On the circularity of the law of effect
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16868396 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul E Meehl (University of Minnesota System, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1950 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 52-75 |
| Publication date | 1950-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychological Bulletin (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-2909 • E-ISSN: 1939-1455 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037/h0058557 |
| OpenAlex | W2057696588 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
| References cited | 2 |
Whereas some critics were most concerned with the mechanisms mediating effect, others focussed their attention on the nature of the satisfiers and annoyers to which reference is made in Thorndike's law. Although Spencer and Bain, in whose tradition Thorndike continued, frankly invoked pleasure and pain as agents responsible for the fixation and elimination of responses, Thorndike's law has been a law of effect, not affect. He carefully defines satisfiers and annoyers in terms independent of subjective experience and report. a satisfying state of affairs is meant one which the animal does nothing to avoid, often doing such things as to attain and preserve By a discomforting state of affairs is meant one which the animal avoids and abandons, Although admittedly free of hedonism, such a definition of satisfiers and annoyers has faced another serious difficulty: the danger of circularity. critic may easily reword the definition to read: The animal does what it does because it does it, and it does not do what it does not do because it does not do it. This reductio ad ads^/-rd^^m is probably not entirely fair, but it points up the danger of the definition in the absence of an independent determination of the nature of satisfiers and annoyers. satisfying or annoying nature of a state of affairs can usually be determined ful ly only in the course of a learning experiment and cannot then be invoked as a causal condition of learning without circularity. In their experimental work Thorndike and his associates have made no significant attempts to establish the satisfying or annoying nature of their rewards and punishments independently of the learning experiment (19, p. 496)
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| Citations per year | 0.28 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1951 - 2025 (75) |
| Highly cited | No |