Operant Behavior

WE are interested in the behavior of an organism because of its effects on the environment. (One effect on the social environment is, of course, the arousal of our interest.) Some effects seem to throw light on the behavior which produces them, but their explanatory role has been clouded by the fact that they follow the behavior and, therefore, raise the specter of teleology. An attempt has been made to solve the problem by creating a cpntemporary_^uxmgate of a given effect. A quality or property of purpose is assigned to behavior to bring "what the organism is behaving for" into the effective present, or the organism is said to behave in a given way because it intends to achieve, or expects to have, a given effect, or its behavior is characterized as possessing utility to the extent that it maximizes or minimizes certain effects. The teleological problem is, of course, not solved until we have answered certain questions: What gives an action its purpose, what leads an organism to expect to have an effect, how is utility represented in behavior? The answers to such questions are eventually to be found in past instances in which similar behavior has been effective. The original problem can be solved directly in the same way. Thorndike's Law of Effect was a step in that direction: The approximately simultaneous occurrence of a response and certain environmental events (usually generated by it) changes the responding organism, increasing the probability that responses of the same sort will occur again. The response itself has passed into history and is not altered. By emphasizing a-daange-in-th&jjrganism, Thorndike's principle made it possible to include the effects of action among the causes of future action without using concepts like purpose, intention, expectancy, or utility. Up to that time, the only demonstrable causes of behavior had been antecedent stimuli. The range of the eliciting stimulus