Re: Challenge to the behaviourists #2

From: The Sophist (sophist_at_brown.edu)
Date: 09/13/04 

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 13:28:20 -0400

Neil W Rickert wrote:

> Why do people play chess? If we could predict human behavior, we
> would know the outcome before the game begins.
>
> Why do we hold elections? If we could predict human behavior, we
> would know the election outcome before the vote.
>
> Why do we hold trials (legal proceedings)? If we could predict human
> behavior, we would know the verdict before the trial started.

Why do physicists conduct experiments? If we could predict the behavior
of inanimate physical things, we'd know the outcome of the experiment
before it happened. That human behavior displays the kind of
unpredictability by us which you cite here proves nothing at all. 

-- 
Aaron Boyden
The main division between the so-called Continental and Analytic 
traditions has been disputes over whether the task of being unclear 
should be carried out in natural language or in a formal system.

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