At 7:16 PM -0500 4/20/08, Ken Steele wrote:
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--
Well said; you obviously have an extensive history!
--
The best argument against Intelligent Design is that fact that
people believe in it.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ *
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