note later the significance of the fact that support for the structuralist position has come from both phenomenology and existentialism and their neglect of past and future in the search of the essential features of the here and now. **1:08:24** · Okay, this section um I would love to understand more because I not entirely sure what phenomenology is. I know of ex existentialism, but what it like I'm I'm deeply confused here. Um I will say maybe I should add like flags in the video. Um if behaviorism has not yet replaced the feeling and states of mind which it discarded as explanations, it could indeed be called a kind of structuralism. But it found replacements in that environment. **1:08:55** · As we learn more about the role of contingencies of reinforcement, we are more likely to move beyond formal properties. The point may be illustrated the concept of imitation. In a purely formalistic definition, one organism might be said to be imitating another when it behaves as the other behaves. But as we saw in chapter 3, contingencies of both survival and reinforcement must be considered. The patrons of a restaurant are behaving in roughly the same way with respect to their dinners, but they're not imitating each other. **1:09:24** · They are behaving in similar ways because they are exposed to similar contingencies. The man who runs after a thief is not imitating him, then both are running. Structuralism is involved in the distinction often drawn between learning or competence and performance. We need like a glossery of stuff like this. **1:09:49** · The distinction was useful um in early studies of learning because the changes in performance when observed were rather erratic since it was assumed that learning was an orderly process. There appeared to be a discrepancy, but it was resolved by supposing that learning was not very accurately revealed in the behavior the organism displayed. Performance was clearly a structuralist term referred to what an organism did without referring to why it did it. **1:10:15** · Improved techniques have revealed an orderly relation between performance and contingencies and have eliminated the need to appeal to a separate inner learning process or to competence. The same confusion may be seen in the contention that operant and respondent conditioning represent a single process. A contention said to be opposed to the view that the two kinds of conditioning affect different systems of behavior. **1:10:41** · Respondent conditioning being appropriate to the autonomic nervous system and operant condition to the skeletal musculature. **1:10:48** · It is true that much of the activity of the autonomic nervous system um does not have a natural consequence does not have natural consequences which could easily have become part of operant contingencies but such contingencies can be arranged. In chapter 11, I shall report an effort to bring the vascular system of the arm under operant control by instrumentally amplifying a measure of the volume of the arm. But the basic difference is not the topography of the response systems and the contingencies. **1:11:20** · The environmental arrangements which produce a condition reflex are quite different from those which produce an operant behavior regardless of the respective systems. The fact that both the processes may go on in a given situation also does not mean that they are the same process. A child acquiring operant behavior no doubt also acquires conditional conditioned reflexes. **1:11:39** · And Pavlo's dog though restrained by the experiment by the experimental stand was operantly reinforced and adv adventicious ways by the occasional representation of food. We must wait to see what learning processes this uh physiologist will eventually discover through direct observation rather than through inference. Meanwhile, the contingencies permit a useful um uh a useful and important distinction. **1:12:13** · Structuralism often goes beyond mere description and one of its strategies has had a very long history. When the notion of a functional relation was not yet fully understood like a a function from math, explanations of phenomena were sought in their structures. Plato's doctrine of forms was an effort to explain events with principles derived from the same or similar events. It has been said that from Plato to Kepler, mathematics was not regarded as describing celestial motion but as explaining it. **1:12:41** · The search for explanation in form or structure goes on. Um Gestalt Gestalt Gestalt um psychology tried to supplement the structural notion of habit formation with organizational principles. Mathematical properties properties hold their old explanatory force. It has been said, for example, that for one anthropologist, the relationships the relations of kinship do not evolve as much as they tend to express algebraic relations. **1:13:14** · As I noted in chapter 1, a merely structural account may be supplemented by invoking time as an independent variable. The growth of an embryo from a fertilized egg to a fetus at term is a remarkable example of development. It has been suggested that similar sequences in the growth of skills of an art of a concept in the mind may be important. The behavior of a person or culture is said to pass through various stages until it reaches maturity. **1:13:41** · Psychop uh psychopathology of the drug addict has been said to be due to an arrested infantile psychic development. As these examples suggest, what grows is said to be something in the mind. as with Pagette Pagette or in the personality as with Freud. **1:14:00** · But if a child no longer behaves he is as he has behaved before, it is not only because he has grown but because he has had the time to acquire a much bigger repertoire through exposure to exposure to new contingencies of reinforcement and particularly because the contingencies affecting children at different ages are different. a child um child's world develops too. **1:14:27** · Compared to the experimental analysis of behavior, developmental psychology stands in the position of evolutionary theory before Darwin. By the early 19th century, it was well known that species had undergone progressive changes towards more adaptive forms. They were developing or maturing and improved adaptation to the environment suggested a kind of purpose. The question is not whether evolutionary changes occurred but why. **1:14:51** · U both Lamarok and Buff Buffon appeared to the purpose supposedly shown by the individual in adapting to his environment. A purpose somehow transmitted to the species. remain for Darwin to discover the selective action of the environment as it remains for us to supplement developmentalism in behavioral science with an analysis of the selective action of the environment. **1:15:21** · It remains for Darwin to discover the selective action of the environment as it remains for us to supplement developmentalism in behavior science with an analysis of selective action of the environment. Okay, I I think I get what that's saying. Um Um but not not as well as I would like, honestly. Um and this