ron2
Posted : 10/16/2010 10:43:17 AM
Burl, I read your link in the post concerning David Hume. And find I agree with it. Though he may be considered philosophical, the statements are based on observations. The horses and zebras thing.
Though this next point may belong in on of the other threads concerning the validity of OC, I think it has points here, as well.
A number of people draw a line between classical conditioning (CC) and operant conditioning (OC) but I don't think they are separated and I think viewing it as a duality is doing a disservice but it seems par for the course in our modern culture, which does draw a lot from hellenistic thought, which is also found in our religions. Good and bad, heaven and hell. The sin of the body, the purity of the soul.
Anyway, what is classical condition? Just because it does not involve an overt food treat does not mean that it does not involve operant process. A dog is never allowed on the couch and is never given a treat for staying off the couch. And some would say that is classical. Actually, at the initial onset, the dog has choices in reacting. Either ignore corrections and get on the couch, anyway, or "cave in" to pressure and seek a comfy spot elsewhere. And what is it about that comfy spot elsewhere? -R. Picking the other spot avoids the aversive of trying to get on the couch. After some point, the dog has "learned" the social rule of never being on the couch and follows it, primarily as a way to avoid aversive, later, perhaps finding reward in it, until long after the fact when the behavior "appears" to be instinct but is really what, in my amateur way, I call an OC event becoming classical or appearing that way. Social learning, too, as operant qualities. The reason for adapting to social situations is that it is rewarding, purely as a means of survival. Either dogs "enjoy" society as humans do or they don't but calling it social learning does not remove the reward or punishment aspect of the process involved. That is, OC is basic to other descriptions. A dog is not born knowing how to sit or stay off the couch on command. These are things that are learned through reward and punishment. And sometimes, reward can be the absence of punishment, which by the way, has an analog in thermodynamics, to whit, following the path of least resistance. For dogs, sometimes better than humans, are efficient in their use of energy.
Dogs don't walk miles a day for the reason that humans do, necessarily. They walk as far as they have to hunt. The same could be said for other canids. Otherwise, if they have found a steady source of food, they will stick to that source. Such as prototypical dogs hanging around human settlements for scraps. They could go hunting elsewhere but efficiency dictates that you hunt where the hunting is good, you scavenge where the leftovers are. I don't think dogs are capable of the old joke about a lost wallet. A guy lost his wallet and is searching the ground around a lamp post. A passerby asks him what is going on.
"I lost my wallet in the alleyway over there."
"Why are you looking over here?"
"The light is better over here."
He who responds efficiently and quickly to the environment lives longer. That response is OC. It may eventually become "classical", i.e., hanging around humans, even if food gets scarce, because the habit has formed.
What about ToM? If dog, as a species has developed because a few early dogs realized that learning things from humans led to more food, then why wouldn't a ToM develope from evolutionary pressure. Precisely, a mutation has a response that allows it to gain info from a human and that info leads to more resources and that increased resources or favor with the human leads to better breeding chances and there you go, dogs that listen to humans get to breed more successfully than those that don't.
Dogs may not have had ToM to start but it certainly could have evolved in their symbiotic evolution with Man.