time again

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 11:00:13 -0800 (PST)

Eva wrote the following note for Yrjo's AT seminar, but it has direct
implications for our earlier discussion of time and the backwardness
of knowing. It points to a very clear connection between, among others,
Dewey and Skinner.
fyi
mike
>From: Eva Ekeblad <eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se>

At 06.29 -0800 81-07-01, Burrhus Frederic Skinner wrote:

>Contingencies of selection
>necessarily lie in the past; they are not acting when their effect is
>observed.
>To provide a current cause, it has therefore been assumed that they are
>stored
>(usually as "information") and later retrieved. Thus (1) genes and
>chromosomes
>are said to contain the information needed by the fertilized egg in order t=
o
>grow into a mature organism. But a cell does not consult a store of
>information
>in order to learn how to change; it changes because of features that are th=
e
>product of a history of variation and selection, a product that is not well
>represented by the metaphor of storage. (2) People are said to store
>information about contingencies of reinforcement and retrieve it for use on
>later occasions. But they do not consult copies of earlier contingencies to
>discover how to behave; they behave in given ways because they have been
>changed by those contingencies. The contingencies can perhaps be inferred
>from
>the changes they have worked, but they no longer exist. (3) A possibly
>legitimate use of storage in the evolution of cultures may be responsible f=
or
>these mistakes. Parts of the social environment maintained and transmitted
>by a
>group are quite literally stored in documents, artifacts, and other
>products of
>that behavior.

and

>The role of selection by consequences has been particularly resisted
>because there is no
>place for the initiating agent suggested by classical mechanics. We try to
>identify such
>an agent when we say (1) that a species adapts to an environment (rather
>than that the
>environment selects the adaptive traits); (2) that an individual adjusts
>to a situation
>(rather than that the situation shapes and maintains adjusted behavior);
>and (3) that a
>group of people solve a problem raised by certain circumstances (rather
>than that the
>circumstances select the cultural practice that yields a solution).

and

>The proper recognition of the selective action of the environment will
>require a change
>in our conception of the origin of behavior, a change perhaps as extensive
>as that of our
>former conceptions of the origin of the species. As long as we cling to
>the view that a
>person is an initiating doer, actor or causer of behavior, we shall
>probably continue to
>neglect the conditions that must be changed if we are to solve our problems=
=2E

This is from *Upon Further Reflection*, 1987 -- Chapter 4: Selection by
Consequences.
It was first published in: *Science* 213 (July 1981): 501-504.

I found it on my 2GB external memory when looking for American conceptions
of agency...

Eva