Should we essentially ignore the role of stimuli in a general account of operant selection?

When one takes the evolution of operant behavior as prototype, one sees that the term replication is too tied to the peculiarities of genetic evolution. A more general term is recurrence. The important problem raised by recurrence is not “information” but relationship: deciding when two occurrences belong to the same lineage. That is solved by looking at common environmental effects. The authors have made some good progress toward abstracting the concept of General Evolutionary Process. Particularly constructive are their emphasis on the iterative nature of the process of selection and their separation of interaction from replication. They are right also in their implication that part of the importance of this project lies in clarifying selection as a type of causality and as a valid basis for explanation (Baum & Heath 1992). The notion of operant behavior has been resisted by laypeople and scientists alike for the same reasons that evolutionary theory has been resisted: (1) an enormous preference for immediate (“push”) causes, even if they have to be imagined, and (2) the implied rejection of cherished imaginary immediate causes such as agency, will, purpose, and intelligence. I suggest, however, that the authors might have made more progress had they considered operant evolution (i.e., shaping) as a prototype, instead of genetic evolution. In attempting to abstract the General Evolutionary Process, no necessity requires that genetic evolution be taken as the prototype. It has the advantages that it is widely accepted among the scientific community and that its mechanisms are partially understood, but it has the disadvantage that its peculiarities are easily taken for necessary attributes. If instead one takes operant evolution as prototype, at least two issues are clarified: the term replication and the concept of information. Replication. Even if it is true that DNA is in a sense “copied” (and the facts of recombination make this doubtful), in no useful sense are repeated occurrences of a behavioral pattern copies. If I brush my teeth every night before I go to bed, in no sense is my brushing one night a replica of my brushing the night before. Even though we are ignorant of the way the workings of the brain affect behavior, nothing we know suggests there might be a replica or representation of tooth-brushing somewhere in the brain either. Rather, as with other natural events, such as sunrise, hurricanes, birth, and death, the event occurs when the conditions are right (bedtime, bathroom, toothbrush, toothpaste, and so on). (The historical origins of tooth-brushing in a history of reinforcement and punishment – that is, by iterative selection – are another matter, of course.) A more neutral term would be recurrence, meaning just “occurring again” or “turning up repeatedly.” Replication would be just one type of recurrence – recurrence by copying. Other mechanisms of recurrence may be imagined; for operant behavior, we have the effects of context and cues known as stimulus control. Thus, one need not search for some sort of copying when talking about the recurrence of behavior. In particular, one need not talk nonsensically about things like “memes” “jumping from brain to brain” when talking about the spread of a behavioral pattern within a cultural group (Baum 2000; Dawkins 1989a). Information. The authors assert, “the notion of ‘information’ is fundamental to any account of replication” and “In replication the relevant information incorporated into the structure of replicators is ‘passed on’ to successive generations of replicators.” Even if these statements were true of replication, they are irrelevant to the more general idea of recurrence. The authors’ reliance on the notion of replication leads them to misstate the important issue involved, which is about relationship. Even if the structure of replicators is passed on, for purposes of evolutionary theory, the problem is not pondering the “information incorporated”; the problem is deciding when two sequential occurrences belong to the same lineage. The short answer would be that two occurrences belong to the same lineage if they share common ancestry (Ghiselin 1997). This, however, raises the question of defining “ancestry” in general terms. Here again, the example of operant evolution sheds light, because it leads us to see that “common ancestry” means common history of selection. My tooth-brushings Monday night and Tuesday night belong to the same lineage, not because of any “information incorporated,” but because they may be attributed to a common origin – say, childhood training (i.e., exhortations from my parents and dentist, approval and disapproval, cavities or the lack of them, and so on; Baum 2000). The common origin and common history of selection, however, depend on common environmental effects. Both the origin of my tooth-brushing (exhortations, etc.) and the selection of my tooth-brushing depended on past effects of contributing to dental hygiene. Thus, common “ancestry” for behavior comes down to a common basis for selection or common history of environmental effects. In more abstract terms, two occurrences belong to the same lineage if they are attributed to the same history of interaction with the environment. Dawkins (1989b) makes a parallel point for genetic evolution when he explains that the genes that promote dam-construction in beavers were selected by their effects on the beavers’ environment. Indeed the genes “for” dam-construction are defined by those effects, for they are nowhere apparent in the structure of the beavers’ DNA. Although the idea that genes influence behavior is widely accepted, the content of this idea differs little from the wide acceptance that the brain influences behavior. Almost nothing is known of how this occurs. If we had to rely on examination of structures in DNA or the brain to define the units of recurrence, we would be in deep trouble. But defining the recurring units in terms of their common environmental effects solves this otherwise intractable problem. Instead of “information,” environmental effects turn out to be the key to defining lineages. I doubt one would recognize this without considering the evolution of behavior, whether across generations or within a lifetime. Should we essentially ignore the role of stimuli in a general account of operant selection?