i would appeal to the history of right and left turning and its consequences in
the life of the organism.
Russ,
At some point we might want to appeal to the neural events that accompanied
these events to answer the question, how does the nervous system mediate the
interaction between the organim and it's environment. Something like that.
Eric will do better when he has time but he has classes to teach and children
raise.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 5/2/2010 5:35:17 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism [was Beat poet]
Eric, Can you provide an example of an acceptable behaviorist answer to your
question about why a person turned left instead of right. By example, I'm
looking for something more concrete than "the explanation for the choice must
reference conditions in our protagonists past that built him into the type of
person who would turn left under the current conditions." What might such an
explanation look like?
-- Russ Abbott
______________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
cell: 310-621-3805
blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
______________________________________
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 4:03 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[email protected]> wrote:
Robert,
You accuse Nick of talking about "the brain", when he was talking about "the
mind".
The most basic tenant of behaviorism is that all questions about the mind are
ultimately a question about behavior. Thus, while some behaviorists deny the
existence of mental things, that is not a necessary part of behaviorism. On the
other hand, the behaviorist must deny that the mind is made up any special
substance, and they must deny that the mental things are somehow inside the
person (hence the comparison with soul, auras, etc.). If the behaviorist does
not deny tout court that mental things happen, what is he to do? One option is
to claim that mental things are behavioral things, analyzed at some higher
level of analysis, just as biological things are chemical things analyzed at
some higher level of analysis. So, to answer your question: There IS a brain,
and the brain does all sorts of things, but it does not do mental things.
Mental things happen, but they do not happen "in the brain". As Skinner would
put it, the question is: What DOES go on in the skull, and what is an
intelligible way to talk about it? The obvious answer is that the only things
going on in the skull are physiological.
For example, if one asks why someone chose to go left instead of right at a
stop sign, one might get an answer in terms of the brain: "He turned left
because his frontal cortex activated in such and such a way." However, that is
no answer at all, because the firing of those neurons is a component part of
the turning left! Ultimately, the explanation for the choice must reference
conditions in our protagonists past that built him into the type of person who
would turn left under the current conditions. In doing so, our explanation will
necessarily give the conditions that lead to a person whose brain activates in
such and such a way under the conditions in question.
Put another way: To say that he chose to turn left because a part of his brain
chose to turn left misses the point. It anthromorphizes your innards in a weird
way, suggests homunculi, and introduces all sorts of other ugly problems.
Further, it takes the quite tractable problem of understanding the origins of
behavior and transforms it into the still intractable problem of understanding
the origins of organization in the nervous system. Neuroscience is a great
field of study, and it is thriving. Thus, people hold out hope that one day we
will know enough about nerve growth, etc., that the origin of neuronal
organization will become tractable. One day they will, but when that day comes
it will not tell us much about behavior that we didn't already know, hence they
won't tell us much about the mind we didn't already know.
Or at least, so sayith some behaviorists,
Eric
On Sun, May 2, 2010 05:09 PM, "Robert J. Cordingley" <[email protected]>
wrote:
Nick
Let me try this on(e)... it's because the brain is the physical structure
within which our thinking processes occur and collectively those processes we
call the 'mind'. I don't see a way to say the same thing or anything remotely
parallel, about soul, aura, the Great Unknown and such. Is there an argument
to say that the brain, or the thinking processes don't exist in the same way we
can argue that the others don't (or might not)?
Thanks
Robert
On 5/2/10 12:52 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
</snipped>
How is banging on about mind any different from banging on about soul, or aura,
or the Great Unknown?
Nick
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
