Re: Humans "unique" social


"Malcolm" <regniztar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dd39mp$10p0$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
>>
>> It is the product of language, and especially written language -
>> clearly a uniquely human trait.
>>
> Skinner thought that language was learnt by conditioning, in the same way
> that a dog learns to pair a bell with the presentation of food.


No, Skinner did not think this. He held that verbal behavior was operant
behavior. The distinction between Pavlovian and operant conditioning was
made prior to 1940 in "Two Types of Conditioning and a Pseudotype: A Reply
to Konorski and Miller."


The baby
> would accidentally say the syllables "mama", Mummy comes, so it tries it
> again, and so forth.


>
> Chomsky pretty decisively showed that Skinner was wrong. Unfortunately his
> alternative theory of "deep grammar" never really got anywhere. Despite
> valiant attempts, no one has really produced a convincing theory about the
> structure in which this grammar is stored.


Chomsky never read Verbal Behavior, as he was later to admit to Searle, but
anyone who has read both VB and Chomsky's "review" already knew that.
Chomsky began the institutionalized misrepresentation of radical behaviorism
that continues to this day, as is evidenced by what you write. VB remains a
cogent treatment of "language" and behavior analysis has produced the only
workable technology of behavior, including the techniques for establishing
verbal repertoires in autistics. Actually - in an odd way - Skinner's
position on utterances is similar in some important ways to Chomshy's notion
of surface and deep structure.

>
> Computers have added impetus to the quest. Superficially you can have a
> conversation with your PC:
> "Please insert disk in drive A:"
> [ click click ]
> "OK: Do you want to save in JPEG or GIF?"
> "JPEG"
> "Error reading drive A: abort, retry, fail?"
>
> However it has proved impossible to scale up the computer's vocabulary and
> range of competence, so that it can accept requests like "what is the
> advantage of JPEG over GIF?".
>
> It seems almost certain that linguistics is one of the interesting
> scientific problems. We don't know what the answer is, and we where it
> will
> lead us.
>
>
>



.

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