Cognition, Behavior and History
David Longley
metaphysical philosophy. This tradition includes such conceptions
as
that there is an a priori form of all possible worlds; that there
are
simple things which are the ultimate constituents of reality; that
these
things combine to form states of affairs; that elementary states
of
affairs can be presented in elementary propositions; that every
non-
elementary proposition in analysable into an arrangement of
elementary ones; that thoughts are structures composed of mental
elements; that a thought is an intrinsic representation and a
sentence
of language a derivative representation of a possible state of
affairs;
that thoughts and propositions contain their own method of
projection;
that there is a common nature or general form of all thoughts and
propositions; that every proposition can be compared with reality;
that
when we *mean* or *understand* something, the meaning and
understanding is achieved by an inner process of calculation or
computation. The Tractatus gave these conceptions their most
compressed, rigorous, and elegant presentation. In Wittgenstein's
new
thinking all these conceptions are swept away."
Norman Malcolm (1986)
Wittgenstein: Nothing Is Hidden
Epilogue, p.236
One might have hoped that some folk here would have given a little more
thought to the points that have been made in this newsgroup over the
past year.
Nearly 80 years have now passed since the publishing of Wittgenstein's
"Tractatus Logico Philosophicus". How many here have paused to think
about why a whole movement of philosophy largely inspired by it, and one
which provided the ambience and theory for the birth to the programmed
computer, was nevertheless abandoned as just *wrong* by Wittgenstein,
Quine and Skinner (see the latter's 1945 paper).
I read posts here, and I look at modern Cognitive Science, and I'm just
appalled by the gall of those who have the temerity to call what they're
promulgating *new*, *sophisticated*, and original. Worse still, they
often casually assert that it has replaced outdated "behaviorism"!
Ironically, what these folk don't appear to realise is that they have it
all completely wrong or reversed. They really just don't know what they
are talking about. The "behaviorism" which Glen and I have been trying
to get people here to pay closer attention to, ie Skinnerian "Radical
Behaviorism" and Quineian "Evidential Behavorism", were essentially
developed in the wake of the "cognitivism" or "intensionalism" inspired
by the Tractatus and carried through by Carnap. Radical, Evidential
Behaviorism and Rylean/Wittgensteinian logical behaviorism developed
largely as a response to problems within the world view developed by the
early Wittgenstein.
Most of those now beating the drum for "modern" cognitivism, seem not
just to be ignorant of a good part of early 20th century philosophy, but
much that followed as well. Those that aren't often just distort and
otherwise misrepresent it, and most here certainly tend to get the later
developments by Wittgenstein, Quine and Skinner completely wrong, if
they know about it at all!.
The reason ......? I reckon the main one is that all too many just
ignore history - that's usually the reason why people don't get
behaviour right! Why?... neophobia and an unfortunate universal tendency
or habit to stick with what's familiar and not to radically question
ones natural assumptions and those of ones verbal community..
--
David Longley
Lester Zick
Probably because they just weren't smart enough to make anything
except philosophy out of it.
>I read posts here, and I look at modern Cognitive Science, and I'm just
>appalled by the gall of those who have the temerity to call what they're
>promulgating *new*, *sophisticated*, and original. Worse still, they
>often casually assert that it has replaced outdated "behaviorism"!
No one considers behaviorism outdated, David. Dated perhaps but still
useful for training animals. It never held any significance for the
explanation of cognition in scientific terms and chose to redact terms
it couldn't explain. But it still has some historical curiosity value
for what happens when philosophers go bad and philosophy goes wrong.
New doctrinal foundations are laid for science all the time. It's a
fact of intellectual evolution. Get used to it. Behaviorism was just
an historical aberration that failed to survive because it chose to
deny sentient behavior rather than explain it.
I'm not sure that Wittgenstein et al. could have explained the origin
and nature of sentient behavior. But that's no reason to have denied
it out of philosophical prejudice. We face intellectual challenges all
the time but don't just decide to act like spoiled children throwing
tantrums because we don't like the choices.
So the history of philosophy is fraught with failure. The history of
philosophy is also fraught with a lot of bad philosophers. You can
reasonably expect postdocs and undergrads to revere the past. Just
don't expect me to worship the light that failed when I've got a light
bulb in my pocket. So it isn't new, sophisticated, and original. It
just happens to be newer, more sophisiticated, and more original than
any idea the past is heir to.
>Ironically, what these folk don't appear to realise is that they have it
>all completely wrong or reversed. They really just don't know what they
>are talking about. The "behaviorism" which Glen and I have been trying
>to get people here to pay closer attention to, ie Skinnerian "Radical
>Behaviorism" and Quineian "Evidential Behavorism", were essentially
>developed in the wake of the "cognitivism" or "intensionalism" inspired
>by the Tractatus and carried through by Carnap. Radical, Evidential
>Behaviorism and Rylean/Wittgensteinian logical behaviorism developed
>largely as a response to problems within the world view developed by the
>early Wittgenstein.
Yeah. It's really too bad the early Wittgenstein just wasn't smart
enough to solve the problem instead of denying it. Probably why he
became a philosopher instead of a scientist in the first place.
>Most of those now beating the drum for "modern" cognitivism, seem not
>just to be ignorant of a good part of early 20th century philosophy, but
>much that followed as well. Those that aren't often just distort and
>otherwise misrepresent it, and most here certainly tend to get the later
>developments by Wittgenstein, Quine and Skinner completely wrong, if
>they know about it at all!.
I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
>The reason ......? I reckon the main one is that all too many just
>ignore history - that's usually the reason why people don't get
>behaviour right! Why?... neophobia and an unfortunate universal tendency
>or habit to stick with what's familiar and not to radically question
>ones natural assumptions and those of ones verbal community..
>
You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
past couldn't.
Regards - Lester
Eray Ozkural exa
1. Tractatus does not give the most compressed, rigorous and elegant
presentation of a computational point of view, among others mentioned
in the quoted epilogue.
2. If indeed it did, then early Wittgenstein would be preferable to
the later Wittgenstein.
3. The single-minded devotion to linguistic analysis does not
guarantee any philosophical results whatsoever, as proven by
Wittgenstein and Quine.
David Longley
Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> writes
To you, maybe not. But then that may just indicate that you don't
understand what Malcolm is saying - and that doesn't surprise me at all.
>2. If indeed it did, then early Wittgenstein would be preferable to
>the later Wittgenstein.
To you maybe. But that's just because the early Wittgenstein's work will
reinforce your current prejudices. It inspired a programme of research
and development which was atomistic and logicist, and may well find its
cumulative expression (through Carnap etc) in the work of people like
Hayes and McCarthy (in this area at least). What you don't seem to
appreciate is that there may be good reasons for holding that approach
to be just *wrong* (as I've tried to show).
>3. The single-minded devotion to linguistic analysis does not
>guarantee any philosophical results whatsoever, as proven by
>Wittgenstein and Quine.
It's not a single minded devotion to "linguistic analysis" per se (at
least not that alone), but a broader commitment to *behaviour analysis".
The computational or cognitivist approach fails in my view because it
omits what's critically important - *the controlling influence or
contingencies of the environment*. It's that *neglect* or omission of
the environment that renders computationalism and cognitivism
*solipsistic* (which is why I've kept quoting the Fodor BBS paper here).
Perhaps there's *some* justification to parents' concerns about the
development of their console-obsessed kids these days? If you think that
one through you might start to better appreciate what I mean by the
controlling force of the environment (verbal, social, physical). You
might also start to appreciate why it's so much *easier* (faced with the
task of analysing/explicating those contingencies) to put all that aside
and pretend that one can get by with the predictable simplicity of
computing. Sadly, it just isn't enough, and I bet you'll be shocked when
you find out the extent to which programmers are *used* or 'managed'..
The cognitivist's "models" and the computationalists "agents" are a
refuge from an analysis and explication of the complexities of the
contingencies or schedules of reinforcement which control/manage
behaviour. Once you see *that*, I bet you'll find the writings of the
later Wittgenstein, Skinner and Quine harder (but more interesting) to
read as you'll come to see that they're actually talking *about*
behaviour and its controlling contingencies. You'll start to see that
what seemed be the clever stuff, actually isn't - and what seemed to be
mundane and boring (analysing and explicating environmental
contingencies) is actually not mundane at all, just very hard work.
Cognitivism doesn't work, and "AI" isn't what it seems..
--
David Longley
David Longley
To you, maybe not. But then that may just indicate that you don't
understand what Malcolm is saying - and that doesn't surprise me at all.
>2. If indeed it did, then early Wittgenstein would be preferable to
>the later Wittgenstein.
To you maybe. But that's just because the early Wittgenstein's work will
reinforce your current prejudices. It inspired a programme of research
and development which was atomistic and logicist, and may well find its
cumulative expression (through Carnap etc) in the work of people like
Hayes and McCarthy (in this area at least). What you don't seem to
appreciate is that there may be good reasons for holding that approach
to be just *wrong* (as I've tried to show).
>3. The single-minded devotion to linguistic analysis does not
>guarantee any philosophical results whatsoever, as proven by
>Wittgenstein and Quine.
It's not a single minded devotion to "linguistic analysis" per se (at
least not that alone), but a broader commitment to *behaviour analysis".
The computational or cognitivist approach fails in my view because it
omits what's critically important - *the controlling influence or
contingencies of the environment*. It's that *neglect* or omission of
the environment that renders computationalism and cognitivism
*solipsistic* (which is why I've kept quoting the Fodor BBS paper here).
Perhaps there's *some* justification to parents' concerns about the
development of their console-obsessed kids these days? If you think that
one through you might start to better appreciate what I mean by the
controlling force of the environment (verbal, social, physical). You
might also start to appreciate why it's so much *easier* (faced with the
daunting task of analysing/explicating those contingencies) to put all
that aside and pretend that one can get by with the predictable
simplicity of computing.
Sadly, it just isn't enough (and I bet you'll be shocked into a major
re-think when you find out the extent to which "programmers" are *used*
or 'managed').
The cognitivist's "models" and the computationalist's "agents" are a
refuge from an analysis and explication of the complexities of the
contingencies or schedules of reinforcement which control/manage
behaviour. Once you see *that*, I bet you'll find the writings of the
later Wittgenstein, Skinner and Quine harder (but more interesting) to
read as you'll come to see that they're actually talking *about*
behaviour and its controlling contingencies. You'll also start to see
that what seems to be the clever, sophisticated stuff of "Cognitive
Science", actually isn't (it's largely convoluted narrative) - and what
seemed to be mundane, boring and "obvious", ie explicating and analysing
environmental contingencies which control, or program behaviour is
actually not mundane and pedestrian at all, it's just very hard,
daunting work and Cognitivism is just a familiar refuge, which tells you
nothing and gives you nothing - just stories.
Cognitivism doesn't work, it's atavistic. "AI" isn't what it seems to
many either (as a consequence), although many in the field write good
stories.
--
David Longley
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> It's not a single minded devotion to "linguistic analysis" per se (at
> least not that alone), but a broader commitment to *behaviour analysis".
>
Yes. Mere commitment.
> The computational or cognitivist approach fails in my view because it
> omits what's critically important - *the controlling influence or
> contingencies of the environment*. It's that *neglect* or omission of
> the environment that renders computationalism and cognitivism
> *solipsistic* (which is why I've kept quoting the Fodor BBS paper here).
>
What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief. It is
not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it necessary.
So, it is probably not true!
> Perhaps there's *some* justification to parents' concerns about the
> development of their console-obsessed kids these days? If you think that
> one through you might start to better appreciate what I mean by the
> controlling force of the environment (verbal, social, physical). You
> might also start to appreciate why it's so much *easier* (faced with the
> task of analysing/explicating those contingencies) to put all that aside
> and pretend that one can get by with the predictable simplicity of
> computing. Sadly, it just isn't enough, and I bet you'll be shocked when
> you find out the extent to which programmers are *used* or 'managed'..
>
Most of programming business is centered around getting workd one. I
see nothing wrong with that. There is no reason why programming should
be fundamentally different from other businesses!
> The cognitivist's "models" and the computationalists "agents" are a
> refuge from an analysis and explication of the complexities of the
> contingencies or schedules of reinforcement which control/manage
> behaviour. Once you see *that*, I bet you'll find the writings of the
> later Wittgenstein, Skinner and Quine harder (but more interesting) to
> read as you'll come to see that they're actually talking *about*
> behaviour and its controlling contingencies. You'll start to see that
> what seemed be the clever stuff, actually isn't - and what seemed to be
> mundane and boring (analysing and explicating environmental
> contingencies) is actually not mundane at all, just very hard work.
>
They are not a refuge. They are the unique solution.
> Cognitivism doesn't work, and "AI" isn't what it seems..
Wrong, wrong.
Regards,
--
Eray Ozkural
Glen M. Sizemore
GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is it
that your education is so deficient in this realm?
EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
necessary.
So, it is probably not true!
GS: You're kidding.......right?
*We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave in
particular ways (including saying particular things).
"Eray Ozkural exa" <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.04030...@posting.google.com...
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
> EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>
> GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
> century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
> stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is it
> that your education is so deficient in this realm?
>
> EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
> necessary.
> So, it is probably not true!
>
> GS: You're kidding.......right?
>
> *We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave in
> particular ways (including saying particular things).
And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with behaviourism.
We say that someone else believes something when we see them behave in a
particular way. However, when I want to see if or say that _I_ believe
something, I don't bother to look at my behaviour or what I SAY I
believe to determine that. I have a direct access to a belief that may
or may not express itself in external behaviour. And that's the
mentalistic picture that Lester talks about, and that's the thing that
cognitivists look at.
Behaviourism is either wrong or uninteresting. Either it says that
there's nothing more to the story than behaviour -- which ignores that
mentalistic access -- or it says that the only thing that we can
empirically study is behaviour, at which point it may be right in that
sense but it doesn't explain what happens in the black box, and that's
what cognitivists and cognitive scientists are trying to explain.
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
Well, if I wanted the best view of the computational point of view, I'd
ask someone who believed in the computational point of view, and not
someone who seems gleeful about how Wittgenstein supposedly abandoned it.
(I'll admit, I haven't read this book, so if that's not his stance, then
ignore this.)
>> 3. The single-minded devotion to linguistic analysis does not
>> guarantee any philosophical results whatsoever, as proven by
>> Wittgenstein and Quine.
>
>
> It's not a single minded devotion to "linguistic analysis" per se (at
> least not that alone), but a broader commitment to *behaviour analysis".
>
> The computational or cognitivist approach fails in my view because it
> omits what's critically important - *the controlling influence or
> contingencies of the environment*. It's that *neglect* or omission of
> the environment that renders computationalism and cognitivism
> *solipsistic* (which is why I've kept quoting the Fodor BBS paper here).
You're right that a cognitivist approach that IGNORED the environment
would almost certainly be wrong. Yet I'm not certain that that's what
you mean. Certainly it seems to me that to prioritize or give control
to the environment is a worse mistake. It is clear that environment can
impact our beliefs and desires and mentalistic notions, but it does not
seem to determine it. Different people in the same environments will be
affected in different ways. This seems to suggest some sort of internal
picture that plays the major and controlling role in such
determinations. So, solipsistic or not, it seems to work fairly well.
