Abstract
Mechner’s advocacy of interrelating beauty, music, and behavior reunites themes from the earliest stages of the development of behavior analysis. This reunification occurs after a long hiatus during which molar behaviorism emphasized averaging over moment-to-moment behaving and deemphasized moment-to-moment behaving itself. Molar behaviorism cannot meaningfully address many of the musical themes Mechner analyses. Interpretations of musical behaving and other complex behaviors like volition in terms of average behavior encourages focusing on steady-state behavior and discourages focusing on shaping. The resulting problem is clear if we remember that we do not hear molar (average) musical behavior, so to examine the aesthetic qualities of molar musical behavior is conceptually impossible. The solution is to develop more powerful and more general shaping methods for moment-to-moment musical performance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I should acknowledge that my advocacy of Mechner’s position may itself have been shaped by my father’s having founded and edited The Journal of Musicology the purpose of which, I frequently heard him say, was to facilitate a better understanding of the relation between science and music.
References
Chomsky, N. (1971). The case against B. F. Skinner. New York Review of Books. Retrieved online.
Hackenberg, T. D. (2009). Realism without truth: A review of Giere’s science without laws and scientific perspectivism. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 91, 391–402.
Hawkes, L., & Shimp, C. P. (1975). Reinforcement of behavioral patterns: Shaping a scallop. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 23, 3–16.
Hawkes, L., & Shimp, C. P. (1998). Linear responses. Behavioural Processes, 44, 19–43.
Herbranson, W. T., Fremouw, T., & Shimp, C. P. (1999). The randomization procedure in the study of categorization of multi-dimensional stimuli by pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 113–135.
Herrnstein, R. J. (1979). Derivatives of matching. Psychological Review, 86, 486–495.
Herrnstein, R. J., Loveland, D. H., & Cable, C. (1976). Natural concepts in pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 2, 285–302.
Machado, A., & Silva, F. J. (2007). Toward a richer view of the scientific method. The role of conceptual analysis. American Psychologist, 62, 671–681.
Mechner, F. (2017). Behavioral and biological analysis of aesthetics: Implications for research and applications. The Psychological Record. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-017-0228-1
Munro, T. (1928). Scientific method in aesthetics. New York, NY: Norton.
Neuringer, A. (2014). Operant variability and the evolution of volition. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 27, 62–81.
Nicolson, M. H. (1946). Newton demands the muse: Newton’s Opticks and the eighteenth century poets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Peterson, G. B. (2004). A day of great illumination: B. F. Skinner’s discovery of shaping. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 82, 317–328.
Porter, D., & Neuringer, A. (1984). Music discrimination by pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 10, 138–148.
Rachlin, H., & Laibson, D. (Eds.). (1997). Introduction. In The matching law: Papers of Richard Herrnstein in psychology and economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rachlin, H. S. (1976). Introduction to modern behaviorism (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Freeman.
Schlinger Jr., H. D. (2013). A functional analysis of psychological terms redux. The Behavior Analyst, 36, 255–266.
Shimp, C. P. (2001). Behavior as a social construction. Behavioural Processes, 54, 11–32.
Shimp, C. P. (2013). Toward the unification of molecular and molar analyses. The Behavior Analyst, 36, 295–312.
Shimp, C. P. (2014). How molecular, molar, and unified analyses change the meaning of behavioral variability. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 27, 82–105.
Skinner, B. F. (1950). Pigeons playing ping pong. Retrieved July 13, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4
Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York, NY: Knopf.
Skinner, B. F. (1976). Farewell, my LOVELY! Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 25, 218.
Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist. New York, NY: Knopf.
Tanno, T., Silberberg, A., & Sakagami, T. (2015). The copyist model and the shaping view of reinforcement. Behavioural Processes, 114, 72–77.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shimp, C.P. Science Shapes the Beautiful: Shaping Moment-to-Moment Aesthetic Behavior. Psychol Rec 68, 359–364 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-018-0311-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-018-0311-2