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

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08/08/04 

Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:39:54 GMT

On 7 Aug 2004 12:58:31 -0700, gmsizemore2@yahoo.com (Glen M. Sizemore)
in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>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."

Yes, yes, I can readily understand your disappointment. You and David
have indeed been martyrs to the cause of understanding cognitive
science. Of course it doesn't help that as serious behavior analysts
you don't even discriminate behavior correctly and expect others to do
it for you, that you foist speculative materialist pretensions on the
unsuspecting and browbeat and bully those who prefer behavioral
science to behaviorism.

You and David understand bubkas about mentalism. You're like a couple
of chattering magpies, nattering nabobs of positivism and materialism.
You're like a pair of jesuit priests who having taken a special oath
of allegiance and fidelity to the pope of behaviorism consider it your
sworn duty to propagate the faith at all costs. It's called propaganda
and not science.

What you think you know of mentalism in reality consists of trivial
antiquarian word games daing back centuries. And you rehearse these
the way priests do for arguments against the one true faith, theirs of
course, sniggering through your brush mustaches and bowties all the
while at the sillyness of such things as the mind and mental effects.

Regards - Lester

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