David Longley
Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>>*solipsistic* (which is why I've kept quoting the Fodor BBS paper here).
>
>You're right that a cognitivist approach that IGNORED the environment
>would almost certainly be wrong. Yet I'm not certain that that's what
>you mean. Certainly it seems to me that to prioritize or give control
>to the environment is a worse mistake. It is clear that environment
>can impact our beliefs and desires and mentalistic notions, but it does
>not seem to determine it. Different people in the same environments
>will be affected in different ways. This seems to suggest some sort of
>internal picture that plays the major and controlling role in such
>determinations. So, solipsistic or not, it seems to work fairly well.
>
>
It doesn't - check out the facts.
We know from empirical work that environmental contingencies shape and
control behaviour, and in many instances we know, at least at the
behavioural level, *how* they do. *That's* is not the problem. The
problem is that many people who are unfamiliar with all that research
keep making false assertions about it. As this happens so frequently,
even in academia, (because so many people just naively accept what
others say without checking out the facts for themselves) in time,
research starts to suffer.
What you say about radical behaviorism is just factually incorrect. If
you do as I suggest and check out the facts for yourself, you'll find
that out.
What you will see here much of the time, is an uphill struggle against
misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Those who keep asserting that
our motives here are doctrinaire, partisan, or otherwise "ideologically
driven" are just wrong.
Sadly, it's rather like trying to battle cancer.
--
David Longley
Lester Zick
<gmsiz...@yahoo.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>
>GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
>century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
>stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is it
>that your education is so deficient in this realm?
Probably because David won't come across with a free education.
>EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
>necessary.
>So, it is probably not true!
>
>GS: You're kidding.......right?
>
>*We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave in
>particular ways (including saying particular things).
>
Which behavior we then politely decline to investigate as mentalistic
fictions and prefer to redact from the language in favor of somewhat
less fictitious buzzwords like tact, transparent, and opaque, etc.
Regards - Lester
Lester Zick
Well put.
Regards - Lester
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
David Longley <Da...@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:
>It doesn't - check out the facts.
>We know from empirical work that environmental contingencies shape and
>control behaviour, and in many instances we know, at least at the
>behavioural level, *how* they do.
This is behaviorist dogma being peddled as if fact.
What we know, is that when there are changes in the environment,
there will also be changes in the behavior of people.
That indicates some kind of correlation.
According to the radical behaviorists, the environment causes
(controls) the behavior of people. But causality does not
automatically follow from correlation, and the behaviorist claim of
causality is not demonstrated fact.
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Glen M. Sizemore
> EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>
> GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
> century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
> stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is
it
> that your education is so deficient in this realm?
>
> EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
> necessary.
> So, it is probably not true!
>
> GS: You're kidding.......right?
>
> *We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave
in
> particular ways (including saying particular things).
AC: And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with behaviourism.
GS: Behaviorism simply points out that we talk about beliefs when we see the
behavior said to be caused by beliefs.
AC: We say that someone else believes something when we see them behave in a
particular way.
GS: So, in fact, behaviorism is not wrong.
AC: However, when I want to see if or say that _I_ believe
something, I don't bother to look at my behaviour or what I SAY I
believe to determine that. I have a direct access to a belief that may
or may not express itself in external behaviour.
GS: But just because you are not observing "external behavior" does not mean
that you are not observing behavior. And you should keep in your alleged
mind that there are a lot of variables that control verbal behavior. For
example, a devout Christian will answer "yes" to the question "Do you
believe in God?" but they have described themselves a number of times as "a
believer" and they have answered "yes" to the question numerous times, and
they have probably asked themselves that question numerous times. This does
not mean that they have direct access to "beliefs." It means that the
response "yes" or "I believe in God" has been reinforced in a number of
different circumstances.
AC: And that's the
mentalistic picture that Lester talks about, and that's the thing that
cognitivists look at.
GS: Cognitive psychologists manipulate the environment, and measure
behavior. And then they do a lot of talking about "mental processes."
AC: Behaviourism is either wrong or uninteresting.
GS: How would you know? You couldn't even pass an intro psych level test on
"learning," let alone describe what radical behaviorism does or does not
say.
AC: Either it says that
there's nothing more to the story than behaviour -- which ignores that
mentalistic access -[...]
GS: Radical behaviorism holds that what one sees when one introspects is one
's perceptual and motor behavior. It does not ignore the issues that
surround "subjectivity."
AC: [...]or it says that the only thing that we can
empirically study is behaviour,[...]
GS: No, it says that that is what psychologists DO, no matter what they say
they do.
AC: [...]at which point it may be right in that
sense but it doesn't explain what happens in the black box, and that's
what cognitivists and cognitive scientists are trying to explain.
GS: Behaviorism has no problem with trying to find out how the brain
mediates the effects of an organism's ontogenic history (or how it mediates
the effects of whatever exists because of natural selection). Cognitive
psychologists simply invent "processes" that have whatever characteristics
are necessary to explain the behavior from which they are inferred, but have
no "observability" other than that. And disrupting behavior by directly
disrupting physiology is no proof that the alleged entity is useful or
"real;" it simply suggests that the physiological structures in question are
involved in the behavior. The concepts of cognitive "science" cannot stand
close scrutiny, but this does not matter because cognitive "science" does
not subject them to close scrutiny. This is part of psychology's mistrust of
philosophy, and belief that all questions are ultimately empirical or
theoretical (rather than conceptual). And it also is because there are no
end to the yarns that can be spun when the entities are not directly
observable. Of course, there are about 17 other things that render cognitive
"science" a misguided conceptual system.
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:pab1c.6127$jw2.3...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>
Glen M. Sizemore
What we know, is that when there are changes in the environment,
there will also be changes in the behavior of people.
That indicates some kind of correlation.
According to the radical behaviorists, the environment causes
(controls) the behavior of people. But causality does not
automatically follow from correlation, and the behaviorist claim of
causality is not demonstrated fact.
GS: Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
one group but not in another. Neither method is correlational (unless one
wants to say that ALL experimental science is "correlational." You are,
apparently, completely clueless concerning how mainstream psychology AND
behavior analysis operates.
"Neil W Rickert" <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message
news:c257m4$pek$3...@usenet.cso.niu.edu...
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsiz...@yahoo.com> writes:
>NR: This is behaviorist dogma being peddled as if fact.
>What we know, is that when there are changes in the environment,
>there will also be changes in the behavior of people.
>That indicates some kind of correlation.
>According to the radical behaviorists, the environment causes
>(controls) the behavior of people. But causality does not
>automatically follow from correlation, and the behaviorist claim of
>causality is not demonstrated fact.
>GS: Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
>experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
>variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
>manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
>"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
>INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
>manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
>one group but not in another.
If your point is that mainstream psychology also gets it wrong, I
would tend to agree with that.
Causation really has to do with mechanism. The constraints under
which psychology is done make it rather difficult to come up with
conclusions about causation.
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Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <Nfb1c.6134$jw2.3...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>> You're right that a cognitivist approach that IGNORED the environment
>> would almost certainly be wrong. Yet I'm not certain that that's what
>> you mean. Certainly it seems to me that to prioritize or give control
>> to the environment is a worse mistake. It is clear that environment
>> can impact our beliefs and desires and mentalistic notions, but it
>> does not seem to determine it. Different people in the same
>> environments will be affected in different ways. This seems to
>> suggest some sort of internal picture that plays the major and
>> controlling role in such determinations. So, solipsistic or not, it
>> seems to work fairly well.
>>
>>
>
> It doesn't - check out the facts.
Um, what facts? So far, a more cognitivist view -- or at least one that
tries to explain things focused more on internal notions like beliefs,
desires, etc -- seems to handle all the facts that I care about when I
study philosophy of mind. So which ones are left out? Note that, as I
said above, I don't think a cognitivist or mentalist has to or should
ignore the role environment plays in the formation and triggering of
internal thingies.
>
> We know from empirical work that environmental contingencies shape and
> control behaviour,
Shape, I agree with. I don't know what you mean by "control", though,
so I may not go that far. It seems that internal notions like beliefs
and desires control, at least, the specific behaviour I do more than the
environment -- at least at the time -- does.
You can argue that environment builds the internal notions, but then
that comes down to a nature vs nurture argument which probably can't be
solved.
> What you say about radical behaviorism is just factually incorrect. If
> you do as I suggest and check out the facts for yourself, you'll find
> that out.
Can you tell me what parts of what I supposedly said about radical
behaviourism you're referring to? Because I didn't say anything out it
in this post.
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
> Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>>EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>>
>>GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
>>century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
>>stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is
>
> it
>
>>that your education is so deficient in this realm?
>>
>>EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
>>necessary.
>>So, it is probably not true!
>>
>>GS: You're kidding.......right?
>>
>>*We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave
>
> in
>
>>particular ways (including saying particular things).
>
>
> AC: And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with behaviourism.
>
> GS: Behaviorism simply points out that we talk about beliefs when we see the
> behavior said to be caused by beliefs.
And if that's all it says, then my reply is "Big deal". How I talk
about behaviour or beliefs when applied to others is irrelevant to what
these things really are. You cannot claim that just because I talk
about beliefs in the context of behaviour that behaviour is more
interesting or more useful than the internalist study of beliefs which
the cognitivists and mentalists pursue.
Unfortunately, many behaviourists take this point and conclude that,
therefore, behaviour is all important and the internalist notion is
either wrong -- there are no such things as beliefs -- or
unstudyable/uninteresting. Neither appeals to me very much, as the
former just seems wrong, and the latter does nothing to solve the
problems that I really want explained, which IS the internal notions.
>
> AC: We say that someone else believes something when we see them behave in a
> particular way.
>
> GS: So, in fact, behaviorism is not wrong.
I didn't say it was wrong. I said that that notion was what was wrong
with it: it gives too much importance to this notion and thus insists
that this limited view of the mind is all there is -- or, to be more
accurate perhaps, it lends itself and seems to inspire this view.
>
> AC: However, when I want to see if or say that _I_ believe
> something, I don't bother to look at my behaviour or what I SAY I
> believe to determine that. I have a direct access to a belief that may
> or may not express itself in external behaviour.
>
> GS: But just because you are not observing "external behavior" does not mean
> that you are not observing behavior.
To me, behaviour in the context of mind IS external behaviour. I don't
treat internal introspection as behaviour in the way behaviourism seems
to dictate it should be treated. But more on that later.
> And you should keep in your alleged
> mind that there are a lot of variables that control verbal behavior. For
> example, a devout Christian will answer "yes" to the question "Do you
> believe in God?" but they have described themselves a number of times as "a
> believer" and they have answered "yes" to the question numerous times, and
> they have probably asked themselves that question numerous times. This does
> not mean that they have direct access to "beliefs." It means that the
> response "yes" or "I believe in God" has been reinforced in a number of
> different circumstances.
But surely we'd want to say that they do or do not believe in God,
correct? Someone can answer "Yes" to that question all day long and yet
not actually believe in God (they could be lying, which was actually
common in more religious times). And surely we can see that, before the
reinforcement, they had the belief in God that was instrumental in their
answering "Yes" to the question the first time. It is the belief that
causes the behaviour of agreeing, not the reinforcement or behaviour
itself, and it certainly does not seem to be the case that the behaviour
of saying that phrase CAUSES the belief itself (although it may, I
admit, if repeated enough cause the belief to be formed or accepted by
the internal structures).
Another example of this, which I'll use elsewhere as well, is this
notion. There is a case of Vanilla Coke in my fridge. If you ask me
"Is there a case of Vanilla Coke in my fridge?" I'll answer "Yes". But
this isn't because I've asked and answered that question many times
before. It's because I remember putting the case of pop in the fridge,
and I remember seeing it when I got other things out of the fridge, and
I remember taking cans out of it to drink. So I have the belief, but it
isn't from verbal behaviour or, really, any actual behaviour in the
sense that it directly posits the belief. It seems to be a belief
derived from actions and observations. But that's done by reason, which
is not how a behaviour notion is supposed to work (it's a cognitivist
view). So it seems that the cognitivist view just works the way things
really work.
>
> AC: And that's the
> mentalistic picture that Lester talks about, and that's the thing that
> cognitivists look at.
>
> GS: Cognitive psychologists manipulate the environment, and measure
> behavior. And then they do a lot of talking about "mental processes."
Yep. But it looks like in those investigations, things like mental
processes seem to appear, and be required. And, for certain, when I put
myself in the experiment there seems to be mental things going on.
>
> AC: Behaviourism is either wrong or uninteresting.
>
> GS: How would you know? You couldn't even pass an intro psych level test on
> "learning," let alone describe what radical behaviorism does or does not
> say.
Where does this rant come from? I remember that in a previous
discussion, long, long ago, you seemed somewhat reasonable. How do you
know what I'd say about learning? I ain't talked about it yet. Plus,
the statement you are ranting against doesn't say anything about what
they'd say -- just what result they can have.
>
> AC: Either it says that
> there's nothing more to the story than behaviour -- which ignores that
> mentalistic access -[...]
>
> GS: Radical behaviorism holds that what one sees when one introspects is one
> 's perceptual and motor behavior. It does not ignore the issues that
> surround "subjectivity."
It still would ignore the internal notions of beliefs, desires, and
their impact when external behaviour is happening. But I'll accept --
as stated -- that some behaviourisms won't claim that there's nothing
more to the story than behaviour ...
>
> AC: [...]or it says that the only thing that we can
> empirically study is behaviour,[...]
>
> GS: No, it says that that is what psychologists DO, no matter what they say
> they do.
Same thing -- we can only study empirically behaviour, and so that's
what we experiment on.
>
> AC: [...]at which point it may be right in that
> sense but it doesn't explain what happens in the black box, and that's
> what cognitivists and cognitive scientists are trying to explain.
>
> GS: Behaviorism has no problem with trying to find out how the brain
> mediates the effects of an organism's ontogenic history (or how it mediates
> the effects of whatever exists because of natural selection). Cognitive
> psychologists simply invent "processes" that have whatever characteristics
> are necessary to explain the behavior from which they are inferred, but have
> no "observability" other than that.
As I said.
Look, there's a reversal in how the two sides look at it. Cognitivists
look at the internal processes that we SEEM to have through
introspection, and observe how behaviour interacts with and mediates
those processes. Behaviourists -- from your own description above --
take behaviour to be primary and ask how the cognitive things interact
with and mediate behaviour. And this shift causes them to be in
conflict, but it seems to me that they aren't really asking the same
questions, especially noted by some of your replies where you think that
the key thing for a cognitivist to do is create behaviour by changing
the physiology, when for a cognitivist that's possible, but not really
what they care about.
> And disrupting behavior by directly
> disrupting physiology is no proof that the alleged entity is useful or
> "real;" it simply suggests that the physiological structures in question are
> involved in the behavior.
You do realize that this is the same argument I use against materialist
theories of mind, and in support of dualism (mentalistic if anything
is), right?
Note that changing beliefs by altering environment or behaviour would be
vulnerable to the same counter.
