Re: Challenge to the behaviourists, #1

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 09/19/04 

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:41:21 +0100

In article <iu-dnXuwybtQatHcRVn-qg@metrocastcablevision.com>, Bill
Modlin <modlin1@metrocast.net> writes
>
>"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:20040917190942.325$Gy@news.newsreader.com...
>
>> ... What is absurd is to
>> explain "intelligence" by saying that the insides are, or could be,
>> "intelligent." One does not explain higher-level observations by
>saying that
>> the observed, macroscopic properties are actually properties of the
>level to
>> which one is reducing the higher-level. That's like saying that
>mercury
>> atoms are silvery and slippery...It's stupid - just like you.
>
>Since your gloss of what we are saying does not make sense, perhaps you
>could consider the possibility that you are incorrectly interpreting our
>words and look for a more sensible reading? Or are you more interested
>in calling people stupid than discussing the issues?
>
>In any case, I'll try to explain more clearly.
>
>First, I think we all recognize that "intelligence" is a word with many
>uses and meanings, so that any number of confusions can arise just
>because people are using different senses of the word.
>
>Even when we try to pin it down by giving a definition at the start of a
>discussion, we may run into difficulty because it isn't the sort of
>thing one can observe directly, like slipperiness or silveryness.
>Intelligence, at least of the sort that I'm interested in talking about,
>is a property of behavior-generating mechanisms that tends to produce
>appropriate and effective context-dependent behaviors. We infer the
>existence of intelligence from observations of the sorts of behavior
>that we associate with the word, but none of those behaviors can be
>taken as definitive. It matters not only what behavior is observed,
>but why that behavior occurred, and in general for animate systems we do
>not have access to the details of the process whereby a particular
>behavior was generated to be certain whether it was an example of
>intelligence at work, or something else... such as intensive training
>for that specific behavior, or simply good luck.
>

The successful science that investigates the "behavior-generating
mechanisms that tend to produce appropriate and effective
context-dependent behaviours" is the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
as you have been told before. You ignore this and appear to be rather
arrogantly (and incompetently) trying to either reinvent it, or
plagiarize it as Modlinology. This appears to be a common, but
insufficiently remarked upon form of delinquency in these waters. The
EAB work is further complemented by research in neuroscience, but that
work is not "cognitive" any more than the EAB work is "Modlinology".
When people build computational models of what they are studying, they
are only building theoretical models or simulations which allow them to
better predict, or otherwise better manage their subject matter. Whilst
that may enable them to engineer better equipment and spin off
technologies, it's an egregious error at best to assert that what's
being engineered is "intelligence" - this is just marketing hype or
euphemism, and it's little more than a form of imperialism. Once this
has been pointed out, I think it's fair to charge anyone who persists in
behaving this way as guilty of something close to plagiarism. It's
endemic in "cognitive neuroscience" and masquerades under all sorts of
names.

>Since intelligence is, when I use the word, a property of the internal
>mechanisms which generate behavior rather than of the behaving organism,
>Glen's snide remarks about slippery mercury atoms completely miss the
>mark.

You only bewitch yourself and naive others when you write like that.
What "internal mechanisms" are there (other than neurological/physical)
which mediate the behaviour?

> To say that an organism "is intelligent" is a shorthand for
>saying that its internal mechanisms for processing sensory data and
>potentially generating behavior use appropriate procedures to do so...
>that its methods are intelligent. It is then quite appropriate to
>discuss those internal mechanisms and their principles of operation, and
>to ascribe intelligence only when the right methods are used.

More self-deluded double-talk. Shorthand for behaviours!

>
>Of course, just what constitutes "the right methods" is yet to be
>determined. That's the point of AI research, to discover what sort of
>mechanisms are necessary to generate the wide range of behaviors from
>which collectively we infer the existence of something loosely called
>"intelligence".
>
>The specific point that I was trying to make, which inspired the
>slippery atoms jab, is that one can in principle program a computer to
>emulate any specific pre-specified pattern of behaviors in response to
>any similarly pre-specified set of detectable conditions... without
>necessarily imbuing the program with any vestige of intelligence. So
>we can have a computer (or a computer driven robot) which might do many
>things that we would take as evidence of intelligence in a human, and
>yet know that the system was still not at all intelligent. The classic
>example is chess. We generally consider that playing a good game of
>chess suggests intelligence in a person, yet few would wish to call Deep
>Blue intelligent, since we know how it achieves grand-master level chess
>playing and also know that the mechanisms it uses would be utterly
>irrelevant to most other tasks.

