[from Mary Powers 951130]
Some personals -
Dick: sounds good to me.
Chuck: sorry, didn't check the books. You did indeed.
Tom: Ack, argh. Unbelievable.
Dag & Isaac: Good posts!
Bruce Abbott (951128.1750 EST)
There is a sense that reinforcement theory basically works,
and that the anomalous cases will be found to be consistent
with reinforcement theory once the variables at work are
properly understood. People are reluctant to give up a
theory that seems to make sense of a great number of
observations in favor of a new view whose ability to account
for at least some of these phenomena has yet to be
demonstrated.
Is the operative word "seems"? Does "once the variables at work
are properly understood" mean more ex post facto explanations?
It seems to me, rereading T. Kuhn, that the anomalies are the
chink in the EAB armor. You have been proposing to do some
canonical EAB experiments, but retracing half a century or so of
of work will only ever account for a few of the great number of
observations. Anyone minded to quibble that any particular
phenomenon is not explained by PCT will always have examples to
draw on - especially since PCTers feel that redoing all this
stuff would be a giant waste of time. Anyone who is confident
that eventually anomalous cases will be explained is also well-
armored against any alternative theory. But people who are aware
of - and bothered by - anomalies, would find their concerns
addressed by PCT (always provided, of course, that PCT can
explain them). So, does anyone have a handy-dandy little list of
reinforcement theory anomalies?
I suppose this is naive of me, but it seems to me that running
old experiments over again would be solely for the purpose of
recovering or replicating data that PCT needs to know - such as
what's actually going on in a Skinner Box after the door is shut,
and while the experimenter is out to lunch ;-> - and the number
of experiments that would settle that is not large. I think
there has been post after post on this net accounting very well
for the phenomena of reinforcement - by separating out
observations from conclusions, by redefining what the
observations seem to be about, and by (gasp) proposing a
mechanism that produces the phenomena that are seen. PCT vs.
reinforcement theory is about frames of reference. I don't see a
lot of point in gathering data all over again when what matters
is not what it is but how it is talked and thought about.
Mary P.