> The concepts of cognitive "science" cannot stand
> close scrutiny, but this does not matter because cognitive "science" does
> not subject them to close scrutiny. This is part of psychology's mistrust of
> philosophy, and belief that all questions are ultimately empirical or
> theoretical (rather than conceptual). And it also is because there are no
> end to the yarns that can be spun when the entities are not directly
> observable.
I believe that introspection -- an utterly unscientific notion -- is our
best shot at "observing" these things.
If these things are required -- and it appears they are -- then the fact
that they are not empirically observable should not count against them.
Glen M. Sizemore
tend to agree with that.
GS: That is not my point. I'll repeat my point:
"Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
one group but not in another."
"Neil W Rickert" <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message
news:c25vp9$382$1...@usenet.cso.niu.edu...
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsiz...@yahoo.com> writes:
>NR: If your point is that mainstream psychology also gets it wrong, I would
>tend to agree with that.
>GS: That is not my point. I'll repeat my point:
>"Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
>experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
>variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
>manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
>"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
>INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
>manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
>one group but not in another."
I read that the first time. I'm not sure why you repeat it.
Medical researchers manipulate a variable in one group, but not in
another (where they use a placebo). Yet medical researchers seem to
be smart enough to recognize that they are not thereby able to infer
causation.
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Glen M. Sizemore
>experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
>variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
>manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
>"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
>INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
>manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
>one group but not in another."
NR: I read that the first time. I'm not sure why you repeat it.
Medical researchers manipulate a variable in one group, but not in
another (where they use a placebo). Yet medical researchers seem to
be smart enough to recognize that they are not thereby able to infer
causation.
GS: Wrong. In the simple two-group experiment in which one group is exposed
to a treatment (say, drug administration) and the other group is not exposed
to that treatment, but is otherwise treated the same (i.e., the placebo
control group), any difference in the means that is statistically
significant is considered to show that the treatment caused the effect. In a
correlational study, such as when one measures say, amount of alcohol
consumed and a person's weight, where nothing is manipulated, the
relationship (should there be one) is not considered to "show causation."
"Neil W Rickert" <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message
news:c26ctd$80s$2...@usenet.cso.niu.edu...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Roy Jose Lorr
Lester Zick wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 14:39:53 +0000, David Longley
>
>
> I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
> Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
> was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
> chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
Can science be based on something other than "material determinism"?
>
> You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
> past couldn't.
Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
--
The last stage of
utopian sentimentalism
is homicidal mania.
AlphaOmega2004
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsiz...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:56d634a5c2cca6b8...@news.teranews.com...
> >"Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
> >experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
> >variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
> >manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
> >"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
> >INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
> >manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables)
in
> >one group but not in another."
>
> NR: I read that the first time. I'm not sure why you repeat it.
>
> Medical researchers manipulate a variable in one group, but not in
> another (where they use a placebo). Yet medical researchers seem to
> be smart enough to recognize that they are not thereby able to infer
> causation.
>
>
> GS: Wrong. In the simple two-group experiment in which one group is
exposed
> to a treatment (say, drug administration) and the other group is not
exposed
> to that treatment, but is otherwise treated the same (i.e., the placebo
> control group), any difference in the means that is statistically
> significant is considered to show that the treatment caused the effect.
But not necessarily the direct cause. Proximal and direct are two different
causal notions that you should klnow about.
David Longley
Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
>
>Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>> Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>>
>>>EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>>>
>>>GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
>>>century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
>>>stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is
>> it
>>
>>>that your education is so deficient in this realm?
>>>
>>>EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
>>>necessary.
>>>So, it is probably not true!
>>>
>>>GS: You're kidding.......right?
>>>
>>>*We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave
>> in
>>
>>>particular ways (including saying particular things).
>> AC: And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with
>>behaviourism.
>> GS: Behaviorism simply points out that we talk about beliefs when we
>>see the
>> behavior said to be caused by beliefs.
>
>And if that's all it says, then my reply is "Big deal". How I talk
>about behaviour or beliefs when applied to others is irrelevant to what
>these things really are.
if, heaven forbid, you ever got to write a scientific paper, would how
you talked be "irrelevant" to what you had done?
> You cannot claim that just because I talk about beliefs in the context
>of behaviour that behaviour is more interesting or more useful than the
>internalist study of beliefs which the cognitivists and mentalists
>pursue.
>
Why not - that's pretty much what Quine, Skinner and many others have
said we *do*. You're just not aware of what you are doing (along with
millions of others!) a lot of the time, and because you haven't learned
to better discriminate. Why do you think we bother training people in
applied psychology and research? Why do we train people to do ANYTHING
in fact?
>Unfortunately, many behaviourists take this point and conclude that,
>therefore, behaviour is all important and the internalist notion is
>either wrong -- there are no such things as beliefs -- or
>unstudyable/uninteresting. Neither appeals to me very much, as the
>former just seems wrong, and the latter does nothing to solve the
>problems that I really want explained, which IS the internal notions.
>
We know it doesn't *appeal* to you. If it did, you wouldn't be saying
what you are saying. But not everything that is true is appealing!
>> AC: We say that someone else believes something when we see them
>>behave in a
>> particular way.
>> GS: So, in fact, behaviorism is not wrong.
>
>I didn't say it was wrong. I said that that notion was what was wrong
>with it: it gives too much importance to this notion and thus insists
>that this limited view of the mind is all there is -- or, to be more
>accurate perhaps, it lends itself and seems to inspire this view.
It gives weight to what others don't, and that's why it has predictive
utility over and above that euphemism for ignorance known as
"cognitivism".
<snip more of basically the same tired old ignorant nonsense>
--
David Longley
David Longley
<ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes
>"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsiz...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>>NR: If your point is that mainstream psychology also gets it wrong, I would
>>tend to agree with that.
>
>>GS: That is not my point. I'll repeat my point:
>
>>"Consult even an intro textbook on methodology and you will see that
>>experiments (a method of study that involves manipulation of independent
>>variables) is not the same as correlational studies in which nothing is
>>manipulated. The experimental analysis of behavior directly demonstrates
>>"causation" by repeatedly producing changes in behavior by MANIPULATING
>>INDEPENDENT VARIABLES. Mainstream psychology infers causation by
>>manipulating an independent variable (or level of independent variables) in
>>one group but not in another."
>
>I read that the first time. I'm not sure why you repeat it.
>
>Medical researchers manipulate a variable in one group, but not in
>another (where they use a placebo). Yet medical researchers seem to
>be smart enough to recognize that they are not thereby able to infer
>causation.
>
>
reasoning!
Much of the time, quite unwarranted conclusions are drawn in medical
research for the same reasons. They may seem to be smart enough to you,
but a lot of the time, but the research evidence suggests otherwise.
I've gone into this before at length - the problems of actuarial vs
clinical judgement do not just apply to the clinician.
--
David Longley
David Longley
>
>
>David Longley wrote:
>
>> In article <Nfb1c.6134$jw2.3...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>>Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>>> You're right that a cognitivist approach that IGNORED the
>>>environment would almost certainly be wrong. Yet I'm not certain
>>>that that's what you mean. Certainly it seems to me that to
>>>prioritize or give control to the environment is a worse mistake.
>>>It is clear that environment can impact our beliefs and desires and
>>>mentalistic notions, but it does not seem to determine it.
>>>Different people in the same environments will be affected in
>>>different ways. This seems to suggest some sort of internal picture
>>>that plays the major and controlling role in such determinations.
>>>So, solipsistic or not, it seems to work fairly well.
>>>
>>>
>> It doesn't - check out the facts.
>
>Um, what facts? So far, a more cognitivist view -- or at least one
>that tries to explain things focused more on internal notions like
>beliefs, desires, etc -- seems to handle all the facts that I care
>about when I study philosophy of mind.
Fine, but when tasked with providing an *accountable* service in
behaviour management, it doesn't suffice at all - if you want to see why
I say that, read the material at my website and look at the recently
published corroborate research. If all of that *did* work, and if the
"Cognitivist" approach worked anywhere else (forget about "AI" for the
time being) I wouldn't be saying what I am!
> So which ones are left out? Note that, as I said above, I don't
>think a cognitivist or mentalist has to or should ignore the role
>environment plays in the formation and triggering of internal thingies.
>
No, they *need not*, but they do. That's my point, but to properly
appreciate that, you really should look at the context I refer to above.
Sadly, that is woefully neglected by all to many of the critics here.
>> We know from empirical work that environmental contingencies shape
>>and control behaviour,
>
>Shape, I agree with. I don't know what you mean by "control", though,
>so I may not go that far. It seems that internal notions like beliefs
>and desires control, at least, the specific behaviour I do more than
>the environment -- at least at the time -- does.
Well, in one context, say the Skinner Box, or other similar experimental
paradigms, "control" refers to the fact that one can make pretty good
predictions of what is going on - if you like, one can manage behaviour
on the basis of the contingencies.
In a larger context, most of my applied work was a contribution towards
the management of the behaviour of long term prisoners (initially, a sub
group referred to as "Control Problems" or "difficult inmates"). These
were the problem inmates (maybe 30 inmates) in the UK maximum security
system of prisons (the "Dispersal System" then about 3000 maximum
security inmates out of a national population of about 45,000 inmates).
Later work expanded (still under the auspices of "control") to systems
of better management for long term prisoners more generally. In the
early work, the contribution took the form of development and use of a
distributed national relational database system for profiling behaviour,
ie measures of what inmates actually did (not what they thought) as a
Management Information System. This was used to better classify and
monitor behaviour through the analysis of relations between classes of
variables with a view to using that to create a set of contingencies for
the better management of behaviour (which like it or not, is what prison
managers have to do, in the interest of all concerned).
This sort of thing is, I have tried to make clear, done in all walks of
life, and what people tend to think they do "cognitively" tends to
really often amount to a heuristic way of doing much the same thing -
often with predictably unfavourable consequences.
>
>You can argue that environment builds the internal notions, but then
>that comes down to a nature vs nurture argument which probably can't be
>solved.
>
No, it comes down to an actuarial (extensional) vs clinical
(intensional) conflict, and that largely has been resolved if you look
more carefully into what I have been saying. Much of what I have said
here has been an account of why the "Cognitivist" (intensional) approach
is at best a poor version of the extensional.
>> What you say about radical behaviorism is just factually incorrect.
>>If you do as I suggest and check out the facts for yourself, you'll
>>find that out.
>
>Can you tell me what parts of what I supposedly said about radical
>behaviourism you're referring to? Because I didn't say anything out it
>in this post.
>
>
<g>
--
David Longley
Lester Zick
<moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
>
>Lester Zick wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 14:39:53 +0000, David Longley
>>
>>
>> I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
>> Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
>> was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
>> chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
>
>Can science be based on something other than "material determinism"?
Yes.
>>
>> You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
>> past couldn't.
>
>Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
>--
Yes.
Regards - Lester
Roy Jose Lorr
Lester Zick wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 14:58:38 GMT, Roy Jose Lorr
> <moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Lester Zick wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 14:39:53 +0000, David Longley
> >>
> >>
> >> I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
> >> Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
> >> was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
> >> chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
> >
> >Can science be based on something other than "material determinism"?
>
> Yes.
Which something other than "material determinism" can science be based on?
>
> >>
> >> You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
> >> past couldn't.
> >
> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
> >--
> Yes.
And, your solution is?
AlphaOmega2004
"Roy Jose Lorr" <moses...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:40479E62...@worldnet.att.net...
>
>
> Lester Zick wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 14:58:38 GMT, Roy Jose Lorr
> > <moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >Lester Zick wrote:
> > >
> > >> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 14:39:53 +0000, David Longley
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
> > >> Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
> > >> was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
> > >> chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
> > >
> > >Can science be based on something other than "material determinism"?
> >
> > Yes.
>
> Which something other than "material determinism" can science be based
on?
>
> >
> > >>
> > >> You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
> > >> past couldn't.
> > >
> > >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
Free will is simply the non-cognition of the events leading up to a choice;
those events being below the threshold of such cognition (subconscious) or
unknown in general (e.g., necessary conditions in the Universe for the
scenario to explicate).
Lester Zick
<moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
>
>Lester Zick wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 14:58:38 GMT, Roy Jose Lorr
>> <moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >Lester Zick wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 14:39:53 +0000, David Longley
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I have to confess abject ignorance of the past as you represent it.
>> >> Apparently Wittgenstein et al. lived up to their potential such as it
>> >> was. It just wasn't enough to escape the futility of history and they
>> >> chose instead to sink back into the morass of material determinism.
>> >
>> >Can science be based on something other than "material determinism"?
>>
>> Yes.
>
>Which something other than "material determinism" can science be based on?
>
>>
>> >>
>> >> You choose to worship the past, David. I prefer to solve problems the
>> >> past couldn't.
>> >
>> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
>> >--
>> Yes.
>
>And, your solution is?
>--
My solution is that in conversations you only get to ask two questions
lest the discussion turn into an interrogation. You've asked two
questions. I've answered them. Now it's my turn to ask questions.
Regards - Lester
Roy Jose Lorr
Lester Zick wrote:
That's not the way it works. I asked two questions, you answered
them, I get to question your answers. You get to ask questions
anytime you like... See how it works?
If you have answers to my questions or questions of your own, I
look forward to reading and responding to them. If not... well...
Roy Jose Lorr
AlphaOmega2004 wrote:
I always thought free will was the ability to chose for or against a unique
natural inclination or intuition. I probably don't understand your
explanation beyond my perceiving your conception of free will as being
in the same category as a sneeze. Perhaps if you could explain
"non-cognition" and how it directs cognitive choices, especially moral
ones?... In layman terms, if possible.
Lester Zick
<moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
No that's not the way conversations or discussions work. That's the
way inquisitions work. And the last time I checked this newsgroup
isn't the Holy Office of the Inquisition and you're not the Grand
Inquisitor.
>If you have answers to my questions or questions of your own, I
>look forward to reading and responding to them. If not... well...
>--
How nice. And if you have further questions as part of the
conversation, you'll just have to wait until I ask my questions.
Regards - Lester
manicmarvin
>> >
>> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
>> >--
>> Yes.
>
> And, your solution is?
He can't tell you that! That would take away your free will!
You must discover your own solution using your own free will.
regards,
Marvin
--
Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical
universalization of a multitude of subjective realities - Philip K. Dick
Roy Jose Lorr
Lester Zick wrote:
Evasion is good.
>
>
> >If you have answers to my questions or questions of your own, I
> >look forward to reading and responding to them. If not... well...
> >--
> How nice. And if you have further questions as part of the
> conversation, you'll just have to wait until I ask my questions.
Evasion is good.
Roy Jose Lorr
manicmarvin wrote:
> Roy Jose Lorr wrote:
>
> >> >
> >> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
> >> >--
> >> Yes.
> >
> > And, your solution is?
>
> He can't tell you that! That would take away your free will!
> You must discover your own solution using your own free will.
Whatever my solution, why cant he tell me his, or you, yours?
Its not as if the concept is unexplainable, or is it?
> --
> Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical
> universalization of a multitude of subjective realities - Philip K. Dick
Is this supposed to be the answer?
