I’m going to try not to use the word “behaviorism” too much. I’m not so committed the methodology of ignoring mental events—in fact, after a while this will mostly concentrate on mental events—and Richard says he has lots of good evidence that PCT can successfully model the same things behaviorists successfully model while also going beyond it.
I’m more attached to the behaviorist idea of reinforcement learning, which is so broad and well-studied that it transcends methodological concerns and which has to be an important part of any true theory of the mind. I’m mentioning behaviorism mostly because I’ll be using its discoveries (and citing Skinner quite a bit) to explain reinforcement learning and don’t want people saying “Isn’t that behaviorist? And isn’t behaviorism stupid?”
I suggest “Behaviorism: It’s what’s for dinner!”
I’m going to try not to use the word “behaviorism” too much. I’m not so committed the methodology of ignoring mental events—in fact, after a while this will mostly concentrate on mental events—and Richard says he has lots of good evidence that PCT can successfully model the same things behaviorists successfully model while also going beyond it.
I’m more attached to the behaviorist idea of reinforcement learning, which is so broad and well-studied that it transcends methodological concerns and which has to be an important part of any true theory of the mind. I’m mentioning behaviorism mostly because I’ll be using its discoveries (and citing Skinner quite a bit) to explain reinforcement learning and don’t want people saying “Isn’t that behaviorist? And isn’t behaviorism stupid?”
How would you know if a human is mentally employing behaviorism?