HERBERT SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS: A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW OF PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract

Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (1855, first edition) was regarded by his contemporaries, including William James and John Dewey, as a major contribution to what was then a very new discipline. In this book he first expounded his ideas about both evolution of species and how behavior of the individual organism adapts through interaction with the environment. His formulation of the principle that behavior changes in adaptation to the environment is closely related to the version of the law of effect propounded some years later by Thorndike. He can thus be seen as the first proponent of selectionism, a key tenet of behavior analysis. He also explicitly attacked the then prevailing view of free will as being incompatible with the biologically grounded view of psychological processes that he was advocating, and thus put forward ideas that were precursors of B. F. Skinner's in this important area of debate.

Da intencionalidade da consciência ao método progressivo regressivo em Husserl

“…Como é possível observar na ilustração (Figura 2), a relação entre a passagem de tempo e o processamento dos estímulos não acarreta o sequenciamento constitutivo de uma consciência ou intencionalidade operante, mas a recepção e reação isolada a diferentes estímulos providos pelo ambiente. No modelo de Spencer prevalece a ideia de que a realidade é evidenciada pela persistência da consciência a estímulos estáticos em sequência linear temporal (Leslie, 2006). Há pouco espaço à atividade constitutiva consciente em modelos do século XIX derivados de fisiologia cerebral.…”

Evolutionary psychology and behavior analysis: Toward convergence.

“…Textbooks on behavior analysis now acknowledge the importance of evolutionary constraints on learning and include discussions of such phenomena as instinctual drift, the Garcia effect, and preparedness (e.g. Leslie, 1996, Mazur, 2002). The notion of a preparedness dimension to learning was spelled out in a 1970 paper by Seligman who argued that “the organism may be more or less prepared by the evolution of its species to associate a given CS and US or a given response to with an outcome” (p. 408).…”