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ADAPTATION, TELEOLOGY, AND SELECTION BY CONSEQUENCES
Author(s) -
Ringen Jon D.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1993.60-3
Subject(s) - teleology , selection (genetic algorithm) , epistemology , darwinism , behaviorism , natural selection , cognitive science , adaptation (eye) , field (mathematics) , vitalism , psychology , philosophy , computer science , sociology , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , medicine , alternative medicine , mathematics , pathology , pure mathematics
This paper presents and defends the view that reinforcement and natural selection are selection processes, that selection processes are neither mechanistic nor teleological, and that mentalistic and vitalistic processes are teleological but not mechanistic. The differences between these types of processes are described and used in discussing the conceptual and methodological significance of “selection type theories” and B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorist view that “operant behavior is the field of intention, purpose, and expectation. It deals with that field precisely as the theory of evolution has dealt with another kind of purpose” (1986, p. 716). The antimentalism of radical behaviorism emerges as a post‐Darwinian extension of Francis Bacon's (and Galileo's) influential view that “[the introduction of final causes] rather corrupts than advances the sciences” (Bacon, 1905, p. 302).