Glen M. Sizemore
> Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>>EO: What you described is an a prior "fact", or rather just belief.
>>
>>GS: Of course it's a "belief*" It is a "belief" that comes from nearly a
>>century of investigations into the role of contingent relationships among
>>stimuli, and among responses and stimuli, in controlling behavior. How is
>
> it
>
>>that your education is so deficient in this realm?
>>
>>EO: It is not necessarily true. In fact, there is nothing to make it
>>necessary.
>>So, it is probably not true!
>>
>>GS: You're kidding.......right?
>>
>>*We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them behave
>
> in
>
>>particular ways (including saying particular things).
>
>
> AC: And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with
behaviourism.
>
> GS: Behaviorism simply points out that we talk about beliefs when we see
the
> behavior said to be caused by beliefs.
AC: And if that's all it says, then my reply is "Big deal".
GS: It is a "big deal" because if there are no observations other than
behavior, then to explain the behavior (by reference to natural selection,
cultural selection, personal history, current stimulating environment, and
other public variables not easily described as "stimuli") is to render moot
any discussion of "internal causes."
AC: How I talk
about behaviour or beliefs when applied to others is irrelevant to what
these things really are.
GS: How so? Simply because you say so? As I said, if one explains the
behavior from which the mental entities are inferred without pointing to
unobservables, then one eliminates the need to make them up and reify them.
How is it that you know "...what these things really are?" You don't observe
them, at least not in the third person. Perhaps you are seeking
justification in introspection. That position, then, regards what is felt
introspectively as causes of behavior (i.e., feelings cause behavior). Then,
our third-person usage is thought to be a sort of inference - when we
observe people behaving in a particular way, we infer that they must be
having feelings similar to the ones we have when we behave in that fashion,
and this explains the similarities in our behavior. This is, of course, the
most popular view, but it is, I think, incorrect. The alternative view
argues that we come to apply terms directly to others' behavior, as it were.
Later, we come to describe ourselves in such terms, but the stimuli
controlling such descriptions may be aspects of our behavior that only we
can witness. That is, we learn to describe ourselves as "angry" when we are
behaving in ways that others would call angry (i.e., when we are engaged in
publically observable behavior), but the response may come under stimulus
control of events to which the public does not have access, and these events
are what we are feeling when we talk about "feelings." As such, they are not
the causes of behavior but, rather either accompaniments of the public
behavior or are, as Skinner liked to say, incipient or inchoate forms of the
response.
AC: You cannot claim that just because I talk
about beliefs in the context of behaviour that behaviour is more
interesting or more useful than the internalist study of beliefs which
the cognitivists and mentalists pursue.
GS: I already dealt with this. But an additional point is that, even if one
doesn't have the "selectionist" answers in the bag, one may still realize
that "mental entities" are inferred solely from behavior and then said to be
the causes of the behavior from which they are inferred. You know, like
saying that drug A will put you to sleep because it has a "soporific
virtue."
AC: Unfortunately, many behaviourists take this point and conclude that,
therefore, behaviour is all important[...]
GS: Is this how you're summing up the history of psychology from Wundt to
Watson?
AC: [...] and the internalist notion is either wrong -- there are no such
things as beliefs -- or
unstudyable/uninteresting.
GS: Again, you need to revisit the history of psychology and the failure of
structuralism, and the subsequent rise of functionalism and behaviorism, as
well as the more recent ascent of cognitivism. And then you should think
about what led to Ptolemaic turtles, and consider whether or not the
"internalist notion" is a bunch of bull phlogiston.
AC: Neither appeals to me very much,[...]
GS: So what.
AC: [...]as the former just seems wrong,[...]
GS: Good argument.
AC: [...]and the latter does nothing to solve the problems that I really
want explained, which IS the internal notions.
GS: And, of course, your conception of what is happening on the inside has
to be right......just like phlogiston was right......right?
>
> AC: We say that someone else believes something when we see them behave in
a
> particular way.
>
> GS: So, in fact, behaviorism is not wrong.
AC: I didn't say it was wrong. I said that that notion was what was wrong
with it: it gives too much importance to this notion and thus insists
that this limited view of the mind is all there is -- or, to be more
accurate perhaps, it lends itself and seems to inspire this view.
GS: Huh?
>
> AC: However, when I want to see if or say that _I_ believe
> something, I don't bother to look at my behaviour or what I SAY I
> believe to determine that. I have a direct access to a belief that may
> or may not express itself in external behaviour.
>
> GS: But just because you are not observing "external behavior" does not
mean
> that you are not observing behavior.
AC: To me, behaviour in the context of mind IS external behaviour. I don't
treat internal introspection as behaviour in the way behaviourism seems
to dictate it should be treated. But more on that later.
GS: Well, it seems unnecessary to say more. I think everything has been
covered. I already know how you "treat...introspection" ("internal" would be
redundant).
> And you should keep in your alleged
> mind that there are a lot of variables that control verbal behavior. For
> example, a devout Christian will answer "yes" to the question "Do you
> believe in God?" but they have described themselves a number of times as
"a> believer" and they have answered "yes" to the question numerous times,
and
> they have probably asked themselves that question numerous times. This
does
> not mean that they have direct access to "beliefs." It means that the
> response "yes" or "I believe in God" has been reinforced in a number of
> different circumstances.
AC: But surely we'd want to say that they do or do not believe in God,
correct?
GS: This is a spurious question. Logically, either A or Not A must be true
if the question is to have any meaning, but this does not mean that A
exists. The question might be meaningless. That is, if there is no such
thing as "beliefs," then the question is meaningless.
AC: Someone can answer "Yes" to that question all day long and yet
not actually believe in God (they could be lying, which was actually
common in more religious times). And surely we can see that, before the
reinforcement, they had the belief in God that was instrumental in their
answering "Yes" to the question the first time. It is the belief that
causes the behaviour of agreeing, not the reinforcement or behaviour
itself, and it certainly does not seem to be the case that the behaviour
of saying that phrase CAUSES the belief itself (although it may, I
admit, if repeated enough cause the belief to be formed or accepted by
the internal structures).
GS: There's way too much gibberish here, but I will comment on one part: it
is nonsense to say that a person who says, for the first time, "I believe in
God" could not be showing the effects of a reinforcement history. Think real
hard on this, Allen: each and every instance of behavior is unique in some
way, but the order is observed at the level of one or more common
properties. Responses may be "topographically novel," but still be a member
of a response class that is produced via reinforcement contingencies.
AC: Another example of this, which I'll use elsewhere as well, is this
notion. There is a case of Vanilla Coke in my fridge. If you ask me
"Is there a case of Vanilla Coke in my fridge?" I'll answer "Yes". But
this isn't because I've asked and answered that question many times
before. It's because I remember putting the case of pop in the fridge,
and I remember seeing it when I got other things out of the fridge, and
I remember taking cans out of it to drink.
GS: Oh bullshit. What evidence is there for this fanciful story? What does
it mean to say that:
"I remember putting the case of pop in the fridge, and I remember seeing it
when I got other things out of the fridge, and I remember taking cans out of
it to drink."
When you answer the question do you have a vision of yourself putting the
stuff in the fridge? Really? In how much detail do you see it? And do you
really, necessarily, see anything at all when you correctly answer the
question? And if not a kind of seeing, of what does the "remembering"
consist if not the correct answering of the question?
AC: So I have the belief, but it
isn't from verbal behaviour or, really, any actual behaviour in the
sense that it directly posits the belief. It seems to be a belief
derived from actions and observations. But that's done by reason, which
is not how a behaviour notion is supposed to work (it's a cognitivist
view). So it seems that the cognitivist view just works the way things
really work.
GS: Oh....you're going to elucidate what it is that is the "behaviour
notion?" Anyway......I've already discussed the notion that "subjective" is
necessarily the domain of "mental."
>
> AC: And that's the
> mentalistic picture that Lester talks about, and that's the thing that
> cognitivists look at.
>
> GS: Cognitive psychologists manipulate the environment, and measure
> behavior. And then they do a lot of talking about "mental processes."
AC: Yep. But it looks like in those investigations, things like mental
processes seem to appear, and be required. And, for certain, when I put
myself in the experiment there seems to be mental things going on.
GS: Oh....you mean like you necessarily see yourself putting the soda in the
fridge? Do you really see yourself going through a scan of some stored
vision of the past? Really, think about it.
>
> AC: Behaviourism is either wrong or uninteresting.
>
> GS: How would you know? You couldn't even pass an intro psych level test
on
> "learning," let alone describe what radical behaviorism does or does not
> say.
AC: Where does this rant come from?
GS: It comes from the fact that "behaviorism" is "about learning." Since you
have shown clearly that you don't understand what "behaviorism" says, how
seriously am I to take "Behaviourism is either wrong or uninteresting." See
where the "rant" comes from?
Skimming through the rest of what you say, I see no need to comment further.
I'm sure you'll let me know if you disagree.
<snip for now>
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:9Zv1c.16700$qA2.8...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Lester Zick
<moses...@worldnet.att.net> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
Dodging religious bigots is even better. You claim the right to
question my answers but you don't. You asked two questions and
got two answers - yes and yes.
You don't question the answers. You question your questions instead of
the answers and try to use me to do it. That's the way you work. No
way, Jose. Not playing your little inquisition game. Torquemada is
history. If you don't understand the issues or the right questions
it's your problem not mine. I'm not going to help you pretend you know
what you're talking about.
>>
>>
>> >If you have answers to my questions or questions of your own, I
>> >look forward to reading and responding to them. If not... well...
>> >--
>> How nice. And if you have further questions as part of the
>> conversation, you'll just have to wait until I ask my questions.
>
>Evasion is good.
Besides as you well know the pentateuch, torah, and YWH are the
answers to all questions.
The last stage of
utopian sentimentalism
is religious hysteria and
homicidal mania.
Regards - Lester
manicmarvin
>
>
> manicmarvin wrote:
>
>> Roy Jose Lorr wrote:
>>
>> >> >
>> >> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
>> >> >--
>> >> Yes.
>> >
>> > And, your solution is?
>>
>> He can't tell you that! That would take away your free will!
>> You must discover your own solution using your own free will.
>
> Whatever my solution, why cant he tell me his, or you, yours?
> Its not as if the concept is unexplainable, or is it?
Oh, you dropped it. My pretty joke, fallen flat. How sad.
>> Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical
>> universalization of a multitude of subjective realities - Philip K. Dick
>
> Is this supposed to be the answer?
If it works for you....
regards,
Marvin
Roy Jose Lorr
manicmarvin wrote:
> Roy Jose Lorr wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > manicmarvin wrote:
> >
> >> Roy Jose Lorr wrote:
> >>
> >> >> >
> >> >> >Have you solved the problem of free will yet?
> >> >> >--
> >> >> Yes.
> >> >
> >> > And, your solution is?
> >>
> >> He can't tell you that! That would take away your free will!
> >> You must discover your own solution using your own free will.
> >
> > Whatever my solution, why cant he tell me his, or you, yours?
> > Its not as if the concept is unexplainable, or is it?
>
> Oh, you dropped it. My pretty joke, fallen flat. How sad.
>
> >> Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical
> >> universalization of a multitude of subjective realities - Philip K. Dick
> >
> > Is this supposed to be the answer?
>
> If it works for you....
Good griefusk, another one.
Roy Jose Lorr
Lester Zick wrote:
As its turning out, your two answers ("yes, and yes") were evasions. If
you didn't want to make a fool of yourself all you had to do was ignore
or refuse to answer my original questions. Instead, you thought you'd
show how your imagined big brain is soooo much smarter than that of a
lowly unwashed street urchin... one whom I might add, has beaten the
intellectual tar out of you on prior occasions. That's really your
problem, fraid of getting whumped again. Its not some phantom
inquisitor you fear but anyone who's got a lock on your minuscule
mental abilities.
>
>
> You don't question the answers. You question your questions instead of
> the answers and try to use me to do it. That's the way you work. No
> way, Jose. Not playing your little inquisition game. Torquemada is
> history. If you don't understand the issues or the right questions
> it's your problem not mine. I'm not going to help you pretend you know
> what you're talking about.
How about at least pretending you know what you're talking about?
I asked perfectly legitimate questions which you chose to evade.
Evasion is not what's going to do it for you. All your squirming non
performance is going to get you is another fool tag. And, from the
looks of your conversations with others, you've already picked up a
carload full of them... haven't you?
>
>
> >>
> >>
> >> >If you have answers to my questions or questions of your own, I
> >> >look forward to reading and responding to them. If not... well...
> >> >--
> >> How nice. And if you have further questions as part of the
> >> conversation, you'll just have to wait until I ask my questions.
> >
> >Evasion is good.
>
> Besides as you well know the pentateuch, torah, and YWH are the
> answers to all questions.
Are you sure about this?
>
>
> The last stage of
> utopian sentimentalism
> is religious hysteria and
> homicidal mania.
How true. Utopian sentimentalism does lead to religious hysteria.
I'm surprised you you had the mental capacity to divine this for
yourself. Or, is it just that your worshipping yourself is so
hysterical in nature that you can't exclude yourself from some
delusional form of "honorable" mention.
--
The last stage of
utopian sentimentalism
is homicidal mania.
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <9Zv1c.16700$qA2.8...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>>>> GS: You're kidding.......right?
>>>>
>>>> *We say someone or something "believes something" when we see them
>>>> behave
>>>
>>> in
>>>
>>>> particular ways (including saying particular things).
>>>
>>> AC: And this, in fact, highlights precisely what's WRONG with
>>> behaviourism.
>>> GS: Behaviorism simply points out that we talk about beliefs when we
>>> see the
>>> behavior said to be caused by beliefs.
>>
>>
>> And if that's all it says, then my reply is "Big deal". How I talk
>> about behaviour or beliefs when applied to others is irrelevant to
>> what these things really are.
>
>
> if, heaven forbid, you ever got to write a scientific paper, would how
> you talked be "irrelevant" to what you had done?
Absolutely. Convenient examples, analogies, or ways of talking about
something have no relevance to what something really is. The fact that
we tend to talk about behaviour more frequently does nothing to show
that that's all behaviour is, and anyone who relied on that in any paper
is doing their theories and their field a great disservice.
>
>> You cannot claim that just because I talk about beliefs in the context
>> of behaviour that behaviour is more interesting or more useful than
>> the internalist study of beliefs which the cognitivists and mentalists
>> pursue.
>>
>
> Why not - that's pretty much what Quine, Skinner and many others have
> said we *do*.
Doesn't make it right, but I, at least, tend to talk in terms of
mentalists views and not just in behaviours.
> You're just not aware of what you are doing (along with
> millions of others!) a lot of the time, and because you haven't learned
> to better discriminate. Why do you think we bother training people in
> applied psychology and research? Why do we train people to do ANYTHING
> in fact?
What's the point of this? You are assuming that a way of talking about
things proves the existence or theory you are espousing, which would
also be used to justify the idea that folk psychological terms of
beliefs and desires determining behaviour as well. Quine, Skinner and
others need a better argument than "people can or would talk about it
only in terms of behaviour if only they agreed with us".
