Re: Shaping Truth in Verbal Behavior

I'm reluctant to provide any attention to this mild flame-fest, lest
it reinforce the flaming, but in the interest of what seems to be an
on-topic question, I thought I'd throw in a couple cents:


>Date:    Sat, 13 Apr 2002 15:02:31 EDT
>From:    John Eshleman <[email protected]>
>Subject: Shaping Truth in Verbal Behavior (was Re: Important
>Follow-up Message)
>
>
>That said, how can a behaviorist speak of "electing" to do something?
>

An entire area of the experimental analysis of behavior concerns
so-called "choice behavior" (a term invented, I think, by a
behaviorist).  In fact, all behavior can probably be conceptualized
as "choice behavior" in that when one does something, one is doing
that thing to the exclusion of all the other things one could
conceivably be doing.

Nevertheless, I considered the use of the term "electing to do" in
the same fashion as choice behavior--one's choice to engage in one of
a multitude of available responses is a function of history and
current context.

_dennis, 2 cents poorer

--
```````````''''''''''''
Dennis R. Wahlgren, M.A.

Center for Behavioral Epidemiology and Community Health
San Diego State University
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/c-beach/

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars--mere globs of
gas atoms.  Nothing is 'mere.'  I too can see the stars on a desert night,
and feel them.  But do I see less or more?"      --Richard Feynman