: Many of my posts have promoted behaviorism. There have been several individuals who have either refuted the basic premise of behaviorism (namely, that human behavior is subject to study, prediction, and control) or insisted that the understanding of these natural laws will enable 'totalitarians' to control human behavior all too effectively. Red Deathy, as shown above, rather inconsistently adopts both positions. Actually I adopt niether, I simply said:
1:That Behaviourism contains a germ of a cognative metonymical link with speciifcally totalitarian regimes, especially reminiscent of medieval catholicism, and that this is so particularly within minds exposed to Modern liberal (read protestant) modes of thought.
2:I have also submitted simply that human life tends to have too many variables to adequately be able to compute a proper and infalible model for an entire society, and at best we can achieve estimate based on past patterns and experience.
3:I had also held that Imagination and desire were missing, I now recognise that Behaviourism does operate certain categories of imagination, namely under secondary re-enforcement, and that my main problem was one of a difference of terminology. 'there are no problems of yadda yadda yadda, only problems of oosits' as wassname said.
: RD and I have exchanged many posts. Each of these posts can be seen as units of behavior---namely, post (stimulus) and reply (response).* Every time I have posted, Red Deathy has responded. In turn, I have counter-responded. This has been continuous reinforcement, a ratio of 1: 1. Continuous reinforcement promotes a high rate of responding, but it has one salient weakness: once a reinforcement fails to appear after behavior is emitted, the probability that the emitting behavior will again be emitted is low. After all, it is 'expected' that reinforcement follows each emission of behavior.
Which all in all is basic stuff, known to linguists for many mnay years, and in particular extension M.. Bakhtin who maintained that all speach acts produced a response in the second particpant (he refuted the old model of speaker/hearer). But lets be clear, that it is the type of speech act that illicits a speech act in response, in this case asssertions or questions (since we are in a debating situation) produce counter-assertions, answers...
: When reinforcement is discontinued, behavior undergoes extinction. In the case of continuous reinforcement, this occurs almost immediately.** This is basic reinforcement principle and can be readily seen by the fact that once I ceased responding to RD (after post 3496, October 31), he emitted two responses (posts 3516 and 3517, both November 1) expecting the continuous reinforcement he had received in the past. It was not forthcoming, however, and he then terminated his posts on November 2. His behavior was extinguished---in lieu of discriminative stimuli which had occasioned responses in the past .*** His extinction curve (rate of not responding) was rapid, complete, and (above all) predictable.
Yeah, if I make a post and you don't respond, I cannot make any further posts, except a speech act of requestng you to continue the debate. this is particulalry so as you did not follow normal debating forms by making clear that you had terminated congress with me...
: After a few days, I posted again (post 3552, November 7)---with every intention of creating the establishing operations that would increase the probability of RD's behavior being again emitted.
Lets also be clear, you raised a specific question *to* me, if it had been such a post as some of teh ones you were making under the memes thread I would have let it go, since I thought we had played out most of our differences, but you aimed a specific question to me. teh type of speech act comes to play again...
: These antecedent environmental conditions indeed increased the probability of RD's behavior. He responded (post 3553) the very same day---seven days after the last reinforcement. His behavior returned in full strength.
Having been conditioned all my life to respond to peoples questions when posed at me, specifically in my role as a propagandist, thi amounts to something of a cold reading. Specifically as I could put forward different reasons other than the model you are proposing for why I responded thus (politeness theory, I had to defend my positive face?) etc.
: He was not coerced or manipulated in any way---or, at least, not in any way that resembles the totalitarian methods he has intimated behaviorism supports. He simply emitted behavior once certain establishing operations (environmental circumstances) that have led to his behavior being emitted (reinforced) in the past were again in place. He might even say that he 'chose' to respond to a post. This is operant conditioning---the concept of selection by consequence that RD has, variously, claimed:
Well, however you are neglecting:
1:That it is my desire to debate that ever brought me into the forum. And it was this desire to debate, to engage that led me to the behaviour you see, it provided teh inital stimulus.
2:That posts you placed on the board in the meantime, not addressed to myself I ignored.
3:That this does not in itself provide a model for controling society...
: I trust I have disproved the first two claims and I hope I have elucidated the last one.
Well considering I never made the first two claims, and selecting specific sentences from whole posts to say I did does not make it so, so I couldn't care less, and I think I've shown how different theoretical constructions can explain the same details with more precision...
: A person would not be expected to respond in the absence of discriminative stimuli (appropriate occasion for responding) pertinent to reinforcement. This not the same as saying that a person would not respond to someone on a debate board if they were not directly addressed, however. As posts 3490 (October 29) and 3517 (November 1) demonstrate, RD responded to posts of mine which were addressed to other correspondents (i.e. appropriate occasions for responding). Indeed, during the period that RD's behavior was undergoing extinction (November 1--6), he could have also responded to posts of mine which were likewise addressed to other correspondents (posts 3542 and 3544, November 4)---but did not. Hence, discriminative stimuli did exist (in the case of posts 3490 and 3517), but I believe he did not do so (unlike in the past) because he had ceased receiving reinforcement (starting November 1).
No, for the most part it was because as I had said I beleived we were not gaining any new ground in our debate, or I felt I had nothing to add. Indeed, you can Go to the Anything Else forum to see an example of me trying to debate with soneone who won't respond, but with whom I have points at issue.
None.
