Beyond the Matter of Size –
Aspects of Molar Behaviorism
Carsta Simon
NAFO-seminaret 2014
Storefjell Høyfjellshotel, April 7-11
contact: [email protected]
Pictures have been removed from this pdf for copyright reasons
1. Vocabulary: Molar, Molecular, Teleological & Multi-Scale
2. Final Causes as a Means of Prediction and Control
– On the Direction of Psychological Investigation
3. Mental Terms - Molar Behaviorism as a Conception of Mind
2 Cases of Mental Terms: Sensations and Intentions
4. Example of a Teleological Explanation: Self-Control
5. To Behave is (A)to Choose and (B) to Spend Time
6. Are Molar and Molecular Approaches Categorically Different?
William M. Baum‘s
Molar Multi-Scale Behaviorism
&
Howard Rachlin‘s
Teleological Behaviorism
Direction of Psychological Investigation –
Final Causes as a Means of Prediction and Control
— Rachlin‘s school of thinking was largely influenced by
Aristotle
— Aristotle: Causal Explanantion = “whatever might follow
the word ‘because‘ in a sentence“
— 4 types of causes:
Explain the nature of objects
— Material
— Formal
Explain dynamic behavior of objects
— Efficient --- In molecular explanations
--- In molar explanations
— Final
Efficient Causes
Final Causes
(in Molecular Explanations)
(in Molar Explanations)
• Effect follows the cause
i.e. cause precedes behavior
-> reveals mechanisms with all degrees of
complexity
• Cause embraces its effects
• Effects are particular movements that fit
into a classification (or form)
• Analysis of final causes yields ends, ends
that consist of patterns of the movements.
No backward causation!
Of what more molar process
is this particular movement a part?
Answer to: How does the movement occur?
Answer to: Why does the movement occur?
• No matter how complete answers to how-questions are, they do not automatically
answer why-questions
• Efficient and final causes only are both incomplete -> good mechanics (that can predict
and control the action of parts of a car) are not necessarily good drivers (that can predict
and control movements of the whole car)
n
Final Causes in Explanations of Behavior
24h
other
” The cupss
cost 110
NOK each”
selling
goods
agreeing
promoting on price
product
“[…]ss“
utterances
Allocation and Nesting of (Verbal) Activities
— The “why“ is explained in terms of a multi-scale analyses of what more extended pattern a
lower scale pattern belongs to
— Nesting: Molarists understand behavior as part of something bigger – it’s function in bigger
context!
— Final causes are like probabilities!
— An individual response (i.e. lever press) does neither have a final cause nor a probability
Final Causes in Explanations of Behavior
-> A contingency of reinforcement may be conceived as
a final cause of the individual acts of which it is comprised
• it consists of the acts it causes (includes them) -> it is the final
cause of stimuli, behavior and reinforcers
• An individual reinforcer considered in isolation cannot be a final
cause
ABC = Final Cause
Cause!!
• Skinnerian behaviorism does not deal with
final causes: An individual behaviorreinforcer contiguity serves as the
efficient cause of SUBSEQUENT responserate increases
• Superstition: Contiguities are efficient
causes of future behavior
What reinforces a smoker’s refusal of a cigarette when he tries to quit?
Operant psychology of the hidden
organism: inner (covert) respondents,
operants, discriminative stimuli and
reinforcers: A smoker reinforces himself
An internal vision of future health wells up
inside him
Problems of internal and external selfreinforcement:
If a reinforcer is a highly valued activity
contingent on the performance of a lessvalued activity (Premack, 1965)
-> an activity that may be initiated or
withheld at any time cannot be contingent on
any other activity
Why not reinforce ANY act?
What reinforces the giving
and withholding of selfreinforcement?