>
>
>> Unfortunately, many behaviourists take this point and conclude that,
>> therefore, behaviour is all important and the internalist notion is
>> either wrong -- there are no such things as beliefs -- or
>> unstudyable/uninteresting. Neither appeals to me very much, as the
>> former just seems wrong, and the latter does nothing to solve the
>> problems that I really want explained, which IS the internal notions.
>>
>
> We know it doesn't *appeal* to you. If it did, you wouldn't be saying
> what you are saying. But not everything that is true is appealing!
Correct. But I explained WHY I find it unappealing, which you might
want to actually read and deal with instead of harping on one word.
>>
>> I didn't say it was wrong. I said that that notion was what was wrong
>> with it: it gives too much importance to this notion and thus insists
>> that this limited view of the mind is all there is -- or, to be more
>> accurate perhaps, it lends itself and seems to inspire this view.
>
>
> It gives weight to what others don't, and that's why it has predictive
> utility over and above that euphemism for ignorance known as "cognitivism".
Well, I guess that depends on what the theory of cognitivism is.
Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
there is lots of evidence to support this.
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <Myv1c.16665$qA2.8...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
>>
>>
>> David Longley wrote:
>>
>>> In article <Nfb1c.6134$jw2.3...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>>> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>>>
>>>> You're right that a cognitivist approach that IGNORED the
>>>> environment would almost certainly be wrong. Yet I'm not certain
>>>> that that's what you mean. Certainly it seems to me that to
>>>> prioritize or give control to the environment is a worse mistake.
>>>> It is clear that environment can impact our beliefs and desires and
>>>> mentalistic notions, but it does not seem to determine it.
>>>> Different people in the same environments will be affected in
>>>> different ways. This seems to suggest some sort of internal
>>>> picture that plays the major and controlling role in such
>>>> determinations. So, solipsistic or not, it seems to work fairly well.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It doesn't - check out the facts.
>>
>>
>> Um, what facts? So far, a more cognitivist view -- or at least one
>> that tries to explain things focused more on internal notions like
>> beliefs, desires, etc -- seems to handle all the facts that I care
>> about when I study philosophy of mind.
>
>
> Fine, but when tasked with providing an *accountable* service in
> behaviour management, it doesn't suffice at all
Well, first, that isn't its primary goal, as I've stated elsewhere, and
second, it does. Yes, behaviourist techniques and training can change
behaviour. Yet changing beliefs and desires also seem to be able to
change behaviour. For example, in an example I mentioned to Glen, and
you ignored, if I want a pop, and I believe that there's a case of pop
in the fridge, my behaviour will be to go to the fridge and get a pop.
If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
not my environment or the original stimuli.
As another example, you can place a plate of donuts in a room and expect
that someone will take one (most of the time, people do). But someone
may not react to the simulus of the donuts for these reasons (and many
others):
1) They're on a diet, and so shouldn't eat donuts.
2) They aren't hungry.
3) They're going to eat a large lunch, and want to save room.
4) They don't like donuts.
5) They don't like the type of donuts on the plate.
6) They don't want to get their hands dirty (or their clothes).
All of these will affect the behaviour. But how many of them can be
said to be controlled by the environment, instead of controlling our
reactions to the environment? Most of these are internal things that at
least I insist control our reactions to the environment.
> - if you want to see why
> I say that, read the material at my website and look at the recently
> published corroborate research.
(Um, if you reference a website, it might be nice to give the link [grin])
>
>> So which ones are left out? Note that, as I said above, I don't
>> think a cognitivist or mentalist has to or should ignore the role
>> environment plays in the formation and triggering of internal thingies.
>>
>
> No, they *need not*, but they do.
Well, I don't, and if they do, they're wrong.
>
>
>>> We know from empirical work that environmental contingencies shape
>>> and control behaviour,
>>
>>
>> Shape, I agree with. I don't know what you mean by "control", though,
>> so I may not go that far. It seems that internal notions like beliefs
>> and desires control, at least, the specific behaviour I do more than
>> the environment -- at least at the time -- does.
>
>
> Well, in one context, say the Skinner Box, or other similar experimental
> paradigms, "control" refers to the fact that one can make pretty good
> predictions of what is going on - if you like, one can manage behaviour
> on the basis of the contingencies.
The obvious reply is that it only works in reference to beliefs that
most people have.
>
> In a larger context, most of my applied work was a contribution towards
> the management of the behaviour of long term prisoners (initially, a sub
> group referred to as "Control Problems" or "difficult inmates"). These
> were the problem inmates (maybe 30 inmates) in the UK maximum security
> system of prisons (the "Dispersal System" then about 3000 maximum
> security inmates out of a national population of about 45,000 inmates).
> Later work expanded (still under the auspices of "control") to systems
> of better management for long term prisoners more generally. In the
> early work, the contribution took the form of development and use of a
> distributed national relational database system for profiling behaviour,
> ie measures of what inmates actually did (not what they thought) as a
> Management Information System. This was used to better classify and
> monitor behaviour through the analysis of relations between classes of
> variables with a view to using that to create a set of contingencies for
> the better management of behaviour (which like it or not, is what prison
> managers have to do, in the interest of all concerned).
Why this tends to work better is that the "web of beliefs" is usually so
complicated that if you try to figure them all out, at least right now,
you tend to miss some. Whereas behaviour, as long as it is consistent,
is the result of the whole, and so no beliefs are "missed out".
However, should the behaviour not match similar environments, the
behaviourist approach kind of gets stuck because it can't figure out
what was internally different. See the donut example above.
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>there is lots of evidence to support this.
Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
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David Longley
>> Well, in one context, say the Skinner Box, or other similar
>>experimental paradigms, "control" refers to the fact that one can
>>make pretty good predictions of what is going on - if you like, one
>>can manage behaviour on the basis of the contingencies.
>
>The obvious reply is that it only works in reference to beliefs that
>most people have.
>
>> In a larger context, most of my applied work was a contribution
>>towards the management of the behaviour of long term prisoners
>>(initially, a sub group referred to as "Control Problems" or
>>"difficult inmates"). These were the problem inmates (maybe 30
>>inmates) in the UK maximum security system of prisons (the "Dispersal
>>System" then about 3000 maximum security inmates out of a national
>>population of about 45,000 inmates). Later work expanded (still under
>>more generally. In the early work, the contribution took the form of
>>development and use of a distributed national relational database
>>system for profiling behaviour, ie measures of what inmates actually
>>did (not what they thought) as a Management Information System. This
>>was used to better classify and monitor behaviour through the
>>analysis of relations between classes of variables with a view to
>>using that to create a set of contingencies for the better management
>>interest of all concerned).
>
>Why this tends to work better is that the "web of beliefs" is usually
>so complicated that if you try to figure them all out, at least right
>now, you tend to miss some. Whereas behaviour, as long as it is
>consistent, is the result of the whole, and so no beliefs are "missed
>out". However, should the behaviour not match similar environments, the
>behaviourist approach kind of gets stuck because it can't figure out
>what was internally different. See the donut example above.
>
>
Thanks for that "contribution" ;-).
Reading through what you write above it's pretty clear to me that you
aren't using the term *behaviour* the way that I (and others in this
field) do. As a consequence, we're not going to communicate very
productively with each other.
In the past, I've gone to some lengths to provide a Quinean perspective
on why 'psychological' or mentalistic 'explanations' are really no
explanations at all.
Asserting, as you do, that one doesn't eat because one isn't "hungry" is
such a Skinnerian classic that you can't have followed what has already
been said and you can't know the literature. What you think of as
cognitive "explanations" are creative, surreptitiously dramatic
euphemisms which are no more than reiterations. It's just their opacity
which allows them to masquerade as explanations. Cognitivists are like
real estate agents - beware <g>!!
Mentalistic language is hopelessly indeterminate. It has its uses, but
they tend to be quite the opposite to what's sought in science.
Mentalistic talk generates more verbal (and other) behaviour.
I suspect that's all that many folk in forums like this really want
though.
--
David Longley
Glen M. Sizemore
they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
not my environment or the original stimuli.
GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it is
your behavior that changes as a result.
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:xLw2c.23513$qA2.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>
>>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>>there is lots of evidence to support this.
>
>
> Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
You're going to make me dig through all of my books to find all of this
evidence, aren't you?
It shouldn't matter, since any decent introspection will get you to
realize that:
You take actions when you want things (on the basis of desires).
You take actions when you think that there's some state of the world
that can fulfill your desires (on the basis of beliefs).
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
> AC: If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
> they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
> down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
> not my environment or the original stimuli.
>
>
> GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it is
> your behavior that changes as a result.
But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
BECAUSE my beliefs change. And that statement doesn't compel my beliefs
to change, since if I don't believe them, then I still believe that it's
there and act as if it was there.
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <xLw2c.23513$qA2.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>> Why this tends to work better is that the "web of beliefs" is usually
>> so complicated that if you try to figure them all out, at least right
>> now, you tend to miss some. Whereas behaviour, as long as it is
>> consistent, is the result of the whole, and so no beliefs are "missed
>> out". However, should the behaviour not match similar environments,
>> the behaviourist approach kind of gets stuck because it can't figure
>> out what was internally different. See the donut example above.
>>
>>
>
> Thanks for that "contribution" ;-).
>
> Reading through what you write above it's pretty clear to me that you
> aren't using the term *behaviour* the way that I (and others in this
> field) do. As a consequence, we're not going to communicate very
> productively with each other.
Well, then I guess the problem is that behaviourists like yourself
aren't using behaviour in the same way as everyone else is. I'll admit,
though, that my focus is more philosophical than psychological. But
I've dealt with the expanded form of the word "behaviour" in a reply to
Glenn, pointing out that even with the expansion the mentalisitic
notions have an important difference that makes them worthy of study.
>
> In the past, I've gone to some lengths to provide a Quinean perspective
> on why 'psychological' or mentalistic 'explanations' are really no
> explanations at all.
>
> Asserting, as you do, that one doesn't eat because one isn't "hungry" is
> such a Skinnerian classic that you can't have followed what has already
> been said and you can't know the literature.
Well a) I wasn't reading the group when you posted it, b) you STILL
haven't referenced your website and c) I am quite well-versed in the
literature around mind and notions of beliefs and desires. I did
recongize that "hunger" was a difficult one, but what I was driving at was:
Case 1: Could be hungry or desire donuts, but has a competing desire or
a belief that says it would be bad.
Case 2: Does not desire food or donuts.
Case 3: Desires donuts, but believes that doing so will lessen a later
desire.
Case 4: Finds donuts undesirable, and/or believes that they are not
enjoyable.
Case 5: Believes that the donuts on the play are not enjoyable, or does
not desire them.
Case 6: Desires donuts, but desires to keep clean and believes that the
donuts will lead to them being dirty.
Now, all of these come from the same stimulus. How can behaviourism
explain that? And note that I've already dealt with arguing that
environment causes the beliefs, as it leads to a nature versus nurture
argument, and still means that beliefs can be important and controlling
the behaviour I actually do based on them.
Note as well that you can be "hungry" without physically requiring food.
> What you think of as
> cognitive "explanations" are creative, surreptitiously dramatic
> euphemisms which are no more than reiterations. It's just their opacity
> which allows them to masquerade as explanations. Cognitivists are like
> real estate agents - beware <g>!!
I think you need to do more than rabidly assert that. You can start by
actually explaining the cases I outlined.
>
> Mentalistic language is hopelessly indeterminate. It has its uses, but
> they tend to be quite the opposite to what's sought in science.
> Mentalistic talk generates more verbal (and other) behaviour.
>
> I suspect that's all that many folk in forums like this really want though.
Blah, blah, blah. For someone who, at least in response to me, has said
nothing about their supposed perfect stance, you rant a lot about other
people's motives.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>
>>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>>there is lots of evidence to support this.
>
>
> Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
I'd say that any Philosophy of Mind text is a good place to start.
Lester Zick
<Da...@longley.demon.co.uk> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>In article <xLw2c.23513$qA2.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
>Mentalistic language is hopelessly indeterminate. It has its uses, but
>they tend to be quite the opposite to what's sought in science.
>Mentalistic talk generates more verbal (and other) behaviour.
>
I'll say it has its uses. Mainly to let behaviorists use concepts like
". . . the opposite to what's sought in science" while denying the
reality of mentalistic fictions like "seeking". Very good, David.
Regards - Lester
Joe Legris
> Cognitivists are like real estate agents - beware <g>!!
>
> Mentalistic language is hopelessly indeterminate. It has its uses, but
> they tend to be quite the opposite to what's sought in science.
> Mentalistic talk generates more verbal (and other) behaviour.
>
> I suspect that's all that many folk in forums like this really want though.
>
Cognitivists are more like dietary supplement salespeople - they really
believe in the stuff even though some of it is useless or dangerous.
Some of them actually try to tell the difference.
Behaviourists are like the few Marxist-Leninists you still see on the
streets of large cities, clutching a sheaf of handbills, mouthing the
rhetoric of days bygone and sustained by handouts from "capitalists".
--
Joe Legris
Glen M. Sizemore
> they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
> down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
> not my environment or the original stimuli.
>
>
> GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it
is
> your behavior that changes as a result.
AC: But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
BECAUSE my beliefs change.
GS: 1.) That "odd point" is what is observed. 2.) How do you know that the
statement doesn't change your behavior, verbal and otherwise, and you label
this as "changing your belief." After all, what does it mean to say that one
"examines one's beliefs?" What does one feel when one does so.
AC: And that statement doesn't compel my beliefs
to change, since if I don't believe them, then I still believe that it's
there and act as if it was there.
GS: What are you talking about? In the little vignette you gave the person's
statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist view
suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes "them"
by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
them any other way - at least not usefully.
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:J0E2c.128
Glen M. Sizemore
a belief that says it would be bad.
GS: Translation: Would eat if other food was available, but has suffered
from the ill-effects of eating to many donuts, or is "following a doctor's
advice" (which would necessitate a great deal of discussion).
AC: Case 2: Does not desire food or donuts.
GS: Translation: Donuts do not currently function as reinforcers, if they
ever have. This could be for a variety of reasons.
AC: Case 3: Desires donuts, but believes that doing so will lessen a later
desire.
GS: I can't even follow the colloquial meaning of this one, sorry.
AC: Case 4: Finds donuts undesirable, and/or believes that they are not
enjoyable.
GS: Translation: Eating donuts has produced aversive consequences, or the
person has been told that donuts may produce aversive consequences (a huge
history of reinforcement is required for the latter, of course).
AC: Case 5: Believes that the donuts on the play are not enjoyable, or does
not desire them.
GS: Translation: Has been told the particular donuts are "bad" or has
observed someone responding badly to eating the donuts. (I guess you might
say that the "beliefs" could have been beamed into the person's head from an
alien intelligence).
AC: Case 6: Desires donuts, but desires to keep clean and believes that the
donuts will lead to them being dirty.
GS: Translation: Has been dirtied (which had aversive outcomes) when eating
donuts or other foods, or has witnessed that the donuts are particularly
"crumbly" and/or staining etc.
AC: Now, all of these come from the same stimulus. How can behaviourism
explain that?
GS: Because different people have different histories - among other things.
