Re: Misc comments on categorisation, problem solving, etc (Was Re: Aaron Somon's....)

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08/15/04 

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 18:19:30 GMT

On 15 Aug 2004 08:48:27 -0700, gmsizemore2@yahoo.com (Glen M.
Sizemore) in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>AC: Well, for the most part I think most of them have gotten out of
>describing
>"mental stuff" as immaterial, and any explanation of behaviour is
>going to
>have to have in it the laws and requirements of explaining behaviour.
>
>GS: It doesn't matter whether you call the explanatory mentalisms as
>"immaterial," "really the brain," or "indwelling spirit." It is the
>lame epistemology that is at issue. Ptolemy would have liked the
>second part of your answer.

Well, lame epistemology is the issue in most cases, including
materialism.

>AC: Well, first, you've dropped the "everything else" to attack
>mentalism, and
>second, the debates in philosophy of mind -- as I have pointed out
>before --
>DO recognize personal history and its role, as there's a huge debate
>over
>free will, in which the claim is made that all of the internals --
>beliefs,
>desires and the like -- are ultimately only caused by the environment
>and
>the experiences of the agent (in short, things outside of the agent)
>and so
>there is no free will, and people who argue against that.
>
>GS: So what? The fact of the matter is that little more than
>lip-service is paid to the role of the environment despite the fact
>that the only way known to affect the "mind" is by operating on the
>environment, verbal and otherwise, of the person. The focus has always
>been the structure of the mind and not on the types of environments
>necessary to produce particular behavioral effects, as you so aptly
>demonstrate below.

Well the structure of the mind is what fascinates. By all that's holy
I do believe that the goal of your behavior and perhaps that of all
behaviorists are universal laws of behavioral training! How bizarre!

>AC: And how does this reinforce or condition anything, without an
>intelligent
>mind setting that as a goal and interpreting the world around them in
>accordance with their views on that goal?

>GS: "Goals" ARE reinforcers, but cast in teleological terms, and
>"interpretations" ARE behavior. To identify a "goal" is to identify
>the reinforcer maintaining a particular response class.

Yeah, but goal is easier to say and a lot more definitive.

>AC: Looking at their personal history can help you figure out what
>state they are in now,[]
>
>GS: Aside from criticizing the gratuitous reference to "state," I
>would say that one could use past history only if one has studied how
>history affects behavior.

The problem here is that there is nothing to study unless there are
immanent and universal laws of history affecting behavior. Which would
put behaviorism right up there with fortune telling.

>AC: [I've snipped out all the insults that you base on a lack of
>understanding
>of my point]
>
>GS: But they were so richly deserved. I don't misunderstand your
>point. I was indoctrinated into your position before I became a
>behaviorist.

This suggests that you didn't really understand what you were taught
or you wouldn't have needed indoctrination.

Regards - Lester

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