[From Bruce Abbott (941210.1330 EST)]
Bill Powers (941208.2015 MST)
Bill, your discussion of the essential difference between the THEORETICAL law
of effect and the PCT reorganization mechanism was clear and helpful. But
there's a problem.
In some ways, I feel as though our discussions of the past few weeks on the
law of effect have been analogous to the classic "Who's On First" routine of
Abbott and Costello--only, by a strange quirk of fate, I've been playing the
role of Costello. I think we're up to the part where Costello finally--
without really understanding why--is able to state things correctly. Abbott
says, "Now were getting somewhere!" and Costello replies, "I don't even know
what were TALKING about!"
We began, as I recall, with my saying that I thought the EMPIRICAL law of
effect (a description of events, not an explanation) captured something
important about behavior that needed to be accounted for from a PCT
perspective. This statement was met with what seemed from this end to be
complete rejection. After quite a number of exchanges ("Who's on first?
What's on second? Idontknow! The concept of behavioral consequence is excess
baggage, etc.) we now seem to be saying that the relationships captured by the
empirical law of effect are in fact nicely explained by the reorganization
concept. Fine, I agree with you. Who's on first? What have we been arguing
about? Why?
What I've been saying all along (I thought) was that the consequences of
behavior (and by this I always understood them in terms of ultimate effect on
controlled perceptions) provided the selection criteria that determine which
behaviors are retained in the output function and which are not. I even
suggested that the law of effect represents a kind of Darwinian mechanism of
variation and selection. Of course the consequence does not bring the
behavior into being--even Skinner never said that! Behavioral variation
occurs, and those that "work" are retained.
Are we on the same wavelength now, or am I still stuck in "Who's on First?"
Regards,
Bruce