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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

B. F. Skinner

Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Attitude Judgement Person
Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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Education End Simplicity
The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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Control Education Mystery Relationship Responsible Satisfaction Simplicity View
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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Avoid Learning Person Punishment Simplicity Way
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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Anxiety Death Myself Worry
Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Blame Born Education Failure Live Ourselves Understand Way Wrong
Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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Construction Problem Problem Solving
It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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Action Inspirational Journey Start
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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Men Question Reality Technology Thinking
It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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Action Inspirational Journey Start
Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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Action Battle Boredom
To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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Control Deep Different Way
That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Behavior Change Teaching Transformation
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

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