Re: death of the mind.
From: Glen M. Sizemore (gmsizemore2_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/10/04
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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 12:36:01 GMT
JH: Your recommended reading list is timely. Still haven't tracked down a
copy of Science and Human Behavior.
GS: S&HB is available in paperback, I think, from B&N, etc.
JH: I'm just wrapping one period of learning and am heading down your way.
Tonight I was browsing through an old Skinner classic, "Are Theories of
Learning Necessary?" I'd rephrase that: "Aren't Theories of Learning
Pretentious in their Aims?" I liked Skinner's remarks that some tend to
create theories because they can't find data ... .
GS: Well, there're two issues. The first concerns the elaborateness of
theories like Hull's, but the second, of course, refers to "events happening
at some other level of analysis." Such theories are best left to
physiologists. Unfortunately, many of them are looking for representations
and other ghosts.
JH: Still very much at sea on a lot of this. After listening to Bryan Kolb's
lecture on brain plasticity I am more convinced than ever that studying
neurophysiological changes in order to understand how learning occurs is
just far too premature. Kolb himself made this assertion, he even stated at
the start of the lecture something about the "hypothesis of learning" and
when one questioner pressed him to explain these remarkable changes in the
brain after drugs and learning he said little then remarked, "I'm just
handwaving". Could you elaborate on his cynical remark re "hypothesis of
learning"? Or did I misinterpret his remark???
GS: Hmmm....don't know the guy offhand, so I can't be sure. I certainly
think that we are not anywhere near explaining, physiologically, anything
like the behavior of a rat responding under an FR 1 schedule of food
presentation. Behavioral neurophysiology (errr..cognitive neurophysiology)
draws upon mainstream psychology for its direction, and this has rendered
progress all but impossible, despite the crowing and arm-wrenching back
patting of neurobiologists.
We already know enough about behavior, however, that we can, I think, see
the task: how does spontaneously occurring (at the level of behavior)
behavior get shaped and blended by its consequences, and how does the
probability of this behavior come to be controlled by stimuli (and other
variables like deprivation etc.)? The above statement extends to perceptual
behavior (see, O'Regan and Noe), but I am just beginning to attempt to say
how to map the language of reinforcement contingencies and behavior to that
of "sensorimotor contingencies" and "knowledge" used by O&N. But I would say
that movements that have sensory consequences are the first response classes
acquired and the first reinforcers are simply certain aspects of sensory
stimulation. For example, it could be hardwired that making two images
become one is a reinforcer. Thus, convergence would be among the first
operant response classes. It might also be that almost any novel sensory
event that is contingent on behavior will function, at least for a time, as
a reinforcer (and it would be this that is inherited).
"John Hasenkam" <johnh@faraway.> wrote in message
news:40efd95a@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
>
> "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:2b64cd9306d188c86ca98cd98b30b531@news.teranews.com...
- Next message: David Longley: "Re: death of the mind."
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