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.86Toward the end of his life Guthrie wrote a comprehensive accountof his version of scientific theory that allows one to see how he reconciled the conflicting claims of purpose, science, and common From Apogee to Perigee | 79sense.87 In effect, he advanced a form of operationism in which meanings were nothing other than verbal conventions.The essence of science, he asserted, was prediction.Prediction consisted in saying that,within a certain margin of error, given an event of category A, an eventof category B was likely to follow.Therefore, a necessary preliminarystep was the categorization of phenomena.Along the way, much ofthe complexity of experience would be lost, but in the interests of formulating meaningful predictions, such a simplification of experiencewas essential.Finally, Guthrie was totally opposed to intervening variables.As aresult, he was the most starkly empiricist of all the neobehaviorists.He claimed that to explain meant to point to the physical stimulusthat, in any given situation, provoked a physical response.When wesaid that an animal was not attending, we meant that the animal wasnot emitting any identifiable responses.Guthrie wrote, Whatever themechanism of learning, it must establish a causal chain of connectionsbetween stimuli and movement patterns. 88Guthrie s theory of learning was a particularly striking instance ofthe projection into psychology of Progressivist thinking.It was notjust the case that learning was interpreted in terms of control of situations by experimenters.89 From the very close observation of the factsof the case it followed that one could exclude fictitious entities such asreinforcement from one s explanatory armamentarium.Explanationbecame prediction and prediction became the discovery of highly specific relationships between discrete events.Throughout his writings Guthrie insisted that meanings were nothing other than verbal conventions.Extending that analysis to theories,he said that theories were merely devices that rendered sets of factsorderly and meaningful to particular audiences.90 Guthrie s desire tobe a good empiricist was limitless (after all, the basic fact about discourse is that it occurs between individuals and that any given pieceof discourse is tailored to the needs, knowledge, and emotional characteristics of individuals).But, equally characteristically, empiricistswant to draw reasonably widely generalizable inductive conclusionsthat will stand the test of time.That was clearly the stronger tendencyin Guthrie s approach, and he never showed how he could reconcilehis social relativism with his absolutist tendencies.The most serious criticism of Guthrie s theory, however, revolvesaround the issue of its supposed simplicity.For Guthrie, his theory s 80 | From Apogee to Perigeesimplicity was its greatest merit.It allowed him to offer seemingly art-less explanations for a wide range of phenomena.Mueller andSchoenfeld s examination of his theory leads them to conclude that itis simple in appearance only.91 One source of the difficulty lay inGuthrie s failure to define the key terms stimulus and response independently of each other.Thus a stimulus was not any sensory pat-tern but a pattern that called forth a response.In the same way, a response was that which was called forth by a stimulus.Those circulardefinitions meant that, in logical terms, Guthrie could offer no prooffor his fundamental assertion that learning consisted of bare associations between specific stimuli and specific responses.In order to do so,we have to point to instances where a radical change of adaptive behavior has followed such connections, and nothing other than suchconnections.A further requirement is that the antecedent events (stimuli) and consequent events (responses) should be defined in terms ofindependent criteria.If the requirement is not satisfied, then a criticcan argue that, in any given instance of Guthrian learning, only thosecharacteristics of stimuli and responses satisfying some unstated priorcriteria are noted in experimental protocols or in cases of naturalisticbehavior.Another source of the concealed complexity of Guthrie s theory layin his failure to deal with the problem of breaking the flow of behavior into significant components.His associationism led him to presume that any observable response had to be made up of a group ofsubresponses, each, in principle, separately conditionable [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.86Toward the end of his life Guthrie wrote a comprehensive accountof his version of scientific theory that allows one to see how he reconciled the conflicting claims of purpose, science, and common From Apogee to Perigee | 79sense.87 In effect, he advanced a form of operationism in which meanings were nothing other than verbal conventions.The essence of science, he asserted, was prediction.Prediction consisted in saying that,within a certain margin of error, given an event of category A, an eventof category B was likely to follow.Therefore, a necessary preliminarystep was the categorization of phenomena.Along the way, much ofthe complexity of experience would be lost, but in the interests of formulating meaningful predictions, such a simplification of experiencewas essential.Finally, Guthrie was totally opposed to intervening variables.As aresult, he was the most starkly empiricist of all the neobehaviorists.He claimed that to explain meant to point to the physical stimulusthat, in any given situation, provoked a physical response.When wesaid that an animal was not attending, we meant that the animal wasnot emitting any identifiable responses.Guthrie wrote, Whatever themechanism of learning, it must establish a causal chain of connectionsbetween stimuli and movement patterns. 88Guthrie s theory of learning was a particularly striking instance ofthe projection into psychology of Progressivist thinking.It was notjust the case that learning was interpreted in terms of control of situations by experimenters.89 From the very close observation of the factsof the case it followed that one could exclude fictitious entities such asreinforcement from one s explanatory armamentarium.Explanationbecame prediction and prediction became the discovery of highly specific relationships between discrete events.Throughout his writings Guthrie insisted that meanings were nothing other than verbal conventions.Extending that analysis to theories,he said that theories were merely devices that rendered sets of factsorderly and meaningful to particular audiences.90 Guthrie s desire tobe a good empiricist was limitless (after all, the basic fact about discourse is that it occurs between individuals and that any given pieceof discourse is tailored to the needs, knowledge, and emotional characteristics of individuals).But, equally characteristically, empiricistswant to draw reasonably widely generalizable inductive conclusionsthat will stand the test of time.That was clearly the stronger tendencyin Guthrie s approach, and he never showed how he could reconcilehis social relativism with his absolutist tendencies.The most serious criticism of Guthrie s theory, however, revolvesaround the issue of its supposed simplicity.For Guthrie, his theory s 80 | From Apogee to Perigeesimplicity was its greatest merit.It allowed him to offer seemingly art-less explanations for a wide range of phenomena.Mueller andSchoenfeld s examination of his theory leads them to conclude that itis simple in appearance only.91 One source of the difficulty lay inGuthrie s failure to define the key terms stimulus and response independently of each other.Thus a stimulus was not any sensory pat-tern but a pattern that called forth a response.In the same way, a response was that which was called forth by a stimulus.Those circulardefinitions meant that, in logical terms, Guthrie could offer no prooffor his fundamental assertion that learning consisted of bare associations between specific stimuli and specific responses.In order to do so,we have to point to instances where a radical change of adaptive behavior has followed such connections, and nothing other than suchconnections.A further requirement is that the antecedent events (stimuli) and consequent events (responses) should be defined in terms ofindependent criteria.If the requirement is not satisfied, then a criticcan argue that, in any given instance of Guthrian learning, only thosecharacteristics of stimuli and responses satisfying some unstated priorcriteria are noted in experimental protocols or in cases of naturalisticbehavior.Another source of the concealed complexity of Guthrie s theory layin his failure to deal with the problem of breaking the flow of behavior into significant components.His associationism led him to presume that any observable response had to be made up of a group ofsubresponses, each, in principle, separately conditionable [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]