this last like um let's just see like Okay, basically done with this chapter. **1:15:52** · This is getting like a little a little blurry at the end for me. I'm going to have to reread it and I'm going to have to consult notes, but I'm used to reading things multiple times. Um but I just wanted to kind of get through this. **1:16:03** · Uh in most of this chapter I have been concerned with feelings or states of mind which have been interpreted as collateral products of the contingencies which generate the behavior. It remains for us to consider other mentalistic processes with which are said to be needed if operant conditioning is to take place. The mind is not merely a spectator. It is said to play an active role in the determination of behavior. **1:16:28** · Many English idioms containing the word mind suggest a probability of action as in I have a mind to go. Mind is often represented as an agent scarcely to be distinguished from the person who has the mind. Crossed my mind that I should go is scarcely more than it occurred to me that I should go. When responsive glands or smooth muscle under the control of the autonomic nervous system are brought under operant control by making reinforcement contingent upon them, the result is said to demonstrate uh damn it, I lost it without smooth scroll. **1:17:01** · Um uh by making reinforcement contingent upon them, the result is said to be demonstrated demonstrate the control of mind over matter. But what it demonstrates is that a person may respond with his glands or his smooth muscles under operant contingencies. A mechanical arm designed to be operated by muscles normally operating um some other part of the body is said to be thought operated or operated by the mind. Although it is operated by the person who originally moved some other part of his body. **1:17:32** · When people shoot other people, it is said that minds kill on guns and that a man's mind was the instrument directly responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But perhaps people are shot by people, not by their minds. **1:17:48** · The view that mental activity is essential to operant behavior is an example of the view that feelings or introspectively observed states are causally effective. When a person replies to the question, will you go tomorrow? By saying, I don't know. I never know how I will how I will feel. **1:18:04** · The assumption is that what it is what is in doubt is the feeling rather than the behavior that the person will go if he feels like going rather than if he will feel like going if he goes. Neither statement is of course an explanation that is an interesting distinction. Uh there are other words referring to mental activities people said to more specifically required by behavior. **1:18:28** · People must judge what will or not occur if they do or do not act in certain ways. The dog in the Pavlovian experiments salivates an anticipation of food or because it expects food. In operant experiments, a rat presses a lever because it anticipates that food will be delivered or expects food to be delivered when it does so. **1:18:49** · In social learning theory, the potential of the occurrence of a behavior is considered to be a function of the expectancy that the behavior will lead to a particular reinforcement or reinforcements and that the value of these reinforcements in a given situation. We should have to translate these statements in some such way as this. The probability of behavior depends upon the kind of frequency of reinforcement in similar situations in the past. A person will feel uh conditions associated with judging, anticipating, and expecting, but he does not need to do so. **1:19:24** · Operant behavior is also said to require the association of ideas. The fact that a baby learns to avoid a hot stove is said to imply that the baby has the ability to associate his act with getting burned, as in a conditioned reflex. Touching and burning are associated in the contingencies. **1:19:39** · Reinforcement is also said to supply information with other than very young children. We can never say that the major effect of reinforcement is other than a source of information used by the child to confirm or change his expectations and to develop new and tentative solutions. **1:19:56** · Increasing the probability that people will respond in certain ways is sometimes said to be a matter of raising consciousness. How fast a rat will run in a maze is said to depend upon whether it knows that food is no longer available in the end box. I shall return to knowledge, information, and consciousness in later chapters. Another supposed mental process said to be needed in operant conditioning is understanding. People said people must understand the regularities upon which they can count. **1:20:25** · Their action must be grounded on this understanding of how things behave. Another state is needed to is needed is belief. People must believe that what they are doing has some chance of obtaining what they want or avoiding something to which they are averse. But the changes chances um are in the contingencies. **1:20:48** · The relation of beliefs to other conditions such as wants and needs can be easily stated to say the desires enter into the causation of beliefs is simply to say that the probability of behavior with which a belief is associated depends not only upon reinforcement but upon a state of deprivation or aversive stimulation. **1:21:11** · It is sometimes said that operant conditioning is simply one aspect of the pursuit of happiness. And the expression will help to summarize several points of this chapter. Happiness is a feeling, a byproduct of operant reinforcement. The things which make us happy are the things which reinforce us. But it is the things not the feelings which must be identified and used in prediction, control and interpretation. Pu pursuit suggests purpose. We act to achieve happiness. By pursuit like search is simply behavior which has been reinforced by achieving something. **1:21:43** · Behavior becomes pursuit only after reinforcement. It has been said that the pursuit of happiness cannot be an explanation of behavior because nothing proves that men in modern societies are happier than men in archaic societies. But operate reinforcement is effective quite apart from any ultimate gain and the negative utility of gambling abundantly demonstrates as the negative utility. **1:22:08** · All right. And next up will be perceiving. Um let me check what time it is. Damn it. It got to three already. **1:22:14** · Wow. Um, getting late. Um, okay. I think so. I mean, I'll make a text post about this as well, but essentially like with finals, I underestimated the amount of time um and difficulty of this text as I did last time as well, which is totally okay. Um, that's just a a thing I'm going to have to work around. And I think everyone is kind of going to be at different levels of uh literacy and ability to understand this. And um I'm going to just read the next couple chapters over the next couple days as well. **1:22:45** · Stitch this together and we should be good.