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:ZbE2c.130$6y1....@news20.bellglobal.com...
Joe Legris
>
> GS: What are you talking about? In the little vignette you gave the person's
> statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist view
> suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
>
> In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes "them"
> by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
> them any other way - at least not usefully.
>
How can you conclude that without examining the properties of such
beliefs? It is conceivable that a belief could have arisen from some
lengthy and complex internal sequence of events that cannot be atributed
directly to any identifiable aspect of the environment. Call it the
butterfly effect.
--
Joe Legris
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>>>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>>>there is lots of evidence to support this.
>> Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
>You're going to make me dig through all of my books to find all of this
>evidence, aren't you?
No. I only asked for *some*.
>It shouldn't matter, since any decent introspection will get you to
>realize that:
Thanks for confirming that you have zero evidence.
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Neil W Rickert
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Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>>>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>>>there is lots of evidence to support this.
>> Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
>I'd say that any Philosophy of Mind text is a good place to start.
I have looked at a bunch of those. None of them contained any actual
*evidence*.
They do seem to contain lots of circular arguments.
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Glen M. Sizemore
person's
> statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist view
> suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
>
> In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes
"them"
> by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
> them any other way - at least not usefully.
>
JL: How can you conclude that without examining the properties of such
beliefs?
GS: The "beliefs" appear to have no properties other than behavior (but if
you tell me how to independently evaluate them, I will seriously consider
what you say). No matter how one "operationalizes" beliefs, one is stuck
measuring behavior and manipulating the environment.
JL: It is conceivable that a belief could have arisen from some
lengthy and complex internal sequence of events that cannot be atributed
directly to any identifiable aspect of the environment. Call it the
butterfly effect.
GS: No thanks. Is it your contention, then, that 1.) "beliefs" are causes of
behavior? And 2.) "they" arise because of "internal processes?" But this is
basically moot; tell me how I can identify a "belief." Is all behavior
caused by "beliefs?" Is operant conditioning a matter of instilling
"beliefs" in animals and people? Are beliefs things? Where are they located?
If they are "inside," how can they be distinguished from other
conceptualizations; animism for example. Say someone claims that spirits
that dwell within a person cause behavior, and that the spirits are made up
of physiology. How is your position to be distinguished from that one? One
spirit has a book with him - the Great Book of Not Necessarily True
Propositions. The spirit occasionally crosses out or otherwise modifies the
entries, and occasionally adds totally new ones. Scholars believe that what
is written in the document has some relation to how a person behaves, but
only when another spirit contributes his energy (he has a document called
"The Big Book of Goals"). What gets written in the Great Book of Not
Necessarily True Propositions is thought to be related to the environments
to which the person, in whom the spirits dwell, is exposed. Wow, one could
build a whole psychology like this - oops, someone already has! Its called
"cognitive psychology!"
"Joe Legris" <jale...@xympatico.ca> wrote in message
Wolf Kirchmeir
>AC: Now, all of these come from the same stimulus. How can behaviourism
>explain that?
>
>GS: Because different people have different histories - among other things.
What's interesting to me is that AC and others in this forum keep ascribing
to behaviorism claims that are _stronger_ than behaviorism's claims - in this
case, that a given stimulus S1 must produce the same response R1 in _every_
animal to whom S1 is presented, regardless of each animal's past history. Now
if that were possible, how much simpler the control of behaviour would be.
You wouldn't have to train any animal, you wouldn't have to teach any human -
all you would need is an inventory of stimuli and their responses. It would
make schools and colleges and apprenticeships obsolete. It would guarantee
peace between nations - all you'd have to do is find the right stimulus,
apply it, and all would be sweetness and light. And you would simply have to
produce the correct sequence of words in this forum, and no one ever argue
about anything ever again.
Reminds me of Monty Python's killer joke sketch.
Hah!
--
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River, Ontario, Canada
"Knowledge defines the boundaries of ignorance"
(after Augustine, Mcluhan and others.)
{drop first and last letters in address for correct email}
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>> AC: If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
>> they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
>> down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
>> not my environment or the original stimuli.
>> GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it is
>> your behavior that changes as a result.
>But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
>BECAUSE my beliefs change.
More correctly, you say that your behavior changes because you
say that your beliefs change.
As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
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Wolf Kirchmeir
It's conceivable, but how would you prove it? How, for that matter, would you
observe it? Just because someone says (s)he's arrived at a certain belief
following some sequence of thought doesn't mean it actually happened that way
- people are notoriously capable of fooling themselves. And even if the
tracing of the conscious thought were accurate, there is no warrant for
concluding that that was all the thought that actually occurred. If anything,
evidence from introspection suggests very strongly that people do _not_ know
how they arrived at some idea/belief/concept/invention/whatever. Once in a
while we get a glimpse of what goes on below the level of consciousness (ie,
at a level that is normally not available to introspection***) , as when
Kekule saw a dancing ring of atoms as he dozed by the fire and realised he
had solve the problem of benzene's structure. But what was unusual about this
was that he was able to hold onto the dream imagery. We almost always forget
dreams.
Besides, the "butterfly effect" applies just as well to the sequence S1 -->
R1, where --> is whatever happens inside the brain. There is no necessary
connection between the magnitude of a stimulus and the magnitude of an
effect.
*** The fundamental fallacy of any theory of mind based on introspection is
dual assumption that a) introspection permits access to all mental functions;
and b) that introspection provides accurate information about those
functions.
David Longley
You can search Google first, *then* ask your questions. As to my
website, that would turn up easily enough too. The above post is
therefore just another bit of ignorant/insincere post as far as I am
concerned.
Psychologists certainly know what "folk psychology" is, they've studied
it empirically (in social, developmental and individual difference
psychology etc) for decades longer than "philosophers of mind" have been
sharing their views with us on it - often, unbeknown to their readership
after they have surreptitiously trawled and repackaged that extensive
empirical literature no doubt! - see Dennett for an example.
It's studied in infra-human behaviour under the rubric "conditioning".
PS. http://www.longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm
and other material at the same site if you are really interested..
--
David Longley
Lester Zick
<ricke...@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
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>Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>>> AC: If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
>>> they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
>>> down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
>>> not my environment or the original stimuli.
>
>>> GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it is
>>> your behavior that changes as a result.
>
>>But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
>>BECAUSE my beliefs change.
>
>More correctly, you say that your behavior changes because you
>say that your beliefs change.
>
>As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
And as far as I can tell nobody has a reliable behaviorcule history
meter that allows behaviorists and other materialists to claim that
behavior is the result of stimulus-history conjunction. However if
behaviorists or others can give an example of such a behaviorcule
history meter to justify their claims, I will certainly consider it.
Regards - Lester
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
lester...@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) writes:
><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>>As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>>allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>>whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
>And as far as I can tell nobody has a reliable behaviorcule history
>meter that allows behaviorists and other materialists to claim that
>behavior is the result of stimulus-history conjunction.
I agree with your point. The problem with mentalism is that
its reference to beliefs depends on handwaving, and cannot be
made sufficiently precise.
The problem with behaviorism is that its reference to behavior
depends on handwaving, and cannot be made sufficiently precise.
Of course the behaviorists always ridicule me when I point this out.
They counter-argue that if I went through the training appropriate
for behaviorism, I would have no difficulty making proper reference
to behavior. Or, in my terminology, if I had been properly
trained in the doctrines and liturgies of the behaviorist religion,
I would be able to identify behavior and verify their claims.
That's all well and good. But if I had been properly trained in the
doctrines and liturgies of the mentalist religion, I might do well at
verifying their claims too.
I don't doubt that proper training in the doctrines and liturgies of
physics makes it easier to identify voltage and temperature from
first principles. However, people who have had no training in the
liturgies and doctrines of physics still seem to be able to read a
voltmeter and a thermometer, and to verify predictions based on
such readings.
We should keep in mind that those physicists who had been properly
trained in the liturgies and doctrines of the subdiscipline
associated with poly-water had no trouble recognizing poly-water and
verifying the claims about it. The polywater claims were refuted
precisely because they could not be confirmed by the
unindoctrinated.
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Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>>AC: If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
>>they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
>>down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
>>not my environment or the original stimuli.
>>
>>
>>GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it
>
> is
>
>>your behavior that changes as a result.
>
>
>
> AC: But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
> BECAUSE my beliefs change.
>
> GS: 1.) That "odd point" is what is observed. 2.) How do you know that the
> statement doesn't change your behavior, verbal and otherwise, and you label
> this as "changing your belief." After all, what does it mean to say that one
> "examines one's beliefs?" What does one feel when one does so.
The behaviour cited -- going to the fridge for a pop -- changes because
the underlying "belief" that would play a key role in that behaviour
occurring changes. Nothing else changes in the picture except the
underlying "belief" notion that going to the fridge can resolve my
desire for a pop. So it seems that, whatever a belief really is -- even
if it isn't a propositional attitude expressed in the normal thought
analysis -- it is a critically and likely the most critically important
factor in determining, given an external environmental stimulus, what
behaviour actually results. And in all of the behaviourist talk I've
seen, the fact that that is the important thing is completely dismissed.
>
> AC: And that statement doesn't compel my beliefs
> to change, since if I don't believe them, then I still believe that it's
> there and act as if it was there.
>
> GS: What are you talking about? In the little vignette you gave the person's
> statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist view
> suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
And what thing explains why the statement may or may not change my
behaviour? Ultimately, it's going to result in an internalist or
mentalist analysis, as it'll result on my views of my past history,
which we tend to call "beliefs" and "desires".
>
> In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes "them"
> by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
> them any other way - at least not usefully.
Well, all that shows it that all your "radical behaviourism" (and David,
this is the first time I'm referring to it) says is that any action is a
behaviour, and therefore this last statement merely says is that in
order to change a belief, you have to take an action. To which the
appropriate reply is a rolling of the eyes and the reply "Well, duh!".
But mentalists still say that there is a critical difference between the
internally-aimed actions (or behaviours, by your account) and the
non-internally aimed actions, or behaviours. Attempting to change
someone's "beliefs" is different than just generally training (for
example, shocking someone when they do something wrong), and the
cognitivists and the mentalists think that doing that, if possible, is
more efficient than other forms of behavioural methods AND from that and
other notions means that they want to attempt to find out what they
really are, and how they work. So, at best, behavourism and
mentalism/cognitivism are just trying to explain different things.
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
> AC: Case 1: Could be hungry or desire donuts, but has a competing desire or
> a belief that says it would be bad.
>
> GS: Translation: Would eat if other food was available, but has suffered
> from the ill-effects of eating to many donuts, or is "following a doctor's
> advice" (which would necessitate a great deal of discussion).
Or, like most people, has simply decided that they don't like how they
look and need to lose some weight. And even the doctor's advice doesn't
require a great deal of discussion, as the doctor simply saying "Don't
eat donuts" works for most people, and when it doesn't, it's a matter of
will, not repetition. Ultimately, repetition only works when the doctor
stands up and screams that if the person doesn't do it, they'll
certainly die or have major medical problems.
>
>
> AC: Case 2: Does not desire food or donuts.
>
> GS: Translation: Donuts do not currently function as reinforcers, if they
> ever have. This could be for a variety of reasons.
Yep. But that's my point: the reasons are important, and are usually
characterized as beliefs and desires.
>
>
> AC: Case 3: Desires donuts, but believes that doing so will lessen a later
> desire.
>
> GS: I can't even follow the colloquial meaning of this one, sorry.
I think you needed to go back to the original cases, but this one was:
Likes donuts, but is having a large lunch and doesn't want to spoil
their appetite. Hence, desires donuts, but believes that having one
will lessen their later desire.
>
>
> AC: Case 4: Finds donuts undesirable, and/or believes that they are not
> enjoyable.
>
> GS: Translation: Eating donuts has produced aversive consequences, or the
> person has been told that donuts may produce aversive consequences (a huge
> history of reinforcement is required for the latter, of course).
Or simply does not find them pleasurable, even if not aversive.
>
>
> AC: Case 5: Believes that the donuts on the play are not enjoyable, or does
> not desire them.
>
>
> GS: Translation: Has been told the particular donuts are "bad" or has
> observed someone responding badly to eating the donuts. (I guess you might
> say that the "beliefs" could have been beamed into the person's head from an
> alien intelligence).
Or has experienced them or the flavours and believes that they didn't
like them. Note that, of course, they can be wrong: they may believe
that maple donuts don't appeal to them, and yet have actually tried
honey donuts and found them unappealing, and may in fact have tried
maple donuts and found them quite enjoyable. But their beliefs say
otherwise.
>
> AC: Case 6: Desires donuts, but desires to keep clean and believes that the
> donuts will lead to them being dirty.
>
> GS: Translation: Has been dirtied (which had aversive outcomes) when eating
> donuts or other foods, or has witnessed that the donuts are particularly
> "crumbly" and/or staining etc.
But you ignore the KEY PART: they have to not want to get dirty AT THAT
TIME. For some reason. Which is a belief/desire thing, it seems.
>
> AC: Now, all of these come from the same stimulus. How can behaviourism
> explain that?
>
> GS: Because different people have different histories - among other things.
And once you get there, the internalist notion that attempts to observe
and find the general principles that developed from that seems to have
to come into the picture to predict/explain their behaviour. Which
makes mentalist/cognitivist notion of beliefs and desires reasonable.
Joe Legris
I have no theory of the role of beliefs in behaviour, but I see no
logical reason why one could not exist. Beliefs presumably correspond to
some intermediate conceptual level of neural activity. It might be
better to do as the behaviorists have done and coin a new name for such
entities to avoid confusion. Let's call them "hangons": persistent
neural patterns that are strengthened by some consequences and weakened
by others. The similarity to the operant is intentional, we've simply
moved to a neurological level. Are hangons observable? Why not? They are
simply neural patterns. Of course, whether or not they are useful is
another issue.
Today's technology is nudging us to a position where neurally based
mid-level entities will be more than useful - they will be essential
tools for unraveling the complexities of the brain. For example,
modularity is a step in this direction. Behaviourists, who seem more
concerned with perpetuating a discredited order than getting at the
facts, seek to thwart the progress of cognitive science by insisting
that there are only two legitimate levels of analysis, behavioural and
neurological.
--
Joe Legris
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>>
>>>Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>
>>>>Perhaps I'm not a cognitivist, but I AM a mentalist: beliefs, desires
>>>>and other mental constructs play a key role in human functioning. And
>>>>there is lots of evidence to support this.
>
>
>>>Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
>
>
>>I'd say that any Philosophy of Mind text is a good place to start.
>
>
> I have looked at a bunch of those. None of them contained any actual
> *evidence*.
>
> They do seem to contain lots of circular arguments.
What do you mean by "evidence", then?
Have you never tried to stop someone from doing something by attempting
to convince them that what they want to do isn't going to do them any
good or get them what they want? Heck, right now the various people in
this thread are trying to convince each other to adopt the behaviourist
or cognitivist approach to studying the mind by trying to convince each
other that our beliefs on the matter are wrong.
I should see if my old prof's book (I THINK it's "Mind and Knowledge: An
Introduction" by Andrew Brook and Rob Stainton) talks about these in a
manner that provides better "evidence". But I don't know where that
book is at the moment.
