{"agent_id":"pavlov","agent_name":"Ivan Pavlov","slug":"the-conditioned-reflex","label":"The conditioned reflex: is the higher nervous activity to be studied objectively, as physiology?","topic":"The conditioned reflex","question":"Is the higher nervous activity to be studied objectively, as physiology?","position":"When my dogs began to salivate at the sight of the attendant who fed them, before any food had touched their mouths, my co-workers called it \"psychic secretion\" and were prepared to ask what the animal felt, what it expected, what passed in its mind. I forbade that language in my laboratory. Not because the question is forbidden in principle, but because it is a road to nothing: we cannot enter the dog's mind, we cannot measure its supposings, and every guess about them is a story we tell ourselves. There was another road, and it was open: to treat the salivation to the signal exactly as we treat the salivation to food — as a reflex, an objective, lawful response of the nervous system to a stimulus, measurable to the drop. This is the conditioned reflex: a response transferred, by repeated pairing, from its natural stimulus to a new signal, and governed by exact laws of acquisition, extinction, generalization, and discrimination that we can establish as surely as any law of physiology. With it the whole of what the old psychology called mind becomes accessible to objective study, as the higher nervous activity of the brain. I did not deny the inner life; I set it aside as unstudiable and took the road that leads to knowledge instead of to words.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"When my dogs began to salivate at the sight of the attendant who fed them, before any food had touched their mouths, my co-workers called it \"psychic secretion\" and were prepared to ask what the animal felt, what it expected, what passed in its mind.","n":[]},{"t":"I forbade that language in my laboratory.","n":[]},{"t":"Not because the question is forbidden in principle, but because it is a road to nothing: we cannot enter the dog's mind, we cannot measure its supposings, and every guess about them is a story we tell ourselves.","n":[]}],[{"t":"There was another road, and it was open: to treat the salivation to the signal exactly as we treat the salivation to food — as a reflex, an objective, lawful response of the nervous system to a stimulus, measurable to the drop.","n":[1]},{"t":"This is the conditioned reflex: a response transferred, by repeated pairing, from its natural stimulus to a new signal, and governed by exact laws of acquisition, extinction, generalization, and discrimination that we can establish as surely as any law of physiology.","n":[]}],[{"t":"With it the whole of what the old psychology called mind becomes accessible to objective study, as the higher nervous activity of the brain.","n":[]},{"t":"I did not deny the inner life; I set it aside as unstudiable and took the road that leads to knowledge instead of to words.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"Conditioned Reflexes (Anrep's translation, 1927 — the systematic exposition of the conditioned reflex, its laws, and the objective method); Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes (Gantt's translation, 1928); The Work of the Digestive Glands (1902 — the physiological work in the course of which 'psychic secretion' was encountered and reconceived as reflex). Reception: the adoption of the conditioned reflex as the unit of behaviorist learning (Watson) and its permanence in the study of classical conditioning and behavior therapy; the distinction between Pavlov's physiological program and the psychological uses made of it; the modern neuroscience of learning and memory as the continuation of the objective study.","works":["Conditioned Reflexes (Anrep's translation, 1927 — the systematic exposition of the conditioned reflex, its laws, and the objective method)","Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes (Gantt's translation, 1928)","The Work of the Digestive Glands (1902 — the physiological work in the course of which 'psychic secretion' was encountered and reconceived as reflex)"],"reception":"the adoption of the conditioned reflex as the unit of behaviorist learning (Watson) and its permanence in the study of classical conditioning and behavior therapy; the distinction between Pavlov's physiological program and the psychological uses made of it; the modern neuroscience of learning and memory as the continuation of the objective study.","status":"One of the foundational achievements of objective psychology and a permanent part of the science of learning. The conditioned reflex became, in Watson's hands, the unit of behaviorist learning, and through behaviorism, behavior therapy, systematic desensitization, and the continuing study of classical (respondent) conditioning it passed into the settled core of psychology and clinical practice; the neuroscience of learning and memory continues Pavlov's objective program with new tools. The standing philosophical objection — that to study the higher nervous activity as reflex is to leave out consciousness, meaning, and purpose — accompanies the work from the start and is the substance of the reductionism debate; but as a method for establishing the exact laws of conditioning, Pavlov's program is not in dispute.","era":"1849-1936","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is plain that for a physiologist the mechanism of these new reactions in higher animals could be only a nervous one. — Translator, 50 LECTURES ON CONDITIONED REFLEXES food, only a little. To the stimnlaliion by food at a distance, there flows into the mouth from the mucous glands a thick, lubricating saliva.","label":"Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes"},{"n":2,"work":"Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We had to deal with the feelings, wishes, conceptions, etc., of our animal. The results were astounding, extraordinary; I and one of my collaborators came to irre- concilable opinions We could not agree, could not prove to one another which was right.","label":"Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes"},{"n":3,"work":"The Work of the Digestive Glands","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But when more closely considered it will be seen that this constitutes no real basis of distinction. In the psychic form of the experiment the substances act by specific excitation of other end-organs, namely, those of the nose, eyes, and ears, which we know are receptors for many influences originating reflexes from a distance.","label":"The Work of the Digestive Glands"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-reduction-of-the-psychic-to-physiology","label":"The reduction of the psychic to physiology: is the objective method the only road to knowledge of the mind?"},{"slug":"types-of-the-nervous-system-and-experimental-neurosis","label":"Types of the nervous system and experimental neurosis: is temperament and breakdown the expression of inherited nervous type?"},{"slug":"cortical-excitation-and-inhibition","label":"Cortical excitation and inhibition: is the cortex a dynamic mosaic, and are sleep and hypnosis forms of inhibition?"},{"slug":"the-second-signal-system","label":"The second signal system: does conditioning extend to human language, thought, and psychiatry?"}]}