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ABSTRACT: The extent to which a virtual "CyberRat" is a valid stand-in for a live, behaving rat is addressed in terms of various versions of a Turing test. The CyberRat program, for the most part, is a valid substitute for a living, behaving subject as a means of learning operant principles of behavior change, if no actual behaving animal can be used. The arguments for the CyberRat's means of modeling behavior change through the philosophy of interbehaviorism and interbehavioral systems analysis are evaluated relative to the positions of Skinner 's behavior analysis. Finally, the stances of behavior analysis and interbehaviorism are discussed in relation to other psychological schools of thought.
Key words: CyberRat, behavior analysis, Interbehavioral Systems Analysis, Turing Test
Any comments on Ray's monograph "CyberRat, Interbehavioral Systems Analysis, and a Turing Test Trilogy" inevitably lead to comments on Kantor's interbehaviorism which, for an academic raised on "pure Skinner" such as myself, forced me to re-examine my thinking. At first, I simply wanted to respond to a great deal of Ray's arguments in this monograph from the comfortable stance of an "operant bigot." At least one of my former mentors would be happy to see me taking that stance. While I am relatively unfamiliar with most of Kantor's original writings, I am very familiar with the writings of William S. Verplanck, especially his Glossary and Thesaurus of Behavioral Terms (Verplanck, 1955). By spending several summers in the 1990s living with Dr. Verplanck, I had the privilege of reading and having the liberty to edit and occasionally add to his Glossary. William Verplanck took me in as a personal assistant to make his Glossary more reader-accessible to a younger (and less well-read) generation of experimental psychologists. Through my conversations and exchanges with Verplanck I took in an extended tutorial on Kantor and interbehaviorism. Verplanck also gave me an appreciation of Gibson's ecological psychology as well as ethology. These experiences have played a part in my views on CyberRat, which Ray first demonstrated to Verplanck, Dr. Ed Morris and I in the mid-1990s.
I have found CyberRat to be simply fascinating from the first rendition to the present version. Let me simply say, if you cannot change the behavior of a real rat, work with...