Cognitive behavioral therapy:
• Skinnerian techniques are retained for
acts that are clearly reinforced
-> when no obvious or immediate
reinforcer found –> behaviorism is
abandoned and mental states become
inner causes
-> try to manipulate
(strengthen) the person’s
beliefs and desires
(e.g. to be healthy)
• For example by asking the patient to
repeat the statement, or reinforcing the
statement
-> but we want to strengthen the
refusal, not the verbal statements
Therapist is making a category mistake
— The mental term is really description of a
final cause (Ryle, 1949)
— The statement of a belief is one of the actions
that comprise the belief
—> Altering the statement would affect that part,
not a central source or cause
—> Might or might not affect the rest
—Like altering the first notes of a symphony
—> Belief is no efficient cause but a final cause
— Concentration on (in best case) efficient causes - on the “how” - might lead to
neglect of analysis of what the person is getting by behaving this way – “why” –
the consequences
— Rachlin (1985) argued that pain treatment based on the equality of pain and pain
behavior has been at least as effective (and if generally accepted might be more
effective) than treatment based on pain as an internal state
Molar Behaviorism as a Conception of Mind:
Mental Terms
Skinner's (1953, p . 279) typical
explanation of the causal status of
an idea : "If the individual himself
reports `I have had the idea for
some time but have only just
recently acted upon it,' he is
describing a covert response which
preceded the overt ."
— Skinner rejected final causes and
mental terms but accepted inner
causes
Teleological behaviorists: An idea is no covert
response but a pattern of wholly overt responses
including the individual's verbal report as one
particular part of the pattern
— Teleological behaviorism is a behavioral
identity theory: mental terms are identical
with extended patterns of overt behavior
— Behavioral approach to mental terms: under
what conditions (context) are they used =
their meaning
Motion of all physical objects is explicable in
terms of both final and efficient causes:
E.g. soul or mind are efficiently caused by genes
coming from one’s parents but are final causes
that embrace activities (consist of them)
A) Sensations
• For physiologists and mentalists sensations like hearing a sound are
fundamentally instantaneous – sensation consists of one spiritual or
physiological event
-> “What is the difference between a deaf and a hearing person?”
• For a teleological behaviorist the difference before and after sensation is not
that the mind contains something more but that the pattern of a person’s
actions differs
• Sensing the color of an object means to discriminate between objects with
that and with another color
• ->Discrimination cannot be instantaneous, it requires a correlation of many
individual events over time
• For a teleological behaviorist being deaf means to fail to discriminate in overt
(verbal and non-verbal) behavior between sound and non-sounds -> it is not
possible to tell whether s.o. is deaf at a moment in time
Person‘s
fottapping,
smiling, verbal
reports about
music…
• -> Correlation b/w sounds and behavior is 0 or not (this is what it MEANS to be deaf or
hearing)
• Mentalists point to two corresponding momentary events in two entirely different
correlations!
• A rat currently pressing at 100 times per minute might be immobile at the moment!
• What differentiates that rat from another one that doesn’t press the lever at all?
• -> Pressing rate is not behavior at the moment but over time
• Just like a hearing person might be inactive at the presence of a sound
• Behavioral differences over time DEFINE hearing and deafness
Person‘s
fottapping,
smiling, verbal
reports about
music…
Person‘s
fottapping,
smiling, verbal
reports about
music…
If a person‘s behavior correlates with sounds over time, that person can
hear- regardless of what goes on in her brain (or conciousness) at that
time
B. Intentions
— Mental events such as a person‘s
intentions can be studied in two ways:
A) Observe behavior and infer inner mechanism that might give rise to
that behavior (like trying to infer the program of a computer by
typing it‘s keys and observing what appears on the screen)
- might be useful to know what is going on in the nervous system
(MRI)
B) Teleological analysis: Like determining the true probability of a
roulette wheel
- Observation and analysis of patterns of behavior
over time (including verbal behavior)
- Observable pattern is the intention (the meaning
of the word)
- A probability (conceived as a relative frequency)
may be known as accurately as you want if
you are willing to wait (no residual)
What are John‘s intentions?
— Teleological behaviorist: John’s past actions are the only relevant data
Sex only
or
on this
actions
(plus his future actions)
I willquestion
seduce herbecause it is in those
serious
and his
the moment
I
where
intentions
actually reside
relationship?
sucecced I will go!
