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- Title
DRIVERS OF BEHAVIOR: COMMENTS ON T. L. SMITH'S "SELECTION BY CONSEQUENCES IN THE ONTOGENY OF BEHAVIOR: THE PROBLEM OF THE FIRST INSTANCE".
- Authors
Baum, William M.
- Abstract
Every Darwinian process consists of variation in a pool or population, recurrence of variants in the population, and selection as differential recurrence of variants. The members in the population vary in some property that functions to serve recurrence, and if some variant functions to serve greater recurrence, that variant increases in the population across time. This characterization applies to biological evolution, cultural evolution, and behavioral evolution. Contrary to Smith (2019), whether variation is qualitative or quantitative is of little moment. Selection is passive relative to variation and cannot be said to produce variation. Contrary to Smith, Skinner probably made no such assumption, but rather just took variation in behavior for granted, as inherent. In shaping, or behavioral evolution, recurrence occurs because activities are induced by phylogenetically important events (PIE). The concept of induction has broader explanatory power than the concept of reinforcement, because induction accounts for both non-operant and operant activities. Coupled with covariance between an activity and a PIE, induction removes the problem of the "first instance" that concerned Skinner and now concerns Smith.
- Subjects
ONTOGENY; BIOLOGICAL evolution; SOCIAL evolution; PIES
- Publication
Behavior & Philosophy, 2020, Vol 48, p1
- ISSN
1053-8348
- Publication type
Article