Re: Finding useful functions- part 1

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 11/05/04 

Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 21:08:37 +0000

In article <krRid.60025$R05.40725@attbi_s53>, patty
<pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> writes
>David Longley wrote:
>
>> In article <16idncPwtouMnRbcRVn-vQ@metrocastcablevision.com>, Bill
>>Modlin <wdmalias-cap@yahoo.com> writes
>>
>
>>>
>>> You have presented evidence that human judgment is based on heuristics
>>> which lead to suboptimal results in cases where there is sufficient data
>>> to apply more accurate procedures for comparison. You have also
>>> presented evidence that the biases inherent in these heuristics are
>>> difficult to overcome by education and training, that training in better
>>> methods of reasoning often does not generalize well.
>>>
>>> You argue that we should therefore prefer to collect data and apply
>>> well-founded statistical and logical procedures rather than rely on
>>> expert clinical judgment, as that judgment is likely to be biased and
>>> suboptimal. This is a reasonable position.
>>>
>> But you haven't understood it, your paraphrasing is a translation
>>which loses everything that's important. It isn't a matter of
>>anything being "sub-optimal"! If it was, we could just say that more
>>evidence is better than less evidence, and that our "onboard
>>computer's" memory isn't big enough. That isn't the issue - it's more
>>profound than that. Intension does not determine extension. You need
>>to learn the language of science here, and that science is behaviour analysis.
>>
>
>Here you switch back to the set theoretic meaning of extensions ...
>which is ok, i just though i would point it out. Incidentally in many
>domains we cannot determine the extension except by using the
>intension. Try for example determining the set of even integers by
>extension. But that was not your point.
>
>Pertinent to your point i would like to say this. Where the behavior
>of an animal in a context is the same as the behavior of other animals
>in that context we can say that behavior is extensional to that
>context. Further, where this holds, it is clear that the internal
>context of the animals is irrelevant to control and prediction of those
>animals. Hence asking about the internal context of the animals is
>contra indicated for clinical judgments about their behavior.
>
>The question that i bring is how to proceed where that is not the case?
>How do we proceed where, what it is smart to do, has nothing to do with
>being predicted or being controlled (or predicting or controlling) ?
>
>patty
>
Do you not see that you, like Modlin are merely substituting some new
vocabulary for the old mentalistic notions but still expressing the same
old nonsense in the way you construct your sentences?

It won't work that way. All you'll end up doing is saying the same old
rubbish with new words!

You've missed the point just as Modlin has. Elsewhere in philosophy
you'll find more sophisticated ignoramuses trying to make intensions
"rigid".

It's all gibberish, logical, but gibberish like Alice in Wonderland! Do
you know why? 

-- 
David Longley

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