Stuart Vyse wrote:
This film is a short segment of Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: The Columban Simulations, which highlighted Robert Epstein's graduate research under B. F. Skinner. The film was published in 1982 by Research Press, and although it appears to be out of print now, it did get wide play in its day. I regularly showed it in Intro Psychology courses.
Stuart is on the right track but misses what I think is a crucial point in the simulations (rightly-termed, these are parodies of famous experiments).
The more general point is that when we watch a person/pigeon/whatever solve a problem then we can see current cirumstances but we cannot see the history (phylogenetic or ontogenetic) of the subject.
Skinner's view is that much of what seem miraculous to us on first view (and requiring the operation of a supernatural agency) is explained by the experiential history of the subject. The problem for him is that we are experiencing a type of fundamental-attribution illusion, assigning trait-like characteristics to a subject because we can't see the being's situational life-history.
Ken --------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
