The laws of behavior are primarily laws of responses rather than laws of organisms. Thus, they provide a technology for selecting those responses that are to serve as the organism’s guests, and it is through this selection that many of the organism’s characteristics and outcomes are determined. This concept of the organism as host to response guests creates a corresponding moral obligation to consider the selection of behaviors to reside within an organism in terms of their effects on the organism’s later life. Certain candidates of widely useful or beneficial response classes are proposed. In addition, an example of cognitive ability is discussed in terms of its possible response components, to illustrate how an apparently ‘active’ organism may result from a strategic choice of response guests by the organism’s teachers.

Keywords:
Active organism, Reactive organism, Behaviorism, Operant approach, Cognition, Philosophy of science
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© 1976 S. Karger AG, Basel
1976
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