Pavlov: The Conditioned Reflex

Five experiments into how a reflex is learned

A course on the thought of Ivan Pavlov.

Course outline

1. The Salivating Dog — The accidental observation in a digestion study that became the first science of learning — and how a neutral signal comes to trigger a reflex.
2. Making and Breaking a Reflex — How a conditioned reflex fades when the signal stops being kept — and why its return after rest proves the bond was hidden, not destroyed.
3. Telling Signals Apart — Why a conditioned response spreads to signals resembling the trained one — and how the animal is taught to draw a fine line between them.
4. The World as Signals — my central claim — the conditioned reflex is the elementary way an animal's brain lets distant, unimportant signs stand in for the vital things they precede — and the objective method that let this…
5. Conditioning in Your Own Life — The laws of the salivating dog, read back into human craving, fear, and its treatment — and where the Foundations end and the deeper tiers begin.

Part of the Symposium course library.