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Operant
Learning and Selectionism:
Risks and Benefits of Seeking Interdisciplinary Parallels
Richard W. Malott1
Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University
Note: This article originally appeared in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences
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Abstract
Seeking parallels among disciplines can have both risks and benefits.
Finding parallels may be a vacuous exercise in categorization, generating
no new insights. And pointing to analogous functions may cause us
to treat them as homologous. Hull, Langman, and Glenn, (2001) have
provided a basis for the generation of insights in different selectionist
areas, without confusing analogy with homology.
Those of us concerned with operant behavior are generally called behavior
analysts, or informally, Skinnerians. And, though most
of us are psychologists, we are somewhat outside the mainstream of
psychology because of our reluctance to make much use of intervening
variables, hypothetical constructs, reifications, or more derogatorily,
explanatory fictions, the fundamental building blocks of most psychology.
So, we behavior analysts have taken great intellectual and perhaps
spiritual comfort in finding a home on the selectionist continuum
between Charles Darwin’s evolutionary biology and Marvin Harris’
cultural materialism (Harris argues that cultural practices survive
if they contribute to the survival of the groups that practice them).
Most of us behavior analysts have found sufficient comfort based
on the popular writing of Steven Jay Gould (e.g., 1983) concerning
biological evolution and Marvin Harris (e.g.. 1984) concerning cultural
materialism, that we have not studied the technical writings in either
field. Sigrid Glenn, is among the few behavior analysts who are not
so easily comforted; therefore, she has she has studied the selectionist
continuum in greater depth and more thoughtfully, than most of the
rest of us behavior analysts. This sophistication is apparent in her
contribution to the article on which I am commenting (Hull, Langman,
& Glenn, 2001).
It is a fascinating exercise to find the parallels between one approach
or discipline and another. And behavior analysts have been previously
fascinated in that manner, as exemplified by their demonstrations
of the parallels between Freudian psychoanalysis and Skinnerian behavior
analysis or between economic analysis and behavior analysis, as well
as between evolutionary biology and the acquisition and maintenance
of response classes.
But this exercise in parallelisms is not without its risks. First,
we risk not going far enough with the parallels, not exploiting them
sufficiently. Given that we have demonstrated a parallel between two
disciplines, what new insights does that give us into either discipline.
Does the parallel suggest new causes or new functional relationships?
Does it suggest new categories or classifications? Does it point to
new dimensions of either the independent or dependent variables we
have ignored or to dimensions we have considered important but now
should recognize as trivial? The parallels drawn by Hull, Langman,
and Glenn, (2001), do not yet give us these sorts of new insights
into behavior analysis; but they may have delineated a model that
may be productive of such insights in the future.
Second, there is the opposite risk, the risk of taking the parallels
too literally. The authors attenuate this risk by saying, “The
processes by which operant adaptation occurs are viewed here as analogous
to the processes by which biological evolution occurs,” and
“When operant behavior is seen as the figure, against organism
as ground, the elements involved in selection processes are analogous
to (not the same as) those involved in gene-based biological evolution.”
Unfortunately, such disclaimers can be quickly forgotten, in the heat
of intellectual discourse or in the heat of practical applications.
The transient nature of disclaimers is frequently illustrated with
disclaimers in the form of operational definitions; for example psychologists
often operationally define “intelligence” as “the
score obtained on an IQ test”; and then, within two or three
sentences, they have reified intelligence into an internal, causal
agent.
To prevent taking parallels to literally, I find it helpful to distinguish
between “analogous” and a somewhat extended notion of
“homologous,” where two events are analogous, if they
serve the same function of have the same effect; and where they are
homologous, if they are based on the same underlying mechanisms or
processes. For example, a rat’s lever pressing increases in
frequency, if that pressing is followed immediately by a drop of water,
the directly underlying process being reinforcement. And our commentary
writing might increase in frequency, if that writing is followed within
a few months by publication, the directly underlying process being
a rule-governed analog to reinforcement—it looks like simple
reinforcement; it acts like simple reinforcement (same behavior-increasing
function), but it is much more complex and requires sophisticated
language skills (here I am not talking about the language skills needed
for actually writing the commentary).
Similarly, the selectionism of operant learning is only analogous
to the selectionism of evolutionary biology, it is not homologous;
the behavioral and biological processes underlying operant learning
differ from those underlying biological evolution. However, it makes
sense that both biological evolution and operant learning should be
selectionistic. Something like selectionism seems almost required,
in both cases; otherwise, life would be much more chaotic than it
is. But it also makes sense that these two examples of selectionism
have evolved (been selected) as independent reactions to the demands
of survival in the same environment. Biological evolution and operant
learning have evolved analogously, not homogonously.
In conclusion and as a behavior analyst, I think the authors have
provided a valuable service in separating the essential features of
a selectionist model (i.e., replication, variation, and environmental
selection) from the unessential features of specific instances of
that model (e.g., replication of organisms across space, in the case
of biological evolution, vs. replication of responses across time,
in the case of operant learning).
References
Gould. S. J. (1983) Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. W.W.
Norton.
Harris, M. (1974) Cows, pigs, wars and witches. Vintage Books.
Hull, D. L., Langman, R. E., & Glenn, S.S., (2001) A general
account of selection: Biology, immunology and behavior. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences. 24
