Behavior as we shall observe it always seems to have the character of getting-to or getting-from a specific goal-object, or goal-situation.
Psychologists
Edward C. Tolman
American psychologist and the leading neo-behaviorist of his generation (1886-1959). His 1932 Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men placed intervening variables between stimulus and response, and his 1948 paper Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men prepared the ground for the cognitive revolution by introducing latent learning and the cognitive map. He led the resistance to the University of California Loyalty Oath in 1949-1950 and won the landmark academic freedom case Tolman v. Underhill in 1955. Across three decades at Berkeley he insisted, against Hull and Skinner, that animals learn facts and pursue goals — a position eventually vindicated by the cognitive revolution.
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Edward C. Tolman's Other Quotes
I shall venture to present in skeletonized form a theory of learning in which I shall make central use of the notion of cognitive maps. Behavior is purposive and cognitive.
Everything important in psychology can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze.
Rats, like men, can be expected to develop expectancies about goals and means.
A loyalty oath is in essence an attempt by the state to invade the realm of conscience. The University must defend the freedom of conscience or it ceases to be a University.
Related Quotes
Rats, like men, can be expected to develop expectancies about goals and means.
-- Edward C. Tolman
Behavior is shaped largely by the exigencies of a given situation, and the notion that individuals act in consistent ways across different situations, reflecting the influence of underlying personality traits, is a myth.
-- Walter Mischel
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.
-- Steven Pinker
Great things are not done without great people, and great people are great because they willed it.
-- Charles de Gaulle
When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.
-- Donald O. Hebb
The analysis of children's play has shown me that play has many functions. It expresses phantasies, wishes, and actual experiences in a symbolic way.
-- Melanie Klein