Allan C Cybulskie
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>>GS: What are you talking about? In the little vignette you gave the
>
> person's
>
>>statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist view
>>suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
>>
>>In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes
>
> "them"
>
>>by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
>>them any other way - at least not usefully.
>>
>
>
>
> JL: How can you conclude that without examining the properties of such
> beliefs?
>
> GS: The "beliefs" appear to have no properties other than behavior (but if
> you tell me how to independently evaluate them, I will seriously consider
> what you say). No matter how one "operationalizes" beliefs, one is stuck
> measuring behavior and manipulating the environment.
I just want to jump in on this, for a second, because it gives me a
great opportunity to remind you of our discussion of a while back and
point out that, for me, a thesis that only behaviour can be empirically
studied is not really an issue for me, but does not mean that beliefs
and desires are not there and are not critical concepts as shown by the
gaps in behaviourist theories.
Allan C Cybulskie
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 15:02:40 GMT, Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>
>>AC: Now, all of these come from the same stimulus. How can behaviourism
>>explain that?
>>
>>GS: Because different people have different histories - among other things.
>
>
> What's interesting to me is that AC and others in this forum keep ascribing
> to behaviorism claims that are _stronger_ than behaviorism's claims - in this
> case, that a given stimulus S1 must produce the same response R1 in _every_
> animal to whom S1 is presented, regardless of each animal's past history.
Nope. All I'm pointing out is that behaviourism cannot explain such
cases without relying on an internal notion similar to beliefs and
desires, which is sufficient for my point.
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <ZbE2c.130$6y1....@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C Cybulskie
> <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
> You can search Google first, *then* ask your questions.
I ain't asking questions; I'm arguing with you. To say "I've said this
all over the past year" doesn't exactly make me interested in digging it
all up.
> As to my
> website, that would turn up easily enough too.
But if you don't care enough to type it out for me, why should I
consider it important enough to search for it? I could just go re-read
Quine or Skinner and their critics.
> The above post is
> therefore just another bit of ignorant/insincere post as far as I am
> concerned.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but since I have no issues
so far in my theory of mind that requires that I adopt ANY form of
behaviourism your insistence that I search out your own arguments are
met with a notion of "Why should I care? I could be studying something
else right now".
>
> Psychologists certainly know what "folk psychology" is, they've studied
> it empirically (in social, developmental and individual difference
> psychology etc) for decades longer than "philosophers of mind" have been
> sharing their views with us on it - often, unbeknown to their readership
> after they have surreptitiously trawled and repackaged that extensive
> empirical literature no doubt! - see Dennett for an example.
So psychologists studied it before Plato? Cool.
>
> PS. http://www.longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm
Thanks for the link. I looked at the fragments paper, but unfortunately
didn't find anything that compelled a rejection of my beliefs/desires
stance, but may have noted that I am probably not a "true" cognitivist.
I wonder if there's a comparison between how well cognitive and
behavioural therapy work for various problems where people go to
therapy. My theory is that behavioural will work best for some
problems, and cognitive for others.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>>Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
>
>>>AC: If someone tells me that the case of pop isn't there any more, or that
>>>they took the last one, my behaviour when I want a pop will be to pop
>>>down to the corner store. But all that has changed is my beliefs, and
>>>not my environment or the original stimuli.
>
>
>>>GS: No the other person's statement is "part of the environment." And it is
>>>your behavior that changes as a result.
>
>
>>But, even if you argue that rather odd point, my behaviour changes
>>BECAUSE my beliefs change.
>
>
> More correctly, you say that your behavior changes because you
> say that your beliefs change.
>
> As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
> allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
> whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
Possibly true. I am not bound to the idea that beliefs and desires
exist, and so they may ultimately disapper. Right now, though, it looks
like some mentalist notion is going to be required to fill in the gaps,
whatever that ends up being.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>
> lester...@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) writes:
>
>><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
>
>>>As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>>>allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>>>whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
>
>
>>And as far as I can tell nobody has a reliable behaviorcule history
>>meter that allows behaviorists and other materialists to claim that
>>behavior is the result of stimulus-history conjunction.
>
>
> I agree with your point. The problem with mentalism is that
> its reference to beliefs depends on handwaving, and cannot be
> made sufficiently precise.
>
> The problem with behaviorism is that its reference to behavior
> depends on handwaving, and cannot be made sufficiently precise.
A perfect chance to clarify our issues here.
For me, the reason I maintain the mentalist view is that it looks like
something like these propositionals that we associate with
belief-statements seems to be at least encoded in how I think about the
internal things that seem to govern my reaction to external stimuli.
Most compelling is that I seem to be able to work on these beliefs as if
they were logical statements and form new beliefs based on deductive
reasoning from various combinations of them and internal separatations.
The behaviourists say "But that's still behaviour, that verbal
thinking and reasoning", and I reply "Yes, but it is usefully different
from and has an impact on how I act in the world, and so I want to study
it" To me, behaviourism isn't WRONG, but it isn't studying things to
the depth I'd like. I think that something is there to explain, but am
not commiting to what it is yet, but the explanation has to explain how
it is perceived AND what it is -- and to me, behaviourism hasn't done that.
Wolf Kirchmeir
>But mentalists still say that there is a critical difference between the
>internally-aimed actions (or behaviours, by your account) and the
>non-internally aimed actions, or behaviours.
What difference? I don't understand what you mean by an "internally aimed
behaviour."
Wolf Kirchmeir
> Attempting to change
>someone's "beliefs" is different than just generally training (for
>example, shocking someone when they do something wrong), and the
>cognitivists and the mentalists think that doing that, if possible, is
>more efficient than other forms of behavioural methods AND from that and
>other notions means that they want to attempt to find out what they
>really are, and how they work.
I suppose you are referring to language. But language is a stimulus - it is
something in the subject's environment.
And BTW, it's behaviorists who have pointed out that punishment is an
inefficient training method. What's more, they have an explanation that works
for creatures that we can't talk to.
Or are you saying that humans are so different from other animals that
explanations and methods that work for other animals can't possible be right
or work for humans?
Allan C Cybulskie
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 16:23:08 -0800, Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
>
>
>>But mentalists still say that there is a critical difference between the
>>internally-aimed actions (or behaviours, by your account) and the
>>non-internally aimed actions, or behaviours.
>
>
> What difference? I don't understand what you mean by an "internally aimed
> behaviour."
Internally-aimed behaviour is nothing more than a behaviour that aims to
change how we THINK about something by changing the internal thoughts
about the thing. It's hard to come up with a way to describe this
without talking about aiming to change the beliefs or desires, because
this is what we generally try to do.
AlphaOmega2004
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsiz...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:dd8715981ef911b9...@news.teranews.com...
> > GS: What are you talking about? In the little vignette you gave the
> person's
> > statement did change your behavior. But nothing about the behaviorist
view
> > suggests that others' statements MUST control one's behavior.
> >
> > In any event, even if there are such things as "beliefs" one changes
> "them"
> > by changing the environment, verbal and otherwise, and one cannot change
> > them any other way - at least not usefully.
> >
>
>
> JL: How can you conclude that without examining the properties of such
> beliefs?
>
> GS: The "beliefs" appear to have no properties other than behavior (but if
They have the property of being. As stored memories and actionable
processes latent in the neuronal architecture; propensities to interact etc.
Allan C Cybulskie
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 16:23:08 -0800, Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
>
>
>>Attempting to change
>>someone's "beliefs" is different than just generally training (for
>>example, shocking someone when they do something wrong), and the
>>cognitivists and the mentalists think that doing that, if possible, is
>>more efficient than other forms of behavioural methods AND from that and
>>other notions means that they want to attempt to find out what they
>>really are, and how they work.
>
>
> I suppose you are referring to language. But language is a stimulus - it is
> something in the subject's environment.
If you mean doing it by talking to someone and reasoning with them with
language or asking them to introspect on it through language, probably.
If not, then I don't know what you mean here.
See the other post for the reply to the language as stimulus argument.
>
> And BTW, it's behaviorists who have pointed out that punishment is an
> inefficient training method.
It was just an example. Pick something that isn't attempting to get
someone to examine their beliefs and mentalists will say that it will
not be as efficient.
> What's more, they have an explanation that works
> for creatures that we can't talk to.
Precisely. Mentalists argue that if you can talk to someone and aim
your behaviour directly at the beliefs, you'll get more efficient
results than otherwise. If you can't talk to them -- or don't want to
-- then it doesn't mean that you can't change things, but an argument
would be that since you ultimately have to change these belief things
anyway, not being able to do it directly is less efficient. And yes,
lots of study has yet to be done on this notion, but I'm afraid that a
behaviourist approach will ignore such critical questions.
AlphaOmega2004
Of course - latent potentials enscounced as memories, neuronal firing
patterns etc.
>
Wolf Kirchmeir
No, one doesn't need beliefs or desires. All one needs to posit is several
neural nets that are triggered by the sight of the donuts, presumably
mediated by some biochemical changes that the sensory input has also
triggered. These nets have different outputs that they send to the actuator
system (for want of a better phrase), which initiates one or another action
depending on the stronger or weaker inputs from the several nets. The net
(sorry about that) output of these nets will be the overt behaviour of
reaching for the donut, or not, as the case may be. Since these neural nets
will be different for different people (they have "different histories"), the
responses will be different, too. Note that the neural net hypothesis does
not conflict with behaviorism but complements it.
BTW, my response can include the conscious thinking (or "debating with
myself") that you wish to delineate as something other than my behaviour. But
surely "talking to myself" about whether or not I should eat that donut _is_
behaviour. It's behaviour I can "utter", even - I can say out loud what I'm
"thinking."
Wolf Kirchmeir
>I wonder if there's a comparison between how well cognitive and
>behavioural therapy work for various problems where people go to
>therapy. My theory is that behavioural will work best for some
>problems, and cognitive for others.
There is no real difference IMO. Cognitivist therapists seek to change the
way people talk about themselves and the reactions to the world around them.
The therapists may claim they are changing people's beliefs, but the only
evidence they have is that people talk differently and talk is a behaviour
(the most complex behaviour that humans are capable of IMO.) Sometimes (by no
means always) changes in talk are associated with changes in other
behaviours.
David Longley
>
>
>David Longley wrote:
>
>> In article <ZbE2c.130$6y1....@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>>Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>> You can search Google first, *then* ask your questions.
>
>I ain't asking questions; I'm arguing with you. To say "I've said this
>all over the past year" doesn't exactly make me interested in digging
>it all up.
>
>> As to my website, that would turn up easily enough too.
>
>But if you don't care enough to type it out for me, why should I
>consider it important enough to search for it? I could just go re-read
>Quine or Skinner and their critics.
>
I have typed it out! Why should I type it out again? You just have to go
and read it you lazy idiot!.
--
David Longley
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>> As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>> allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>> whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
>Possibly true. I am not bound to the idea that beliefs and desires
>exist, and so they may ultimately disapper.
That puts you in the rather strange position of claiming that there
is strong evidence for the belief story, while at the same time
acknowledging that beliefs might not even exist.
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Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>>>>Can you provide citations for some of this evidence?
>>>I'd say that any Philosophy of Mind text is a good place to start.
>> I have looked at a bunch of those. None of them contained any actual
>> *evidence*.
>> They do seem to contain lots of circular arguments.
>What do you mean by "evidence", then?
Certainly not circular arguments. I would have thought that the
meaning of "evidence" was well known.
>Have you never tried to stop someone from doing something by attempting
>to convince them that what they want to do isn't going to do them any
>good or get them what they want?
I'm afraid I don't see the relevance.
> Heck, right now the various people in
>this thread are trying to convince each other to adopt the behaviourist
>or cognitivist approach to studying the mind by trying to convince each
>other that our beliefs on the matter are wrong.
I'm suggesting that you rething your arguments. Whether or not you
have beliefs, and whether or not there are such things, would not
seem to be relevant.
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Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> I agree with your point. The problem with mentalism is that
>> its reference to beliefs depends on handwaving, and cannot be
>> made sufficiently precise.
>> The problem with behaviorism is that its reference to behavior
>> depends on handwaving, and cannot be made sufficiently precise.
>A perfect chance to clarify our issues here.
>For me, the reason I maintain the mentalist view is that it looks like
>something like these propositionals that we associate with
>belief-statements seems to be at least encoded in how I think about the
>internal things that seem to govern my reaction to external stimuli.
Maybe that's how you think about it. It isn't how I think about it.
>Most compelling is that I seem to be able to work on these beliefs as if
>they were logical statements and form new beliefs based on deductive
>reasoning from various combinations of them and internal separatations.
Indeed it is compelling. It is almost as compelling as Kipling's
"How the elephant got its trunk".
Sorry, but philosophy has always seemed to be little more than a
system of "Just So" stories. The logic has always seemed to
be an after-the-fact rationalization.
People just cannot possibly be making their decisions based on
propositional logic, in the way that philosophers describe it. If
they were making decisions that way, then we would not have a 40
record of failure of ambitious symbolic AI projects.
I'm afraid that philosophy is mainly a system of self-deception.
> The behaviourists say "But that's still behaviour, that verbal
>thinking and reasoning", and I reply "Yes, but it is usefully different
>from and has an impact on how I act in the world, and so I want to study
>it" To me, behaviourism isn't WRONG, but it isn't studying things to
>the depth I'd like.
I agree with you that behaviorism does not study things to suitable
depth. Nor does mentalism. A pox on both of their houses.
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David Longley
Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
>
The "Cognitive Skills" programmes which have been intensively resourced
in the UK Prison Service, and explicitly and intentionally at the
expense of more conventional *behavioural* activities (see Fabiano,
Porporino etc), have been shown empirically not to work (look up
previous posts for references and my own papers). Furthermore, the UK
prison population has doubled over the 10 year period that those
programmes have been running.
Now there are many reasons why that may all have happened, but one thing
that is clear is that those "Cognitive" programmes don't work. The
"mentalists" who argued for the programmes (despite my very explicit and
forceful presentation of contrary evidence, argument and alternatives at
the time), ultimately had their way, and even if we can't be sure that
the behavioural alternatives that I recommended would not have done any
better (though I think there are very good reasons for saying that they
would have), we can be sure that those who asserted that "Cognitive
Skills" programmes designed to directly work on beliefs and desires etc,
have not in fact worked!
Now *that's* what should, I think, make clued up people afraid!! If only
for the simple reason that we know that those inmates went on offending,
and that some, no doubt, went on to re-offend quite horrifically!
Now do you get it?
(silly question - of course you haven't!)
--
David Longley
David Longley
<ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes
>lester...@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) writes:
>><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
>>>As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>>>allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>>>whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
>
>>And as far as I can tell nobody has a reliable behaviorcule history
>>meter that allows behaviorists and other materialists to claim that
>>behavior is the result of stimulus-history conjunction.
>
>I agree with your point. The problem with mentalism is that
>its reference to beliefs depends on handwaving, and cannot be
>made sufficiently precise.
>
>The problem with behaviorism is that its reference to behavior
>depends on handwaving, and cannot be made sufficiently precise.