— Good data in this regard may be difficult to obtain
— >John’s intentions may be obscure
— They are obscure in the same way that the roulette wheel’s
probabilities may be obscure
— > because there is not enough currently available behavior to analyze
— not because John’s intentions are hidden inside his head!
— John's belief and his syster’s belief regarding John's intentions are
discriminations among complex patterns in John's behavior
Internal and External Explanations
— Teleological behaviorism is a molarism in time, not in space: If an aspect of
behavior cannot be explained in terms of narrow contingencies, molar
behaviorists look further in time, not in space (i.e. inside the organism like
Skinnerarians)
— Mechanisms underlying intentions, like the mechanisms underlying all behavior,
are internal
— But intentions themselves occur in behavior over time, not inside the head
— Teleological behaviorism studies mental life itself while neurocognitivism studies
its underlying mechanism
— Both are required for a complete understanding of the mind
— Internal <-> external viewpoints are complementary, not mutually exclusive
— All behavior exists b/c of its function in interaction of the person with the
external environment
— But all behavioral patterns are controlled by internal mechanisms
Self-Control…A Conflict Between…
Internal View
External View
• Question of will power
• Brain as an area of conflict: neural
impulses coming from
different places
• Message from “lower“
brain area: “Take a smoke“
(internal impulse)
• Message form “higher“ brain
area is dictating to “refuse
the cigarette“ (internal intention)
• Those internal representations of
intentions fight it out in the brain
and the behavior signals the
winner
• Fundamental conflict between impulsive
and self-controlled actions does not take
place in the brain but in a
person‘s overt behavior
over time
• Temporal conflict b/w (A) a relatively
immediate, high-valued act (smoking) and
(B) an abstract, long-range, pattern of acts
(healthy behavior)
• If conflict resolved in favor of the former:
“behavior is impulsive”, if conflict is
resolved in favor of latter:
“behavior is self-controlled”
“The whole may be greater than the sum of its parts”
(Koffka, 1955)
— Rachlin‘s teleological behaviorism is strongly influenced by this
Gestaltist’s dictum
The teleological behavioral extension
of that gestalt dictum would say that
the value of an activity may be greater
(or less) than the sum of the values of
its parts
— alcoholic prefers to be sober and
socially accepted
— However, over the next few minutes, he prefers to
have a drink
— If over successive brief intervals he always does what he
prefers, he will always be drinking
— The problem of self-control = How to make choices over the longer time span
and avoid making choices on a case-by-case basis
— Difficult to avoid making short-term choices because the value of the immediate
alternative (watching a music video, having a drink now) is greater than that of a
fraction of the longer activity (watching the first minutes of the movie; being
sober now)
— We should make choices over the longer time-span
because the value of the longer activity (watching
the whole movie; being generally sober) is greater
than the sum of all the short-term values of its parts
(watching each individual 3-minute section of the
movie, refusing each particular drink)
— Each 3 minutes of movie-watching, each
drink refusal, has virtually no value in itself
— The pieces of the more valuable behavioral pattern are never reinforced!
— > not immediately, not conditionally, not after a delay!
— No single drink refusal is reinforced after a delay. If the alcoholic refuses a single
drink, she does not wake up three weeks later suddenly healthier and happier
— To realize the value of a drink refusal, the alcoholic must put together a long string of
them—just as to realize the value of a movie you must watch the whole thing
— Imagine after having watched 85 minutes of your 90-minutes movie, you have to
stop. Are you 94,4% as happy as you would have been if you had seen the whole
movie?
