Re: Religion center in the brain

In <4507297a$0$14704$ed362ca5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Glen M.
Sizemore gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx said:
: K: Christianity dominated Western thought for thousands of years
: before Darwin traveled the Galapogos Islands and published his
: systematic observations. Will you say that Christianity begat
: Darwinism?
:
:
:
: GS: No. And Darwin did not argue that his view was a reaction to
: Christianity.

Of course not. That would be almost as silly as saying

"behaviorism, in the same sense, begat cognitive "science" and
cognitive neuro"science."

: K: On historical pendulums, Wundt investigated covert psychological
: activity and psychophysics before radical behaviorism
: insouciantly ignored all cognition as irrelevant to behavior.
:
:
:
: GS: Radical behaviorism holds that "covert psychological activity" is
: important, and is a proper subject matter of psychology, even though it can
: only be known by inference. After being in psychology as a student and
: instructor for more than 20 years, I still don't know what counts as a
: cognition. You imply that it has critically to do with what can be
: introspected, but most of what cognitivists talk about is not observed - the
: product is allegedly observed, but the processes themselves are not so in
: general. BTW, I don't normally associate Wundt with psychophysics, but I'm
: not an expert on the history o psychology. Certainly structuralism was one
: of the most spectacular failures of all time.
:
:
:
: K: The humanists then came along to point out that human beings
: have goals that pigeons and rats do not have,[]
:
:
:
: GS: The term "goal" is not terribly useful, but to the extent that it is
: simply a sloppy way to refer to reinforcement, nobody would deny that the
: reinforcers for humans are often different from those of rats and pigeons.

Motives. Aspirations. Maslow.

: K: and Wertheimer,
: after having discovered the magic trick to a stereoscope
: declared that Tischener's atomism was "sterile and beside the
: point".
:
:
:
: GS: I don't get the point of this. Are you somehow comparing behaviorism
: with the structuralism of Titchner?
:
:
:
: K: Chomsky told Skinner that his precis on language
: development was woefully inadequate,[]
:
:
:
: GS: Unfortunately, Chomsky's review had almost nothing to do with Skinner's
: position, and Chomsky never read Verbal Behavior.

Chomsky, Noam. (1959). A review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal
Behavior. Language, (35)1, 26-58.

He never read it, but wrote an exhaustive review of it? He later
(1967) said: "Therefore, if the conclusions I attempted to
substantiate in the review are correct, as I believe they are,
then Skinner's work can be regarded as, in effect, a reductio ad
absurdum of behaviorist assumptions. My personal view is that it
is a definite merit, not a defect, of Skinner's work that it can
be used for this purpose, and it was for this reason that I
tried to deal with it fairly exhaustively."

He did compliment Skinner on the falsifiability of his theory.

But anyway, how can you say "Chomsky never read Verbal
Behavior"? It seems so dishonst of you to say such a thing.

http://cogprints.org/1148/00/chomsky.htm

"It seems that Skinner's claim that all verbal behavior is
acquired and maintained in "strength" through reinforcement is
quite empty...The claim that instruction and imparting of
information are simply matters of conditioning (357-66) is
pointless."

To reiterate, I said: "Chomsky told Skinner that his precis on
language development was woefully inadequate"

: Anyone who has read both
: his review and Skinner's book already knew that, and Chomsky admitted that
: he never read the book to Searle. You were saying?

What does [NC's reading to] Searle have to do with what I said?

: K: []and why; Chomsky's theory
: was later supported by the discovery of Broca's and Wernicke's
: areas in the brain. Now in 2006 on Usenet a handful of
: behaviorists troll sci.cognitive and object to the
: neuroscientific approach to the study of human behavior. Such is
: the history of scientific progress.
:
:
: GS: The discovery of Broca's and Wenicke's areas do not show anything more
: than that behavioral function is mediated by physiology.

These are uniquely human structures involved in language
comprehension and production. Lesioning in part of Broca's area
disrupts syntax. Chomsky proposed that 1) humans come uniquely
"equipped" with a "language acquisition device" and that 2)
language acquisition is more than mimicry for several reasons,
but especially because of the observation that children are able
to effortlessly acquire the syntax of any language without being
taught. It is also well known that there is a critical period
for language acquisition, and that in cases like the famous
Genie case, the early plasticity relates to the aquisition of
syntax (not word learning or the ability to communicate in the
same manner that one can train a great ape to do).

: No behaviorist that
: I know of objects to neuroscience, but plenty object to the silly
: conceptualization that has been foisted upon it by cognitive "science."
:
: K: Neuroscientific investigation has supported several inference
: based theories - Ewald's opponent process theory of color
: vision, for example - and is developing an explanation of what
: happens in the brain when learning occurs, which includes
: "memory encoding/levels of processing" theories from cognitive
: psychology as well as classical and operant conditioning
: theories from behaviorist psychology, which are actually
: complimentary theories.
:
:
:
: GS: And nobody objects to the hypothetico-deductive method when it is
: applied at the right time and within a context of conceptual clarity. This
: hardly describes mainstream psychology.
:
:
:
: K: All this, despite the naysaying of the
: choleric Usenet few... some of whom have apparently been reduced
: to dishonestly misquoting others or taking their statements out
: of context in an apparent attempt to win a tangential argument.
: Instead of seeking common ground you and Wolf argue semantics.
:
:
:
: GS: I didn't misquote you. Saying that "perception is physiology" is
: basically the same as saying that "seeing is in the brain."

Neither did I say "perception is physiology". I said the
physiological process of visual perception takes place entirely
in the brain. I've said it three times, now. The pathway of
visual perception simply doesn't involve the peripheral nervous
system or even the spinal cord. And it certainly doesn't happen
"in the world" (out in the ethers, somewhere?)

: I paraphrased
: you, not misquoted you. There is no need. What you say is stupid all on its
: own. There is no denying that it, however, the majority position.

What you call a paraphrase of my statement I call a straw man.

: K: And of course if all else fails, Al Bundyism would dictate that
: one metaphorically whip out his manhood and wave it around,
: Daddio.
:
:
:
: GS: I didn't mention my manhood.

More dishonesty. I note you snipped the referenced comments.
Maybe you are ignorant about what "who's your daddy" means? It
is about sexual dominance. Most female intellectuals find it
quite humorous, because old men who can't win arguments with a
woman sometimes devolve to this kind of ad hom. I chuckle at
your need to dominate and bluster.

: I am your intellectual superior and I have
: no desire to literally subject you to the power of my manhood.
:
:
:
: Still Your Daddy,
:
: Glen

Try some prunes.

Kali
--
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former
begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
Hippocrates (c460-c.377 BCE) Greek physician. Law
.

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