Re: death of the mind.

From: Wolf Kirchmeir (wwolfkir_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 11:15:02 -0400

Alex Green wrote:
[...]
> The reason I used this example was that there are three sets of
> information present: the input information, the action, the effect of
> the action on the environment. The effect of the action is obviously
> not encoded in the input, it is also not encoded in the movement of
> the paw because the SAME MOVEMENT occurs in all 3 cases. The
> behaviourist knows the effect of the action by observing it but where
> is the effect in the system input->cat->paw movement? It must be
> modelled in the cat. As the behaviourist will tell you, the cat moves
> its paw to kill the mouse, or move the ball, it does not just lob the
> paw into space with no intention.

The mouse is part of the input, Alex. It's one of the contingencies that
controls the cat's behaviour. And the effect of the action feeds back to
the cat - so it _is_ "encoded in the input". Etc. IOW, your analysis is
simplistic and incomplete.

The behaviorist (me) will tell you that "moving the paw" is not what's
being explained. It's "moving the paw in the direction of the
mouse/ball/etc" that's being explained. The behaviorist (me) will also
point out that the cat's own movements/etc are all part of the "input"
as you so quaintly put it. And so on.

Why is the behaviorist attitude to explanation of cat behaviour useful?
Because so long as you focus on "intentions" and link them to "internal
models", you are likely to overlook a slew of environmental factors
(contingencies) that affect and control the cat's behaviour. The cat and
its environment constitute a system.

There are no doubt internal states that change in response to the cat's
environment. However, even if we grant that those state changes somehow
result in observable behaviours, we cannot infer them, since different
behaviours may be caused by the same or similar state changes. (In
logical terms, you can't infer a consequence from an antecedent.) Nor
can we infer how those state changes result in behaviours. Neurology
will provide answers, or at least help, I think, but they won't be
obvious ones. Labelling those internal states as "intentions" or
"models" isn't helpful, since such labels bring with them all kinds of
implicit assumptions, many of which are certain to mislead us. For
example, one of my concepts of model is "something that is functionally
similar to the prototype, such that functions of the model can be used
to describe/predict functions of the prototype." That could be anything
from a material object (a scale-model of a ship in a testing pool) to an
abstract sytem of concepts (a set of mathematical equations describing
the motions of the planets.) It might even be a neural net, though at
this stage we simply don't know enough to be able to say so with any
confidence. And if a neural net does in fact "model" (cat + mouse), it
does so in ways that must be unlike the models we are accustomed to.
Why? Because in this case the neural net is itself part of the system it
models....

Much of human psychology as "applied" in psychotherapy suffers from the
same defect - there's all kinds of talk about attitudes, beliefs, etc,
while what's actually happening in a given situation is being ignored.
One of the consequences of this is that psychotherapy fails more often
than it cures.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: death of the mind.
    ... As the behaviourist will tell you, the cat moves ... >> paw into space with no intention. ... to operate an internal control system. ... > its environment constitute a system. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: death of the mind.
    ... mouse" even though the movement of the paw may have been the same as ... Certainly if the mouse is killed and the cat eats it then the cat will ... probably repeat the action when the environment is the same again. ... >> behaviourist knows the effect of the action by observing it but where ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: death of the mind.
    ... > the action on the environment. ... What about the effect of the cat's action on cat? ... > the paw because the SAME MOVEMENT occurs in all 3 cases. ... internal state to you, and call that "your intention"; ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: death of the mind.
    ... paw is a direction, a momentum etc. ... present as an intention in the cat. ... The idealistic behaviourist who denies internal states in the cat ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: NBC: everybody is entitled to their opinion...
    ... pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle. ... the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate ... so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my ... "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all. ...
    (rec.music.artists.springsteen)