The behaviorology discipline also makes contributions to the capabilities of other natural scientists. As mentioned previously, after becoming basically familiar with behaviorology, scientists in many disciplines are more able to remain naturalistic in dealing with subject matters at the edge of, and beyond, their particular specializations. Perhaps you are such a scientist.
Now we can consider managing superstition. In the majority of cases, superstitious and mystical accounts remained untested. Not only was testing energy–expensive, and thus unlikely to occur, but the accounts had grown layer upon layer of convoluted rationales and implications. Many included a range of non–natural agents and components, such that they became thoroughly untestable.
We would benefit from clearing up a couple of misunderstandings that arise from our traditional cultural conditioning. After that we can consider managing superstition. The misunderstandings concern reinforcers as rewards and the related question of bribery.
When a response does not produce the reinforcer that follows it, we have historically called the reinforcer an “accidental” reinforcer. Now we describe such reinforcers as coincidental instead of accidental. Let me explain why with a college student example. Having avoided the outdoors for several months due to the winter cold, you are now walking across campus, as no indoor route is available, to a Monday morning meeting you must attend.
Initially those networks became connected by gene–directed growth. Later, restructuring occurs—throughout life, on a moment by moment basis—due to the energy traces from conditioning processes. Physiology–discipline resources provide more details, which leads me (And you?) to love the coordination and cooperation that inheres among natural–science disciplines, along with their usually timely self–correcting interactions.
Consider virtually everyone’s typical reaction to a vending machine that fails to deliver the selected goods. You put in your money, push the button for your selection, and wait. Something is supposed to happen. The machine is supposed to deliver your goods, every time, on a continuous reinforcement schedule.
Before considering several aspects of consciousness that involve reviewing realities “inside the skin,” we first review a little about pre–scientific views of consciousness. While these arose in the past, many continue in the present.
Consider the term “consciousness” as but one example of labels that natural sciences, like behaviorology, clarify and can then use. Words with connotations similar to this traditional term occur early in many languages across human history and geography.
