Kaitlyn’s Reviews > How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution > Status Update

No, Skinner would have acknowledged the phylogenic component of tail wagging, because he acknowledged the interaction of conditioning and biology from the get-go.

Well, 'dismissed animal emotions' is an over-generalization. Even the methodological folks admitted to private events, they just wanted to avoid their study out of a fear of mentalism. There's a difference between refusing to acknowledge emotions existing, and seeing emotions as behaviors to explain rather than explanations for behavior.

So his point was based on the anthropomorphization of his dog. :-/

"Animals can do elementary reasoning, behaviors not controlled by genetics or conditioning" - This only makes sense if you think Pavlovian conditioning is the only form. Operant conditioning is the process by which we learn to reason; reasoning IS behavior. The authors seem to feel that Pavlov and Skinner were devout blank slaters, which was *never* the case.