And the deep-blue "brute force/processing power" story should have told
you something about how we attribute "intelligence" elsewhere perhaps.
Instead, you just sidestep and think that there must be something
special about it where you *don't* understand the "internal mechanisms".
This is UFO-ology and it's how "cognitive science" operates too. But you
won't be told that you are merely bewitching yourself with
intensionalism when you write like that. As a therapy, my advice is for
you to spend some time on the "Two Dogmas" reference and pay particular
attention to the sections I cited in the recent post (where I provided
the link).

>
>I suppose it is possible that some here do define intelligence by the
>production of specific behaviors, without reference to how or why those
>behaviors were generated internally. If so, we have nothing to talk
>about. I wish them well, but would not expect anything they say to be
>relevant to my concerns.
>

The bottom line is that if you are going to dismiss the criticism which
has been levelled at you (describing it as "snide", or not making sense)
*you'd* better be sure that you understand the criticism. Alas, neither
yourself, nor Navega have shown that you *have* understood the
criticism. This makes it likely that it's *you* who are missing the
point. What do you think those working in behaviour analysis (and
especially those working on the brain at the same time) are doing? I
suggest that the extent to which you can't provide an answer that
question, is the extent of your problem .... you need to think on that,
as do many others in this newsgroup (and elsewhere). In my view,
appealing to the intensional "fillers" which you do is just your way of
not dealing appropriately with your ignorance. In Navega's case, sadly,
it looks to be just as much a case of exploiting the ignorance of
others.

As you have not cited much of Glen's accompanying post, I'm citing it
for context, if only for the benefit of others.

Your comments have nothing to do with what I wrote. What is absurd is to
> explain "intelligence" by saying that the insides are, or could be,
> "intelligent." One does not explain higher-level observations by saying
that
> the observed, macroscopic properties are actually properties of the level
to
> which one is reducing the higher-level. That's like saying that mercury
> atoms are silvery and slippery. It's stupid - just like you.

SN: Your straw man shows who is stupid here. I never said that
intelligence
is "explained" by "intelligent insides".

GS: Bill did, and it was his post upon which I commented. You then tell
me
that my post is irrelevant and start to spew your tired old crap about
abstractions.

SN: You are still thinking that one can "define" intelligence just using
observations of behavior.

GS: The colloquial use of "intelligence" is bound to observations of
behavior-in-context. So-called "intelligence tests" evoke behavior in
those
taking the test, and it is the artifacts of behavior (i.e., the marks on
the
fucking page) that are evaluated. Now, you will say that "intelligence"
is
an inference from observations of behavior, or some such, and I have
expressed my criticism of this position. I have said that mental terms
are
verbal responses that are under discriminative control of
behavior-in-context. Later, when we are indoctrinated into mainstream
psychology, we acquire other verbal responses "containing" the terms in
question, but the emission of such terms are functions of other
variables.

SN: Bill and I are saying that this leads one to attribute intelligence
even
to organisms or artifacts that are clearly not intelligent.

GS: There is no way to defend this statement because "intelligence"
means
several different things as is determined by colloquial usage. That is
why
the term is useless scientifically. That does not mean, as I have
pointed
out countless times, that the range of phenomena observed when we
colloquially speak of "intelligence" cannot be treated scientifically.
One
thing is certain, though, it is stupid to say that people behave
intelligently because they posses intelligence.

SN: I prefer to understand intelligence in terms of information theory,
but I'm sure you'll find a way to twist what I'm saying.

GS: What you say is already "twisted." Anyway, the mathematics of
"information theory" is important in a variety of contexts, but it will
never explain intelligence. Information theory is basically about the
propagation of information, not about what goes on when the "message is
received." I'm guessing that you want to say that "information" in a
person' s environment is transferred into a person's head and processed
and comes out as "output." Either this or you have to say that the
"information" is operated upon by something in the person's head - that
would be the homunculus. So either behavior is a mere transformation of
the environment
(like the motion of a steam engine is a translation of energy), which is
absurd, or it is a miraculous product of an indwelling spirit. 

-- 
David Longley
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