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From: tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <483@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 05:43:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-k.483
Posted: Mon Jul 22 05:43:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Jul-85 06:22:11 EDT
References: <1202@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking
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It seems pointless to even try to refute the nonsense that is being said
about behaviorism by people who have not studied it.  I tried earlier in the
summer and people are still making the same dumb mistakes.  Nonetheless,
here goes again.  Behaviorism does not explain behavior in terms of a
deterministic stimulus-response model.  That is characteristic of the
Pavlovian models that preceded behaviorism.  Stimuli are dealt with as a
minor sub-topic, being a factor that correlates with the frequency of
emission of operants, but there is really no such thing as a "response" in
behaviorist models.  Instead, a probabilistic model based on frequency of
emission of observable behaviors called "operants" is used.

Behaviorist models deal in a completely scientific way with behavior by
dealing only with behaviors that can be objectively measured in the
laboratory, and by reporting observations rather than speculating on
unprovable causative factors.  It NEVER says anything like "Organism O
emitted behavior B at time T because of factors F".  It does, however, say
things like "The frequency with which organism O emitted behavior B was
higher when reinforcement schedule S was applied than when S-prime was
applied."

Again, I have to ask that people who have not studied behaviorism be silent
about it.  They are spreading lies, where a lie is defined (after Ouspensky)
as pretending to have knowledge one does not have.

Incidentally, although this is a response to a Rich Rosen message, it is
really directed to the person who wrote what Rich responded to (fairly well).
-=-
Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking
ARPA:	Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K	uucp:	seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim
CompuServe:	74176,1360	audio:	shout "Hey, Tim!"