Robert, You accuse Nick of talking about "the brain", when he was talking about "the mind".
The most basic tenant of behaviorism is that all questions about the mind are ultimately a question about behavior. Thus, while some behaviorists deny the existence of mental things, that is not a necessary part of behaviorism. On the other hand, the behaviorist must deny that the mind is made up any special substance, and they must deny that the mental things are somehow inside the person (hence the comparison with soul, auras, etc.). If the behaviorist does not deny tout court that mental things happen, what is he to do? One option is to claim that mental things are behavioral things, analyzed at some higher level of analysis, just as biological things are chemical things analyzed at some higher level of analysis. So, to answer your question: There IS a brain, and the brain does all sorts of things, but it does not do mental things. Mental things happen, but they do not happen "in the brain". As Skinner would put it, the question is: What DOES go on in the skull, and what is an intelligible way to talk about it? The obvious answer is that the only things going on in the skull are physiological. For example, if one asks why someone chose to go left instead of right at a stop sign, one might get an answer in terms of the brain: "He turned left because his frontal cortex activated in such and such a way." However, that is no answer at all, because the firing of those neurons is a component part of the turning left! Ultimately, the explanation for the choice must reference conditions in our protagonists past that built him into the type of person who would turn left under the current conditions. In doing so, our explanation will necessarily give the conditions that lead to a person whose brain activates in such and such a way under the conditions in question. Put another way: To say that he chose to turn left because a part of his brain chose to turn left misses the point. It anthromorphizes your innards in a weird way, suggests homunculi, and introduces all sorts of other ugly problems. Further, it takes the quite tractable problem of understanding the origins of behavior and transforms it into the still intractable problem of understanding the origins of organization in the nervous system. Neuroscience is a great field of study, and it is thriving. Thus, people hold out hope that one day we will know enough about nerve growth, etc., that the origin of neuronal organization will become tractable. One day they will, but when that day comes it will not tell us much about behavior that we didn't already know, hence they won't tell us much about the mind we didn't already know. Or at least, so sayith some behaviorists, Eric On Sun, May 2, 2010 05:09 PM, "Robert J. Cordingley" <[email protected]> wrote: > Nick > Let me try this on(e)... it's because the brain is the physical structure within which our thinking processes occur and collectively those processes we call the 'mind'. I don't see a way to say the same thing or anything remotely parallel, about soul, aura, the Great Unknown and such. Is there an argument to say that the brain, or the thinking processes don't exist in the same way we can argue that the others don't (or might not)? > Thanks > Robert > > On 5/2/10 12:52 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > </snipped> > >How is banging on about mind any different from banging on about soul, or aura, or the Great Unknown? > >Nick
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
