Adaptive behavior from random response
Donald T. Campbell · Systems Research and Behavioral Science · 2007
Darwin has shown how the seemingly purposeful process of evolution could be explained by the piling up of random variations properly selected. Applied to learning this principle bridges the gap between the ideas based on mechanical principles of behavior and those based on “intelligence” or “purposefulness,” much the same way as this gap is being bridged in servo-technology. It is suggested that all existing learning theories contain explicit or implicit assumptions about some selective principle operating on initially random responses, assumptions which Ashby has carefully spelled out and utilized in the construction of his Homeostat.