(no subject)

“We can no longer be satisfied with the old stimulus/response model, according to which animals (and other organisms) passively respond to prior, incoming stimuli, and learn by means of conditioning (or associations among these stimuli). For this is only one part of the story. In addition, and much more importantly, biological entities are active reality-testers. They are always busy “probing the environment with ongoing, variable actions first and evaluating sensory feedback later (i.e., the inverse of stimulus response)”. Rather than just responding to stimuli, they exhibit ongoing activity that is self-generated, and only secondarily modulated by stimuli. Output tends to come first.”

Steven Shaviro. “Discognition.”