— Evidence that reinforcement
acts on rates of behavior at no
particular point in time
— Reinforcement does not select
individual responses but patterns of responses:
—>A rat that is rewarded for running faster or slower
through a maze (or pressing a lever fast or slower)
does not adjust running speed but periodically
pauses between bursts
— In the short run: The drink will
give the alcoholic pleasure
— In the long run: This individual
drink will not harm her health
— A pattern of drinking is harmful
— While a pattern of abstaining (or
social drinking) is valuable
—> Alcoholic must learn to
A) ignore the rewards and punishers (distant as well
as present) of her individual acts
B) behave so as to maximize the rewards of
extended patterns
Core principles of Multi-Scale Explanations
Baum: Approach to building a
science of behavior based
on two main principles:
All Behavior Takes Time
All Behavior is Choice
Are Molar and Molecular Approaches
Categorically Different or Do They
Represent the Extremes of a Continuum?
Yes and No
Yes, they are extremes of a continuum in the sense that…
Molecular
Guthrie
1935
Acts vs. Movements
• Movement: Particular set
of muscular contractions
resulting a particular locus
of bodily placement
• Act: Coordinated pattern of
movements leading to
definable result (i.e. waving
goodbye which is one act
but can contain different
movements)
• Learning of acts emerges
when learning movements
movements
Skinner
1938
Baum
Herrnstein
Hineline
1966 Rachlin
Molar
Molar
Nope!
An operant (i.e. an
act) can be directly
reinforced! Without
regard to particular
movements (its
structure)
operants
• In Herrnstein/Hineline’s conception of
avoidance: The effective contingency is a
negative correlation imposed between rate of
aversive event and rate of operant emission
• No individual consequence (hypothetical or
real) contingent on any particular operant is
involved
•Teleological behaviorism expands Skinner’s
original concept of reinforcement from a single
event depended on a single operant (1 food
pellet following immediately after 1 lever
press) to a pattern of environmental events
perhaps only vaguely contingent on an
overlapping pattern of operants
extended contingencies
Do Molar and Molecular Explanantions lie
on a Continuum?
YES
NO
Direction of investigation: final vs. efficient causes
-> investigation of time allocations
What counts as data:
• Rate of behavior vs. discrete responses
(contiguity)
•Momentary stimuli vs. sensitivity to molar
aspects of the environment
Covert/ private events (stimuli, responses,
reinforcement)
• Relative meaning of terms
• Historical development
• Size of units on continuous scale/
measurement time
• Origin of Confusion: Terminlogy
– teleological/time allocation - analysis and analysis of 3-term contingengy are mutually exclusive but
experimental definition of behavioral units can happen at continuous levels of complexity
???
Some References
Baum, W.M. (2005). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. Second
Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Baum, W. M. (2012). Rethinking reinforcement: Allocation, induction, and contingency.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis Of Behavior, 97(1), 101-124.
Baum, W. M., & Rachlin, H. (1969). Choice as time allocation. Journal of the Experimental
Analysis of Behavior, 12(6), 861-874. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1969.12-861
Herrnstein, R. J., & Hineline, P. N. (1966). Negative reinforcement as shock-frequency
reduction. Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 9(4), 421-430.
Littman, R. A., & Rosen, E. (1950). Molar and molecular. Psychological Review, 57(1), 58-65.
O'Donohue, W. T., & Kitchener, R. F. (1999). Handbook of behaviorism. San Diego, Calif.:
Academic Press.
Rachlin, H. (1976). Behavior and learning: W. H. Freeman.
Rachlin, H. (1985). Pain and behavior. The Behavioral And Brain Sciences, 8, 43-52.
Rachlin, H. (1992). Teleological behaviorism. American Psychologist, 47, 1371-1382.
Rachlin, H. (1994). Behavior and mind: The roots of modern psychology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Rachlin, H. (2000). The science of self-control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press..
Rachlin, H. (2002). Altruism and selfishness. Behavioral And Brain Sciences, 25, 239-296
Rachlin, H. (2012). Making IBM’s computer Watson human. The Behavior Analyst, 35, 1-58).
Simon, C. (2013). "You can be a behaviorist and still talk about the mind – as long as you don’t
put it into a person´s head” An interview with Howard Rachlin, Ph.D. Norsk Tidsskrift
for Atferdsanalyse, Vinter 2013(2).
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan