Nisan comments on Voluntary Behavior, Conscious Thoughts - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Yvain 11 July 2011 10:13PM

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Comment author: Nisan 12 July 2011 02:10:45AM 6 points [-]

voluntary behavior is behavior subject to operant conditioning, and involuntary behavior is everything else.

Hm, I thought operant conditioning, by definition, worked on voluntary behavior, and classical conditioning worked on involuntary behavior. (This would make Skinner's definition of voluntary behavior circular.) I need a new definition of operant conditioning.

Perhaps operant conditioning should be defined as conditioning that presents reward or punishment stimuli in response to behavior, and classical conditioning should be defined as conditioning that presents stimuli independent of behavior.