A Reply to Dr. Isaac

I am sorry to have given Dr. Isaac the impression, from my comments on his experimentally valuable paper Evidence for a sensory in monkeys, that I had a quarrel contemporary psychology in general. My quarrel is only with Dr. Isaac's apparent agreement with that segment of contemporary psychology which continues to assume the need for a concept. More specifically, I wondered whether this concept is necessary or useful for an understanding of the effects of different intensities of sensory stimulation on behavior. It seems to me that the effects could be more parsimoniously and accurately understood in terms of neural activation or arousal and without reference to an hypothesized drive state. If the latter is inrerpreced to mean the former, then it is, of course, redundant. My comments were aimed, I had thought, not at a minor aspect of D r . Isaac's paper, but at his main conclusion as indicated in the title of his paper: Evidence for a sensory in monkeys. The comments were directed at the general theoretical framework of his paper. I suggested that, although i r was true that his experimental evidence was not inconsistent with some of the conventional aspects of a biological drive, this did not necessitate the assumption of a drive state. In fact, such an assumption, I tried to show, can have misleading consequences for an understanding of behavior; it can be used to obscure more accurate conceptions, closer to the known facts of behavior

Psychoanalysis · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Neural dynamics and brain function · Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function · Psychology

• A Reply to Dr. Leuba's Comments

  Open Access•Walter Isaac•Psychological Reports•1963

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• Evidence for a Sensory Drive in Monkeys

  Open Access•Walter Isaac•Psychological Reports•1962

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