Re: death of the mind.

From: Alex Green (dralexgreen_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: 31 Aug 2004 11:38:51 -0700

patty <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message news:<ha0Zc.99357$mD.24159@attbi_s02>...
> Alex Green wrote:
> > patty <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message news:<nAKYc.208750$8_6.139913@attbi_s04>...
> >
> >>Alex Green wrote:
> >>
> >>>patty <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message news:<L3tYc.112623$TI1.103642@attbi_s52>...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Alex Green wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Wolf Kirchmeir <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<500Yc.26145$_H5.1005269@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> >>>>>
> >>>
> >>>[snip]
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>A cat will paw just as ferociously at a bouncing ball. Did she have the
> >>>>intention to kill the ball?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>She has the intention of moving the ball, not killing it. Cats have
> >>>complex internal states and the behaviourist can log these by
> >>>observing behaviours.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>A cat will paw at a lever and then go get
> >>>>her reward in a dish across the room. Did she have the intention to
> >>>>kill the lever? How do you scientifically distinguish your attributions
> >>>>of states (that interpretative process going on *in your head*), from
> >>>>the alleged intentional states *in the cat* ?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>The internal states are complex. That is what varied behaviour is
> >>>demonstrating. Suppose the ball, lever and mouse are positioned so
> >>>that the paw movements are the same in all three. The data provided by
> >>>the cat is the paw movement. It is the same in all three cases. The
> >>>behaviour however is varied because it involves 3 different activities
> >>>with three different rewards for the cat. If the paw does not encode
> >>>the entire behaviour then where was it encoded? Clearly it was encoded
> >>>in the cat. The cat modelled the world around it and chose particular
> >>>directions in which to strike with the paw for particular effects.
> >>>
> >>
> >>I think a cat's reaching behavior is a bad example. A cat will reach
> >>its paw at anything that moves, at least initially. Beyond that i
> >>expect that it's behavior can be pretty much predicted and controlled by
> >>setting the consequences of its actions. No internal states are
> >>necessary for this and a behaviorist will not use them in his
> >>predictions. IOW science cannot prove these alleged intentions in lower
> >>animals.
> >
> >
> > 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.
>
> What about the effect of the cat's action on cat?

That happens after the effect of the action. It also misses the point
that the action was contextual, the strike of the paw was "to kill a
mouse" even though the movement of the paw may have been the same as
"to roll a ball".

>
> "Operant conditioning, so named by psychologist
> B. F. Skinner, is the modification of behavior
> (the actions of animals) brought about by the
> consequences that follow upon the occurrence
> of the behavior."
>
> <http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Operant_conditioning>

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. The
internal model will be made much more easily next time.

>
> Do you think there is any information about the effects of the cat's
> actions on its environment in the cat? ... in a human ?

Yes. We know this about humans because they can imagine and report
upon their imaginings. Their imaginings can also be monitored by fMRI,
confirming their reports. Dreams also activate areas of the brain that
are normally used for percepts and both cats and humans dream.

>
> > 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.
> >
> > In the system there is a state of the input then an information flow,
> > this creates a state in the cat then an information flow in the form
> > of a paw movement which cause a state in the environment. The state in
> > the environment contains more information than was encoded in the paw
> > movement (which was the same in all 3 cases). Therefore the cat must
> > have modelled the extra information (mouse dead or ball rolls). This
> > suggests there is a complex state in the cat.
>
> Yes, it is clear that there is complex information in the cat.

The cat contains a state that is unique to itself. This state can be a
source for actions. Without being a cat we cannot know for certain
whether this internal state is also conscious experience.

>
> > It is well known that
> > mammals contain complex neural states that are compared with the
> > environment and used to initiate actions so it is faintly surprising
> > that idealistic behaviourism should exist.
> >
>
> Your search - "idealistic behaviorism" - did not match any documents.

The 'idealistic' was my addition because I am sure many people use a
behaviourist approach to psychology without believing in the full
'ideal' that the animal/human has no mental states.

>
> >
> >>Another perspective on this is that what you call a "intention" a
> >>behaviorist will call a "pattern of behavior". Actually they would
> >>probably use different words, but to me it sounds like they say that the
> >>pattern of behavior preceding an alleged intentional action *is* what
> >>you call "the intention".
> >
> >
> > The "pattern of behaviour" is a confusion about the information flow.
> > The effect of the paw is not encoded in the movement of the paw in our
> > examples because the same movement has three different outcomes, it is
> > modelled in the cat.
> >
>
> Yes, there is a confusion. I can observer you and *attribute* a
> internal state to you, and call that "your intention"; but what i have
> observed is just *a pattern in your behavior*.

You have observed a set of actions and some effects. The effects were
consequences of the actions and may not have been specifically encoded
in them (like the same movement of a paw having 3 consequences
depending on context). Yes, the combination of action and effect is a
pattern of behaviour and this is an insight into the state of the
animal which contained an intention for the behaviour to occur.

> I have not observed your
> internal state.

NO, but you have observed a change in state in the world that was
modelled as a state change in the animal/human.

> So when i say you have thus and so intention, what am i
> really talking about - that pattern, or that internal state ? That is
> the confusion.

The change in state in the world (live mouse to dead mouse) was
modelled in the cat. It was not encoded in the movement of the paw
without an assumption of the context. It is valid to say that the
observed behaviour is a reflection of a state in the cat.

> Now, i claim that i *am* talking about the internal state, but the elite
> of the EAB will claim that i am in error. You may find the discussion
> starting at
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=B1%25xc.23095%24HG.21611%40attbi_s53>
> to be pertinent.
>

I looked at this link. The form of behaviourism being proposed here
has an attraction because it suggests a 'oneness with nature' which is
almost a spiritual form of materialism. It is rather old fashioned
however because it misses the discovery of well defined percepts in
neurophysiological/cognitive rivalry experiments and is blissfully
unaware of the decoherence debate in quantum physics (is the final
basis of decoherence an observation point?). It also fails to explain
things like dreams, imaginings, the perceptual field - all those
things that constitute the bulk of psychology.

Best Wishes

Alex Green

Relevant Pages

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