Re: Aaron Sloman's "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article

From: Glen M. Sizemore (gmsizemore2_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/07/04 

Date: 7 Aug 2004 12:58:31 -0700

AC: No one argues here that conditioning cannot change behaviour.
Most of the objections are that it is nothing more than
"brainwashing"; in short, that it produces behaviour but not
understanding. The paragons of a cognitive view -- the Stoics --
argued that all should be done according to reason and cognition, but
they had a place for conditioning in their system. Do you understand
why they could insist that cognition was primary, yet still promote
some forms of conditioning? Do you understand the proper place for
conditioning in a cognitive or reason-based idea of mind and solving
problems? I suspect you do not, and also suspect that you will be
even less willing to examine those issues than you accuse those who
disagree with you of being.

GS: What would be the behaviorist's answer to "Most of the objections
are that it is nothing more than "brainwashing"; in short, that it
produces behaviour but not understanding." You don't know, do you? The
fact is, both Longley and I have far more understanding of mentalism
than you will ever have of behaviorism. So much for your "I suspect
you do not, and also suspect that you will be even less willing to
examine those issues than you accuse those who disagree with you of
being."

"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan.c.cybulskie@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<mq5Rc.49744$Vm1.1250884@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> "David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:hWUjKmGE2PEBFwro@longley.demon.co.uk...
> > In article <fa69ae35.0408040449.4c054480@posting.google.com>, Eray
> > Ozkural exa <erayo@bilkent.edu.tr> writes
> > >Hello Wolf,
> > >
> > >Thanks for the interesting examples, but...
> > This is hopeless. You ignore the empirical research even when it's
> > presented and summarised for you.
> >
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=GciKo7KGWmCBFwOc@longley.demon.co.uk>.
> > What we see you doing throughout this post, is exactly what you've been
> > doing in your other posts - you just make up some a priori clap-trap
> > that fits your folk psychological prejudices regardless of the empirical
> > evidence.
>
> To say this simply demonstrates you complete inability to understand the
> issues under consideration.
>
> David, we LIVE what you call "our behaviour". We have personal, direct
> access to all of the issues under discussion. Folk Psychology is based on
> nothing more than a way of talking about those things that we experience
> directly with mind and action. So folk psychology is nothing more than, in
> fact, a nice way of talking about our empirical experiences.
>
> Certainly, when science contradicts some of our views, the folk
> psychological terms must be revisited and re-examined. But that does not
> mean that we have to reject it entirely, nor do we have to reject it until
> the other theories can explain why our experience and empirical evidence led
> us to those conclusions in the first place.
>
> If you were doing some sort of science that couldn't be experienced
> directly, you could posit whatever you liked and not fear contradiction.
> But we experience this every day, and to reject that every day experience
> because of some scientific results that you think contradict it is to reject
> the very thing and evidence we needed to explain in the first place.
>
> >
> > Pointing out that you don't see how silly such behaviour is invariably
> > tends to be a waste of time, as *if* you could see it for what it is
> > (something which would require you to be held accountable for your
> > behaviour in the way that Wolf says he is),
>
> David, we are accountable for our behaviour every day. We LIVE it. And for
> most of us, the folk psychological view WORKS. It allows us to correct
> errors in our own actions and even understand why we do certain things and
> not others. And it works far better than radical behaviourism which so
> far -- as it seems here -- can only explain our behaviour in terms of
> "there's something in the environment somewhere that eventually kind of
> caused it", which isn't useful in everyday life and doesn't really explain
> anything, or what we wanted to know in the first place.
>
> Wolf is, oddly enough, less accountable as a teacher than as a person. See,
> as a teacher, his accountability is just to be able to prove to others that
> he can "teach" things. But as a person, he is actually accountable for
> actually LEARNING and UNDERSTANDING, which has far more serious
> consequences.
>
> No one argues here that conditioning cannot change behaviour. Most of the
> objections are that it is nothing more than "brainwashing"; in short, that
> it produces behaviour but not understanding. The paragons of a cognitive
> view -- the Stoics -- argued that all should be done according to reason and
> cognition, but they had a place for conditioning in their system. Do you
> understand why they could insist that cognition was primary, yet still
> promote some forms of conditioning? Do you understand the proper place for
> conditioning in a cognitive or reason-based idea of mind and solving
> problems? I suspect you do not, and also suspect that you will be even less
> willing to examine those issues than you accuse those who disagree with you
> of being.
>
> I reckon you'd be far too
> > embarrassed to write the way that you currently do about these matters.
> > The difference between you and Wolf is experience, ie feedback on (the
> > outcome of) your own behaviour.
>
> But the feedback that Wolf gets is WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK HE SHOULD HAVE
> DONE, not what's really the case. Unless you can prove that exams do test
> understanding, even people failing exams does not show that they didn't
> understand.
>
> >
> > This general failure of yours is no doubt one of the reasons why you
> > react the way that you do to criticism.
>
> You should look at your own reactions to criticism before pointing a finger
> at others ...
>
> >
> > Look at how you write about these matters - you say that when practice
> > doesn't suffice, the disparity or difference between the training and
> > "much harder" test materials must be made up for by "thinking"! Think
> > about the choice of words above, what does it remind you of? What is
> > this "thinking" which is so limited by the "finite speed of processing"?
>
> Conscious processing and reasoning would be a good starting point for that
> sort of thinking, which is obviously limited by processing speed.
>
> > How do you measure it and how do you refer to it except through
> > behaviour and extensional analysis?
>
> So what?
>
> David, you are NOT a methodological behaviourist. A methodological
> behaviourist can say this and say something meaningful. But you cannot
> insist -- as you do -- that because we can only externally or scientifically
> measure it through behavioural analysus and extensional that that is all
> there is to the story.
>
> How come it has never occurred to you that intensional maxims are in fact
> actually what we DO as humans, and that people so easily fall into that
> language because it actually reflects what we do? You made two criticisms
> of an intenstional approach, both of which are actually demonstrated in
> human reasoning and behaviour. So why do you think it's useless to talk
> about things the way peopel actually do them.

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