p.48 In the course of writing this paper I have become more and
more aghast at the number of separate items I have tried to pack into it. Far too many for clearness. And yet I don't
know how I could have done otherwise. I wanted to introduce you to a new way of viewing things. And I felt that for my argument
to have cogency, I must suggest my whole system and not limit myself to merely one feature about ideas, a feature such as
might properly be encompassed in a single paper. The result, as you will see, is the following overstuffed boa constrictor
of an affair with contents not wholly digested, and perhaps you will say by very nature indigestible. Anyway, so
much for plea and for apology.
p.49-50 we may note two important features which seem to run through and be found in all instances
of behavior. They are trial and error, and learning. Any case of behavior, if not a product of
past trial and error and learning, is, if unwonted obstructions be introduced, capable of new trial and error and new learning.
p.50 the rat in a maze exhibits the trials of turning here, there, and yonder, until it gets to
the food box... In each case the trials (and errors) keep on until some particular and objectively discoverable
end object or situation is got to or from.
p.51 "The purposes we have here observed, these purposes which exhibit themselves in trial and error, these
persistences until, are not mentalistically defined entities at all, but behavioristically defined ones." ...purposes...
are discovered by looking at another organism. One observes that the latter persists through
trials and errors until a given end is got to or from. Such a purpose is quite
an objective and purely behavioristic affair.
p.51 Not only do organisms vary and persist in their responses until they get to or from, but they also
upon successive occasions repeat more readily those particular responses which have proved to lead most easily or most quickly
to or from. That is, they learn.
p.51 We have, then, these two conclusions: (1) Behavior expresses immanent purposes,
-purposes which exhibit themselves as persistences through trial and error to get to or from. And (2)
it expresses, as is indicated by the facts of learning, immanent cognitions, -cognitions as to the nature of the environment
for mediating such gettings to or from... They are ideas, at least in some sense of that word. And our remaining
task is simply that of working them out more clearly.
p.52 What, now, are the purposes? Fundamentally, as we have already seen, they are persistences
to or from. But to or from what? ...states of bodily quiescence or of bodily disturbance. External
environmental objects are got to or from only as means to or from these bodily states.
p.52 all behavior purposes do thus reduce ultimately to drives to or from final
physiological states, and that all other objects or situations are, in the last analysis, got to or from only as
routes or means for getting to or form these bodily states.
p.52-53 we may like the environment to a multidimensional spider's web radiating out from the behaving
organism in many directions. The far ends of the threads terminate in final to-be-sought-for quiescences, or final
to-be-avoided disturbances. Environmental objects and situations are responded to and cognized only in their character
of providing bridges or routes along these threads.
p.55 A behavior act postulates, that is, such real physical entities as
sizes, shapes, weights, inertias, resistances, to serve as actual supports for itself. In order to stand,
to walk, to climb, to run, to swim, to make noises, an organism requires and must have such and such physical supports as a
solid surface to walk on, a physical height to climb over, an unobstructed stretch to run in, a liquid to swim in, and a gaseous
medium to vocalize with.
p.56 Discrimination features function as signs for manipulation features.
p.59-60 consciousness, as Professor [B. H.] Bode would say, is the "bringing of the future into the present."
It is a representation of results so that the latter can themselves become determiners for or against the
act which leads to them... By virtue of such representation the organism is able to evaluate the result of
his act... This insight, however, may be of different degrees: (1) the organism may merely "feel" whether these represented
results are ones which if actually presented would themselves, given the larger act, lead on to still further behavior. Or
(2) ...he may even represent the results of still further behavior which might lead from these first represented results;
and so on through a whole chain of successive representations.
p.61 Their representation therefore helps the animal decide and to release the act leading to them.
p.61 The world for philosophers, as for rats, is, in the last analysis,
nothing but a maze of discrimination-manipulation possibilities, extended or narrow, complex or simple, universal
or particular. [JLJ - perhaps as well for humans, or their machines, in playing a game]