>
>Of course the behaviorists always ridicule me when I point this out.
>They counter-argue that if I went through the training appropriate
>for behaviorism, I would have no difficulty making proper reference
>to behavior. Or, in my terminology, if I had been properly
>trained in the doctrines and liturgies of the behaviorist religion,
>I would be able to identify behavior and verify their claims.
>
>That's all well and good. But if I had been properly trained in the
>doctrines and liturgies of the mentalist religion, I might do well at
>verifying their claims too.
How would you know? You haven't been trained in either, and Glen and I
have been trained in *both*!.
We have told you that one works and the other doesn't. We have cited
some of the reasons and evidence for our saying that, and we have even
provided you with references for what we have said. You just don't
listen.
Why do you think we are advocating behaviourism????
We don't just "counter-argue" - we point out that you're ignorant and
ridiculous - mainly for not listening!
--
David Longley
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <xHM2c.1166$6y1.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>
>>
>>
>> David Longley wrote:
>>
>>> In article <ZbE2c.130$6y1....@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>>> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>>> You can search Google first, *then* ask your questions.
>>
>>
>> I ain't asking questions; I'm arguing with you. To say "I've said
>> this all over the past year" doesn't exactly make me interested in
>> digging it all up.
>>
>>> As to my website, that would turn up easily enough too.
>>
>>
>> But if you don't care enough to type it out for me, why should I
>> consider it important enough to search for it? I could just go
>> re-read Quine or Skinner and their critics.
>>
>
> I have typed it out! Why should I type it out again? You just have to go
> and read it you lazy idiot!.
You had BETTER have missed a smiley on the end of that sentence, buddy,
or you'll have simply proven your utter lack of reading comprehension
and the same social skills you nag Lester for not having, or did you
miss this from the same reply as this came up in:
Quoted text starts now:
Allan C Cybulskie
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
I'd probably agree that this would or might work, but I'd probably still
maintain that the beliefs and desires model, and all of its behaviour,
is captured in this model.
And I'm not conflicting with behaviourism. I'm simply saying that this
sort of story is not what it seeks, and is what I'm looking for. That's
all.
(Or did you miss my 900 posts of "if it doesn't explain the things going
on inside, it isn't explaining what I want explained" [grin])
Allan C Cybulskie
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 16:44:35 -0800, Allan C Cybulskie wrote:
>
>
>>I wonder if there's a comparison between how well cognitive and
>>behavioural therapy work for various problems where people go to
>>therapy. My theory is that behavioural will work best for some
>>problems, and cognitive for others.
>
>
> There is no real difference IMO. Cognitivist therapists seek to change the
> way people talk about themselves and the reactions to the world around them.
> The therapists may claim they are changing people's beliefs, but the only
> evidence they have is that people talk differently and talk is a behaviour
> (the most complex behaviour that humans are capable of IMO.) Sometimes (by no
> means always) changes in talk are associated with changes in other
> behaviours.
To me, the difference is in the aim. Cognitive therapy aims itself at
the beliefs, behavioural not so much. Whether or not that's the real
picture is yet to be determined.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
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> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>I have looked at a bunch of those. None of them contained any actual
>>>*evidence*.
>
>
>>>They do seem to contain lots of circular arguments.
>
>
>>What do you mean by "evidence", then?
>
>
> Certainly not circular arguments. I would have thought that the
> meaning of "evidence" was well known.
Well, it was the examples of what they wanted explained that I thought
would be the evidence, and since it seems you didn't find any of that I
was ... curious.
>
>
>>Have you never tried to stop someone from doing something by attempting
>>to convince them that what they want to do isn't going to do them any
>>good or get them what they want?
>
>
> I'm afraid I don't see the relevance.
Aiming at the belief notion changes the behaviour.
>
>
>> Heck, right now the various people in
>>this thread are trying to convince each other to adopt the behaviourist
>>or cognitivist approach to studying the mind by trying to convince each
>>other that our beliefs on the matter are wrong.
>
>
> I'm suggesting that you rething your arguments. Whether or not you
> have beliefs, and whether or not there are such things, would not
> seem to be relevant.
Um, can you rephrase this? Because if you are saying that whether or
not beliefs exist, or if I have them, is irrelevant, then you kind of
miss what I'm looking for. I want explanations of these seeming beliefs
and how aiming at them works to change them. So that's all that's
interesting to me, right now.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
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> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>
>>>As best I can tell, nobody has a reliable belief-o-meter that would
>>>allow us to independently measure whether your beliefs change (or
>>>whether you even have beliefs in the first place).
>
>
>>Possibly true. I am not bound to the idea that beliefs and desires
>>exist, and so they may ultimately disapper.
>
>
> That puts you in the rather strange position of claiming that there
> is strong evidence for the belief story, while at the same time
> acknowledging that beliefs might not even exist.
There is strong evidence for something internal that corresponds to
those things we call beliefs that controls our external behaviour.
We have no idea what that story is, however.
Allan C Cybulskie
Neil W Rickert wrote:
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> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
>>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>
>
>>>I agree with your point. The problem with mentalism is that
>>>its reference to beliefs depends on handwaving, and cannot be
>>>made sufficiently precise.
>
>
>>>The problem with behaviorism is that its reference to behavior
>>>depends on handwaving, and cannot be made sufficiently precise.
>
>
>>A perfect chance to clarify our issues here.
>
>
>>For me, the reason I maintain the mentalist view is that it looks like
>>something like these propositionals that we associate with
>>belief-statements seems to be at least encoded in how I think about the
>>internal things that seem to govern my reaction to external stimuli.
>
>
> Maybe that's how you think about it. It isn't how I think about it.
What part of "for me" is unclear to you?
>
>
>>Most compelling is that I seem to be able to work on these beliefs as if
>>they were logical statements and form new beliefs based on deductive
>>reasoning from various combinations of them and internal separatations.
>
>
> Indeed it is compelling. It is almost as compelling as Kipling's
> "How the elephant got its trunk".
>
> Sorry, but philosophy has always seemed to be little more than a
> system of "Just So" stories. The logic has always seemed to
> be an after-the-fact rationalization.
Well, I'm not sure science has been much better in some areas. And I'd
say that, in this field, there isn't much else we can do.
>
> People just cannot possibly be making their decisions based on
> propositional logic, in the way that philosophers describe it. If
> they were making decisions that way, then we would not have a 40
> record of failure of ambitious symbolic AI projects.
I'd probably be inclined to agree with you, but it has nothing to do
with my point, which was that it still appears that, at at least some
level, I can use logic on my beliefs in some way as if they were
propositions. This needs to be explained, especially if we abandon the
idea that the decisions are just based on propositional logic.
Although if this is the idea you get from philosophy of mind, you might
want to read some more modern stuff (the book I referenced in the last
post might be a good start). Some strong challenges to this notion have
been made in the last little while.
>
> I'm afraid that philosophy is mainly a system of self-deception.
I doubt that. How can you self-deceive yourself with a discipline that
never actually answers a question [grin]?
>
>
>> The behaviourists say "But that's still behaviour, that verbal
>>thinking and reasoning", and I reply "Yes, but it is usefully different
>
>>from and has an impact on how I act in the world, and so I want to study
>
>>it" To me, behaviourism isn't WRONG, but it isn't studying things to
>>the depth I'd like.
>
>
> I agree with you that behaviorism does not study things to suitable
> depth. Nor does mentalism. A pox on both of their houses.
Probably true. But what depth do you want to see?
Allan C Cybulskie
David Longley wrote:
> In article <_cN2c.1245$6y1.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
> Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
> The "Cognitive Skills" programmes which have been intensively resourced
> in the UK Prison Service, and explicitly and intentionally at the
> expense of more conventional *behavioural* activities (see Fabiano,
> Porporino etc), have been shown empirically not to work (look up
> previous posts for references and my own papers). Furthermore, the UK
> prison population has doubled over the 10 year period that those
> programmes have been running.
I might have to look into these examples in more detail, just to see
just what the Cogntiive Skills programmes really were, and what they
tried to do.
> Now *that's* what should, I think, make clued up people afraid!! If only
> for the simple reason that we know that those inmates went on offending,
> and that some, no doubt, went on to re-offend quite horrifically!
>
> Now do you get it?
So you aimed at changing their beliefs -- and failed. I fail to see (I
admit I skipped most of the specific prison examples, looking for more
details on the criticisms of the philosophy) how your idea would do any
better. I've always found most psychology useless BECAUSE it focuses on
the more general and not on what the individual actually thinks. And if
you reward people for ACTING or BEHAVING in a good way, they'll act in
that way -- until it doesn't benefit them anymore. It doesn't help them
much if you don't make them WANT to act good for the sake of something
internal to them, that does not depend on your reinforcement.
I suspect that your method and the old "prison is horrible, so you don't
want to get caught" might have similar arguments ...
David Longley
>
>
>David Longley wrote:
>
>> In article <_cN2c.1245$6y1.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, Allan C
>>Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes
>> The "Cognitive Skills" programmes which have been intensively
>>resourced in the UK Prison Service, and explicitly and intentionally
>>Fabiano, Porporino etc), have been shown empirically not to work (look
>>prison population has doubled over the 10 year period that those
>>programmes have been running.
>
>I might have to look into these examples in more detail, just to see
>just what the Cogntiive Skills programmes really were, and what they
>tried to do.
>
>> Now *that's* what should, I think, make clued up people afraid!! If
>>only for the simple reason that we know that those inmates went on
>>offending, and that some, no doubt, went on to re-offend quite
>>horrifically!
>> Now do you get it?
>
>So you aimed at changing their beliefs -- and failed.
No... *I* spent a lot of time (years) and practical effort developing a
practical infrastructure which could be used as an alternative to what I
considered a futile effort to change "beliefs"!
Ironically, I did *that* over an eight year period in *opposition* to
people who talk like you because the empirical evidence is firmly
against the view that working on "beliefs" works! What I find so
infuriating is that I have to put up with people like you telling me
what you aren't "persuaded" by when all that really comes down to is a
barefaced statement of ignorance on your part and that I am in a
minority!!
> I fail to see (I admit I skipped most of the specific prison
>examples, looking for more details on the criticisms of the philosophy)
>how your idea would do any better.
IDIOT!
> I've always found most psychology useless BECAUSE it focuses on the
>more general and not on what the individual actually thinks. And if
>you reward people for ACTING or BEHAVING in a good way, they'll act in
>that way -- until it doesn't benefit them anymore. It doesn't help
>them much if you don't make them WANT to act good for the sake of
>something internal to them, that does not depend on your reinforcement.
IDIOT!
>
>I suspect that your method and the old "prison is horrible, so you
>don't want to get caught" might have similar arguments ...
>
IDIOT!
--
David Longley
Neil W Rickert
Hash: SHA1
Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>>>>I have looked at a bunch of those. None of them contained any actual
>>>>*evidence*.
>>>>They do seem to contain lots of circular arguments.
>>>What do you mean by "evidence", then?
>> Certainly not circular arguments. I would have thought that the
>> meaning of "evidence" was well known.
>Well, it was the examples of what they wanted explained that I thought
>would be the evidence, and since it seems you didn't find any of that I
>was ... curious.
What they want explained, and what they are successful at explaining,
are two different things.
>>>Have you never tried to stop someone from doing something by attempting
>>>to convince them that what they want to do isn't going to do them any
>>>good or get them what they want?
>> I'm afraid I don't see the relevance.
>Aiming at the belief notion changes the behaviour.
But I don't see that as aiming at the belief notion. This sort
of example really doesn't distinguish between behaviorism and
mentalism.
>>> Heck, right now the various people in
>>>this thread are trying to convince each other to adopt the behaviourist
>>>or cognitivist approach to studying the mind by trying to convince each
>>>other that our beliefs on the matter are wrong.
>> I'm suggesting that you rething your arguments. Whether or not you
*** rethink ***
>> have beliefs, and whether or not there are such things, would not
>> seem to be relevant.
>Um, can you rephrase this? Because if you are saying that whether or
>not beliefs exist, or if I have them, is irrelevant, then you kind of
>miss what I'm looking for.
You commented on people who disagreed with you, and you claimed that
they were trying to change beliefs. I was just giving an alternative
account of how I am disagreeing with you.
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Neil W Rickert
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David Longley <Da...@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:
>How would you know? You haven't been trained in either, and Glen and I
>have been trained in *both*!.
>We have told you that one works and the other doesn't. We have cited
Neither works well enough for the needs of AI.
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Neil W Rickert
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Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> That puts you in the rather strange position of claiming that there
>> is strong evidence for the belief story, while at the same time
>> acknowledging that beliefs might not even exist.
>There is strong evidence for something internal that corresponds to
>those things we call beliefs that controls our external behaviour.
I don't have any problem with the view that there is something
internal. After all, AI is an investigation of what that something
might be.
The behaviorists probably also acknowledge that there is something
internal. However, the radical behaviorists are very resistant to
any discussion of what that something might be.
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Neil W Rickert
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Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_...@yahoo.ca> writes:
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>>>For me, the reason I maintain the mentalist view is that it looks like
>>>something like these propositionals that we associate with
>>>belief-statements seems to be at least encoded in how I think about the
>>>internal things that seem to govern my reaction to external stimuli.
>> Maybe that's how you think about it. It isn't how I think about it.
>What part of "for me" is unclear to you?
And what is your point? Are you insisting that this thread is
limited to describing your own position, and that no contrary
opinions are permitted?
>> Sorry, but philosophy has always seemed to be little more than a
>> system of "Just So" stories. The logic has always seemed to
>> be an after-the-fact rationalization.
>Well, I'm not sure science has been much better in some areas.
I probably have little respect for those areas.
> And I'd
>say that, in this field, there isn't much else we can do.
There is. But I'll grant that the field publishes a lot more
philosophy than science.
>> People just cannot possibly be making their decisions based on
>> propositional logic, in the way that philosophers describe it. If
>> they were making decisions that way, then we would not have a 40
>> record of failure of ambitious symbolic AI projects.
>I'd probably be inclined to agree with you, but it has nothing to do
>with my point, which was that it still appears that, at at least some
>level, I can use logic on my beliefs in some way as if they were
>propositions.
If you were to look closely at that, you might find that it doesn't
work. Try "There are no ordinary things" (P. Unger, Synthese, 1979).
>> I'm afraid that philosophy is mainly a system of self-deception.
>I doubt that. How can you self-deceive yourself with a discipline that
>never actually answers a question [grin]?
Philosophers of mind seem to have deceived themselves into believing
that they are making progress, even though they often find them stuck
on the same problems that troubled Plato.
>> I agree with you that behaviorism does not study things to suitable
>> depth. Nor does mentalism. A pox on both of their houses.
>Probably true. But what depth do you want to see?
The depth needed for successful AI.
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David Longley
<ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes
>David Longley <Da...@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>>How would you know? You haven't been trained in either, and Glen and I
>>have been trained in *both*!.
>
>>We have told you that one works and the other doesn't. We have cited
>
>Neither works well enough for the needs of AI.
>
>
know* ? What if most of the people who have anything to say about "AI"
have as much difficulty getting their facts about behaviourism right
just as you do?
--
David Longley