Tue, 3 Mar 2009 21:48: [Krimel] posted, in part:
I don't believe Skinner ever did any work on response to temperature and by the way on the last page of the chapter you link. Pavlov never considered himself to be a psychologist and I don't believe Skinner ever trained in or conducted research into physiology. The Gettysburg address has nothing to do with reflexes. DS: Physiology/ psychology, it seems everyone at this forum wants to keep these two things separate. The reason Pavlov is studied by every freshman psychology student is because his observations about physiology have great import to psychology. You are right, he didn't consider himself to be a psychologist but that didn't stop history from judging him to be among the best of them, and he most certainly saw and wrote convincingly about the connection between physiology and behaviour. Skinner using the same metaphysical assumptions believed that behaviour is the response to physical causes. He didn't need to study physiology (although I have a dim recollection that physiology was his stated major at Harvard) to believe that, the positivists, Comte and Wundt influenced lab psychologists like Pavlov and Skinner and most current scientists with their insistence that behaviour has physiological causes. Skinner did thousands of experiments, and it's the principle that I'm pointing too not the specific variable. He believed he could condition any behaviour to any stimulus and, if memory serves, once conditioned Eric Fromm to curse out loud in response to puffs of air during a public debate. It certainly is my own theory that those who can recite the Gettysburg address do so using learned reflexes. If you have another theory, one that is better than saying, "it happens by magic". Please let me know for I have never seen one. Your comment about clarity is fair and I will try harder in future.-david swift Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
