And this gives me an opening to report the conference presentation title I am the proudest of. It was on experimental elicitation of emotional vocalizations In crows:
CAWS AND AFFECT IN THE COMMUNICATION OF THE COMMON CROW. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 12:08 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true? In my mind "affect" as a noun means behavior determined by a mood or feeling complex. For example, "He has flat affect". ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic. And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination". Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth. On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote: > The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is > interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar > effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I > posted: > > https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4 > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/ > > Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the > brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The > "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the > whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk > about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics > over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on > the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand > start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe > that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their > unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But > I could easily be wrong about that, too. > > > On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I >> think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending >> on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are >> contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say >> it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. >> We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could >> be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We >> would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it >> could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the >> brain. >> >> Am I wrong about that? > -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
