Hi, Russ,
See my answer to Glen. And the cop out that ends it.
I think that Eric and i have both been clear at least on this point. How pain
"is implemented" (do I dare?) is an interesting question, and an excellent
scientific question, but it is not the psychological question, unless one
happens to be a physiological psychologist or a neuro-psychologist. I can ask
and answer lots of interesting questions about my word processor's behavior
without knowing jack squat about how word processing is implemented on my
computer. I fact, I can use the same word processor on two different computers
and see very little evidence that the are implemented differently. This does
not mean that I deny the importance of the programmers who implement word
processing on computers or the scientists who would reverse engineer the
programs to find out how they are implemented.
I hope I don't get murdered for the metaphor.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 5/4/2010 10:57:16 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism
Hi Nick, I was wondering how long you could resist getting drawn into this.
History is fine. I have no problem talking about historical sequences and how
they hang together.
What I don't know is whether Eric/you/behaviorists in general are interested in
the answer to the question of what makes a reinforcer work.I tried to get
Eric's answer to that, but I didn't.
Is his/(your/behaviorists answer that he/you/they are interested in how
reinforcers work, but that's not what they are studying? That they believe
that there is a reasonable scientific answer to that question, but that someone
else is pursuing it? If so, I find that a reasonable answer -- although I'd
like to know who he/you/they think are doing that work and how he/you/they
think that work is coming. How would you/he/they describe the results so far?
What do we know about how reinforcers work and what are the questions now being
asked about that? Even if you don't work in the field as someone as concerned
about reinforcers as he/you/they, he/you/they must at least know the state of
our current knowledge of the field.
Or is his/your/behaviorists' answer that how reinforcers work is not a valid
question because attempting to describe what goes on inside the entity being
reinforced is meaningless?
In all this, I'm happy to use as a model the example of a computer. We
understand how computer "reinforcers" (i.e., programs) work because we
understand how computers work. Do you/he/they expect that we will (hopefully
soon) have a similarly concrete answer to how biological reinforcers work?
-- Russ
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]>
wrote:
Russ,
I don't think either Eric and I suppose that internal events are not part of a
full explanation of behavior; we are just asserting that it is not the only
part. History of the behavior is another. A psychologist's job is to relate
behavior to its history. The people whose job it is to relate it those
history-behavior relations to internal events live "down the hall".
What drives Eric and me nuts is when people start talking AS if they are
talking about internal events when in fact they are just redescribing relations
between the history of behavior and patterns of that behavior. EG, the
vernacular, "I felt it in my gut" or the highly sophisticated, "The child was
unhappy because of its 'internal working model' of its mother." I just went
to a conference here in Santa Fe in which people banged on relentlessly that
conscience was IN the brain. Such talk is a redirection, from something that
we know a lot about (people's conscientious behavior) and something we know
almost nothing about (the manner in which that behavior is mediated in the
nervous system ... the neural correlates of that behavior). And even if we
know exactly which part of the brain lights up when Jones feels guilty, we will
still have the problem of the history by which Jones comes to feel guilty about
THAT. Discovering the histories that lead people to feel that way and
characterizing the higher order behavior patterns that constitute "feeling
guilty" is what the psychology of guilt is all about, INAO.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: ERIC P. CHARLES
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 5/4/2010 6:05:59 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism
Eric, you said, "Would you really tell me that I cannot talk intelligently
about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the
atomic structures underlying acid-resistance?" Yes, I would say that you
probably can't talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to
resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures underlying
acid-resistance. How else are you claiming to talk intelligently about it?
If your point is that the digestive biologist doesn't care why the stomach wall
resists acid because all she cares about is what goes on inside the stomach.
And if you are also saying that she assumes that other people can explain how
the stomach wall keeps all that stuff contained without damage to itself. Then
that's fine. It's like me saying that I don't know the details of computer
engineering. All I care about is that the computer interprets instructions in a
certain way.
But I and the digestive biologist both acknowledge that there is an explanation
of the issues we are ignorant of and that other people know what those
explanations are. That seems to be different from the behaviorist who says that
it is pointless to ask for an explanation because it doesn't make sense to ask
the questions I'm asking.
-- Russ
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:51 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[email protected]> wrote:
Russ sayeth: "They [behaviorists] seem unwilling to ask how the entity being
reinforced works so that they can explain how the reinforcer works. That just
seems like bad science."
Uhm.... weird assertion. Lets say that I am a digestive biologist, and you ask
me to explain the atomic structure underlying differences between stomach and
intestinal walls. Am I not justified in telling you that you have asked a great
question that is simply not in my area of expertise. Am I not justified in
telling you that there are people who specialize in answering such questions,
that they are molecular biologists, and that they work down the hall? Would you
really tell me that I cannot talk intelligently about the ability of the
stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures
underlying acid-resistance? Would you really tell me that digestive biology
seems like bad science?
I doubt you would tell me any of those things.
Why should psychology be different? There are perfectly good people who study
the relevant animal innards. They are physiologists and neuro-biologists. They
have offices down the hall. Their work is fascinating and I like to hear their
talks. There are some people who work cross-disciplines. Some of them do cool
work, others do crap work, and still others do cool work that they explain in
crap ways. What more do you want me to say?
---------
Also, I told you that we know a lot about what makes something a reinforcer.
Let us pick an arbitrary set of neutral stimuli, say a card with vertical
lines. I can make a rat such that the vertical lines reinforce the rat's
behavior. THE THINGS I DO TO THE RAT explain why the vertical lines act as a
reinforcer. When you ask "why" the vertical lines reinforce the rat, I will
answer by telling you about how I put the rat through such-and-such procedure.*
Thus I WILL have explained why vertical lines reinforce this rat.
Again, this explains not only the origins of the behavioral phenomenon, but
also the origins of the concurrent neural phenomenon that are a component part
of the process in question.
If you asked why the volcano in iceland blew its top, and I told you that it
blew because the rocks at the top of the mountain flew into the air, you would
stare at me like I was an idiot. Why? Because you asked me to explain something
that happened, and I answered by merely describing back a part of the thing to
be explained. Similarly, all neuronal happenings are part of "the thing to be
explained" when you are explaining reinforcement.
Eric
*Most likely my story will involve repeatedly pairing the vertical lines with
food, but there are other options available. Heck, I can make a rat that does
not find food reinforcing. I can even make a rat that is born not finding food
reinforcing. Alas, those rats won't live very long.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
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
