Internal-Clock Models and Misguided Views of Mechanistic Explanations: A Reply to Eckard & Lattal (2020)
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Internal-Clock Models and Misguided Views of Mechanistic Explanations: A Reply to Eckard & Lattal (2020) Federico Sanabria 1 Accepted: 31 August 2020/ # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract Eckard and Lattal’s Perspectives on Behavior Science, 43(1), 5–19 (2020) critique of internal clock (IC) mechanisms is based on narrow concepts of clocks, of their internality, mechanistic nature, and scientific explanations in general. This reply broadens these concepts to characterize all timekeeping objects—physical and otherwise—as clocks, all intrinsic properties of such objects as internal to them, and all simulatable explanations of such properties as mechanisms. Eckard and Lattal’s critique reflects a restrictive billiard-ball view of causation, in which environmental manipulations and behavioral effects are connected by a single chain of contiguous events. In contrast, this reply offers a more inclusive stochastic view of causation, in which environmental manipulations are probabilistically connected to behavioral effects. From either view of causation, computational ICs are hypothetical and unobservable, but their heuristic value and parsimony can only be appreciated from a stochastic view of causation. Billiard-ball and stochastic views have contrasting implications for potential explanations of interval timing. As illustrated by accounts of the variability in start times in fixed-interval schedules of reinforcement, of the two views of causality examined, only the stochastic account one supports falsifiable predictions beyond simple replications. It is thus not surprising that the experimental analysis of behavior has progressively adopted a stochastic view of causation, and that it has reaped its benefits. This reply invites experimental behavior analysts to continue on that trajectory. Keywords Internal clock . Mechanism . Determinism . Induction . Explanation . Parsimony
* Federico Sanabria [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, PO Box 871104, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104, USA
Perspectives on Behavior Science
Misconstruing the Internal Clock According to Eckard and Lattal (2020), invoking an internal clock (IC) or any other unobservable mechanism to explain temporally controlled behavior should be avoided because (1) they introduce an unnecessary intermediate link in the explanatory causal chain, and (2) they shift the focus of research from observable behavior to unobservable mechanisms. This reply argues that their admonition is unwarranted because it is based on (1) a mischaracterization of IC models and the IC framework of research on interval timing, and (2) a commitment to a notion of scientific explanation that is too constrained to accommodate essential characteristics of behavior. The mischaracterization of IC models starts with a narrow definition of clock. Eckard and Lattal’s (2020) implicit definition is arbitrarily restricted to manufactured clocks (e.g., sundials, grandmother clocks), which makes any reference to a biological or psychol
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