In this article I examine Skinner's objections to mentalism. I conclude that his only valid objections concern the "specious explanations" that mentalism might afford ? explanations that are incomplete, circular, or faulty in other ways. Unfortunately, the mere adoption of behavioristic terminology does not solve that problem. It camouflages the nature of "private events," while providing no protection from specious explanations. I argue that covert states and events are causally effective, and may be sufficiently different in their nature to deserve (...) a name other than "behavior."To call such events"mental"does not force a dualistic metaphysics: Such a distinction can be easily assimilated by an "emergent behaviorism." Emergent behaviorism would make explicit use of theories. It would be inductive and pragmatic, and would evaluate hypothetical constructs in terms of their utility in clarifying and solving the outstanding problems of the discipline. (shrink)

Decay gradients are usually drawn facing the wrong direction. Righting them emphasizes the role of stimuli that mark the response, and leads to different inferences concerning the factors controlling response–reinforcer associations. A simple model of the concatenation of stimulus traces provides some insight to the problems of impulse control relevant to ADHD.

Aristotle's four causes frame Webb's question. Comprehension requires specification of trigger, function, mechanism, and representation. Robots are real models of function. Physical, biological, and epigenetic constraints delimit the hypothesis space for candidate mechanisms. Robots constitute a simplified system more susceptible to formal representation than the target system. They thus constitute an important tool in a constructivist development of scientific knowledge.

A convincing case is made for the importance of conditioning in social interaction, but more than Pavlovian conditioning is involved: UR (unconditioned response) modification, imprinting, Skinnerian conditioning, and other forms of behavior modification are adduced as Pavlovian. Beyond its value as an icon, control theory is not brought to bear in an informative fashion on these phenomena.

There is a conflict of interest in behaviorism between diction and content, between clean speech and effective speech, between what we say and what we know. This article gives a framework for speech that is both clean and effective, that respects graded validation of hypotheses, and that favors distinction over doctrine. The article begins with the description of SDT, a mathematical model of discrimination based on statistical decision theory, which serves as leitmotif. It adopts Skinner's distinction between tacts and mands, (...) the former as responses under the predominant control of the stimulus and the latter as responses under the predominant control of the reinforcer. To analyze behavior is to understand the relative contribution of each of these loci of control, measured as d' and C, respectively. SDT is then applied to causal attributions. It is shown that Skinner's fundamental model of behavior, the three-term contingency, is itself a causal structure, with the initiating stimulus an efficient cause, the reinforcer a final cause, and the response and its various components the substrate upon which these act. In light of these correspondences, covert (mental) processes are viewed as links in a causal chain, under joint control of initiating and reinforcing stimuli. Their ascription is an inference, made with confidence when the links rise to the surface and with dubiety as they sink to the abyss. There exists no threshold at which the links become a different kind of thing; there are only gradients of clarity and confidence about what we take them to be. The host to these processes has a privileged but corrigible perspective on them and on the history of reinforcement that led to them. Skinner's model of the operant is a useful causal model of many nested levels, including covert processes such as cognition. In the avatar of SDT his model provides a tool for qualifying verbal behavior, including descriptions of cognition. (shrink)

Ainslie advances Freud's and Skinner's theories of homunculi by basing their emergent complexity on the interaction of simple algorithms. The rules of competition and cooperation of these interests are underspecified, but they provide a new way of thinking about the basic elements of conditioning, particularly conditioned stimuli (CSs).

Rachlin introduces a new theory before exhausting its predecessor. His earlier model of future-discounting may be developed by integrating over the duration of extended rewards and punishers. The difference in value of an event within a pattern over the event in isolation derives from the deprivation provided by the pattern; yet the pattern attracts because acute rewards are more potent than incremental deprivations.

Despite corrigible details, Nevin & Grace forge a clearer place for persistence as a fundamental attribute of motivated behavior and assay converging experimental operations in its measurement.