Emergents and Rational Behaviorism

Abstract

The rational behavioristic framework here advanced allows for cognitive operations and emergent phenomena that are, in measure, based on the syntheses of general life experiences and observations and also upon the learning induced by traditional respondent and operant conditioning. The framework is based on the assumption that notably the primate brains, and particularly those of the apes and humans, have evolved so as to be acutely sensitive to the detection and storage of predictive relationships. Memory systems store the knowledge thereby derived in a logical set of “files,” which allows the natural operations of the brain to formulate creative behavioral patterns and solutions to novel challenges. Metaphorically, their storage might be thought of in terms of chords which, in their interaction with other memory chords, can be synergistic through the natural physics known otherwise to be characteristic of chords (e.g., fundamentals, resonance, harmonics, overtones, etc.).