Re: death of the mind.

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:57:02 +0100

In article <4108c33a_1@news.iprimus.com.au>, John Casey
<kjcasey@hotkey.net.au> writes
>
>"David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:fry8lvCHKDCBFweS@longley.demon.co.uk...
>> In article <4108158b_1@news.iprimus.com.au>, John Casey
>> <kjcasey@hotkey.net.au> writes
>> >
>> >"patty" <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message
>[...]
>> >>
>> >> The mind is a vague concept that is not specific enough to talk about
>> >> scientifically. It is mostly a collection of fables that we have
>> >> learned from out culture. To say it doesn't exist is a political
>> >> statement, not a scientific one. I doubt that the elite of the EAB
>will
>> >> disagree. When i talked of the "death of the mind" (as i did when i
>> >> started this subject line) i did so as a dramatization of the politics,
>> >> not as a medical examiner doing an autopsy [though, perhaps the latter
>> >> would make an interesting story]. The EAB deals with what can be
>> >> reliably measured and controlled; and that excludes the fables. People
>> >> don't like that because it appears to diminish what they consider
>> >> important. It feels like it infringes on their sovereign domain.
>> >>
>> >> Can the EAB talk to people (to us) without evoking a negative political
>> >> reaction? I doubt it. But if we want to understand what they are
>> >> actually saying, if we are just a wee bit curious to learn something
>> >> about our behavior; it is going to be up to us to get beyond our
>initial
>> >> political revulsion.
>> >
>> >To me politics has nothing to do with it. As far as the experimental
>> >analysis of behaviour is concerned may I point to the experimental
>> >basis of physics? Do they think they have "solved it all" with a few
>> >experiments showing for example the laws of motion? Yet this is the
>> >message I get from GS and DL. Conditioning, as revealed in a Skinner
>> >box, explains it all. The rest are just "details".
>>
>> This message you get - just where exactly did you get it from? Look
>> critically at what *you* have written above and think carefully about
>> what you have said. What are you really telling us?
>
>Glen gave the opinion that conditioning was sufficient in reply to
>a post where I posed the question of its sufficiency.
>
>In a previous thread you wrote:
>"... but however detailed this gets in terms of cortical columns
>and connections, this is really, when it comes to what most people
>are really interested in here, all quite trivial and distracting
> - **** it's just details **** ."
>
>"... What stops us is neophobia, an unconditioned fear response
>which limits what we process - possibly through opioid peptide
>dampers in our primary sensory nuclei of afferent pathways
>- but again, **** the details don't matter **** ."
>
>Whereas I think the details do matter and I think human intelligence
>will turn out to be more than just conditioning just as there is
>more to the way the world behaves than can be given by Newtonian
>physics.

Perhaps it's you who is giving too much emphasis to the word
"conditioning". Behaviour analysts go to considerable lengths to
investigate how subtle changes in contingencies result in quite dramatic
changes in behaviour - changes which casual observers would, through
naive reasoning, get totally wrong. You need to think of an exchange
between a behaviour analyst and someone else where the former is
thinking about what a rat or pigeon may actually do under particular
contingencies of reinforcement and in response to inferences from the
other, just looking puzzled or saying "I don't know" or "on the
contrary". The naive interrogator might then think s/he is being given
the run-around or being made to look silly, where in fact what's going
on is that the latter just doesn't know the rules of the language game.

Much of our folk psychology tends to be wildly speculative. It may
appear (especially in the hands of a good writer) to be logical,
reasonable and highly plausible and persuasive, but it may have little
if any basis in empirical reality. Sadly, much of Cognitive Science and
"AI" is like this in my view, and it is like this because so many of
those who are drawn to it have a penchant for formal, rule governed
behaviour such as logic and mathematics which, as Kant famously pointed
out, is blind unless constrained by empirical fact. Their
pseudo-scientific methodology and rhetoric makes this very hard for them
to see this. "Cognitivism" makes behaviour analysis almost impossible to
come to grips with, and has been known to be the undoing of some of
those otherwise well versed in the EAB as well. It is an insidious
process.

Your extracts from my post reveal some of that difficulty. Look at the
section in Fragments on transfer of training etc. There's a reason why I
keep referring you to "intensional (or referential) opacity". Think of
the duck-rabbit figure to get you into it.

>
>
>>
>> > And yet they are
>> >no more successful in designing a "brain" than anyone else.
>>
>> ??
>>
>> > I kind
>> >of think there is something missing in their theories about what is
>> >the basis of the brains behaviours. I think that we must understand
>> >the brains behaviours in terms of the neural connections not simply
>> >in terms of observable actions in a Skinner box.
>> >
>> >--
>> >John Casey
>> >
>> ????
>
>Actually I feel the same way when I read some of your posts :)

I can see that. But the behaviours are different. I was trained in
modern psychology. I've been trying to show you what's wrong with it.
>
>Anyway I feel you are wasting your time responding to my posts
>and I can see my posts are of no value to others so I shall
>bring my participation to an end.
>
>--
>John Casey
>

I find it frustrating that you aren't even prepared to try to do what
you currently can't do as I think that's the only way you are likely to
benefit from anything I have had to say.

I'm not at all sure your second clause is true either ;-), but maybe
that's at least partly a function of what I say in the above paragraph.

Try Baum's "Understanding Behaviorism" 1994. 

-- 
David Longley
http://www.longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm

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