Operant Reinforcement and Natural Selection: The Useless Analogy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/psi.v20i3.47412Keywords:
Analogy, selection, reinforcement, behavior, brainAbstract
Current theoretical discussions of behavior analysis often mention "selection by consequences" as a
specific causal mode and as an unifying framework that would relate the field to evolutionary biology.
Using the term, "selection," in the context of operant reinforcement, however, amounts to relying on
analogical or metaphorical discourse. This theoretical note has three principal aims: first, to clarify the
conditions under which an analogy of this type may be accepted; second, to summarize and simplify the
arguments that Tonneau and Sokolowski (2000, 2001 ) marshaled against the analogy between operant
reinforcement and natural selection; and finally, to examine whether recent developments in the field
refute these authors’ negative conclusions.
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