ABSTRACT
This is a negativistic chapter. I disagree strongly with the traditional behavioristic approaches to animal learning. But I also disagree with the naturalistic approaches that are offered as an alternative to it by most of the other authors in this book. These tend to suggest greater species and situational differences in learning than exist. Evolutionary contraints have made learning a general biological process in about the same sense as respiration. The differences in the overt course of learning exhibited by different mammalian phyla are due to relatively minor adjustments in this underlying process. This general process ought to be the main subject matter for most of those with a primary interest in animal learning. These points are explained in more detail later in the chapter.
