Ultimate realities: deterministic and evolutionary.
Plot your determinist stance on a simple line to see where you allow randomness and where you do not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The author drew a line. One end is pure chance. The other end is pure fate.
He placed famous behaviorists along that line. Some sit near chance. Others hug fate.
The paper shows how each thinker used Darwin-like ideas to defend his spot.
What they found
No two behaviorists stand in the same place. Skinner moved over time. He started close to fate and slid toward chance.
Peirce and Darwin sit near the middle. Their evolutionary view lets random variation happen, then lets consequences select.
The map gives you a quick way to compare any determinist claim you meet.
How this fits with other research
Moxley (2002) came first. It linked Peirce’s selectionist view to Skinner’s verbal work. The 2007 paper widens that lens to every behaviorist.
Baum (2017) adds math. It turns the continuum into the Price equation. You can now measure how consequences pick behavior within one lifetime.
Stahlman et al. (2023) adds depth. It shows short- versus long-term conflicts at three levels: species, person, and culture. The continuum now has moving parts you can watch in real time.
Why it matters
Next time you read a claim that behavior is fully caused, place it on the map. Ask where random variation is allowed. If the answer is nowhere, you know the writer sits at the fate end. If the answer is everywhere, you are at the chance end. Most useful views live in the middle. Use the map to pick a framework that matches your data, not your mood.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
References to ultimate reality commonly turn up in the behavioral literature as references to determinism. However, this determinism is often difficult to interpret. There are different kinds of determinisms as well as different kinds of ultimate realities for a behaviorist to consider. To clarify some of the issues involved, the views of ultimate realities are treated as falling along a continuum, with extreme views of complete indeterminism and complete determinism at either end and various mixes in between. Doing so brings into play evolutionary realities and the movement from indeterminism to determinism, as in Peirce's evolutionary cosmology. In addition, this framework helps to show how the views of determinism by B. F. Skinner and other behaviorists have shifted over time.
The Behavior analyst, 2007 · doi:10.1007/BF03392146