Krimel, on Sat, 7 Mar 2009 at 13:05:25 -0500 you posted:
[DS:] Physiology/ psychology, it seems everyone at this forum wants to keep these two things separate. [Krimel] Not guilty. I bring this up all the time but always get sidetracked by the mystics in the crowd who insist that any effort along these lines is inherently SOM. Or by the nut case who insist that physiology is irrelevant because experience somehow has a psychic component. [DS:] The reason Pavlov is studied by every freshman psychology student is because his observations about physiology have great import to psychology. You are right, he didn't consider himself to be a psychologist but that didn't stop history from judging him to be among the best of them, and he most certainly saw and wrote convincingly about the connection between physiology and behaviour. Skinner using the same metaphysical assumptions believed that behaviour is the response to physical causes. He didn't need to study physiology (although I have a dim recollection that physiology was his stated major at Harvard) to believe that, the positivists, Comte and Wundt influenced lab psychologists like Pavlov and Skinner and most current scientists with their insistence that behaviour has physiological causes. Skinner did thousands of experiments, and it's the principle that I'm pointing too not the specific variable. He believed he could condition any behaviour to any stimulus and, if memory serves, once conditioned Eric Fromm to curse out loud in response to puffs of air during a public debate. [Krimel] I was pointing to an error in the text you linked to us. I think it still stands as an error. Pavlov was a physiologist. He won a Nobel prize for his work in physiology. He did write and do studies relevant to psychology but so did Descartes who is also studies by first year psychology students. I think Wundt's influence on Pavlov, which you point out, was mainly to reinforce Pavlov's insistence that we was not a psychologist. I don't think Wundt had all that much influence on Skinner at all. Skinner did believe that classical and operant conditioning takes place and shapes nearly all of our behavior both inside and outside the lab. He is linked to the urban legend of the psych class that conditions their instructor to lecture from the hall outside the class by nodding and attending to him as he moved ever closer to the classroom door. But again, you said he studied physiology which he did not in any great detail. His bachelor's degree was in English. Both his M.A. and PhDs were from Harvard in psychology. [DS:] It certainly is my own theory that those who can recite the Gettysburg address do so using learned reflexes. If you have another theory, one that is better than saying, "it happens by magic". Please let me know for I have never seen one. Your comment about clarity is fair and I will try harder in future. [Krimel] OK but my point once again is that this is an improper use of the term reflex. The study of both reflexes and memory are quite rich. There is plenty of literature out there to look into before one sets about constructing new theories to explain either of them. Greetings Krimell, Yes you are right, Pavlov didn't consider himself a psychologist, but guess what, it's not up to him. See if you can get your hands on, Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes, by Pavlov. The second volume (Conditioned Reflexes & Psychiatry) will seem like strange stuff coming from someone who is not a psychologist. Historically speaking, psychology was vastly different at the turn of the last century. Then he wouldn't have been considered a psychologist; now we not only would, but do, consider him to be a psychologist. One of perhaps the top ten greatest. I am not the first to respect Pavlov as a psychologist. It seems a mainstream view. One of the things I was saying in the cited chapter is that all psychologists not talking self-help psycho-babble were influenced by Wundt in that they aren't intuiting or divining mystical insights from who-knows-where. They were doing repeatable, confirmable experiments. They were doing lab science in the style of Wundt. That's his influence on Skinner, who again, if I'm remembering correctly, and since it's a matter of fact not an idea I will not spend hours looking for the reference, mislead his doctoral advisor who believed he was studying physiology for several years before the truth came out. You seem a little tight to me. Am I really the first person you have read who stretched a word to include another concept? Pavlov called "sense organs" "analyzers" I call them "corresponding reflexes". We all use terms that we believe will best help the reader understand the concept we are explaining. Like Hobbes and Pavlov, I think that the eye is a biological machine: light enters the front and a corresponding pattern of electrical nerve impulse leaves the back by the optic nerve. I don't think we will this conversion from light to electricity; I think it's a reflex action. And finally, yes you are right again, there is a ton of literature out there to look into reflexes and memory but none of it explains how our minds work. Many will tell you that it's too complex to explain or that it works by magic, but I've been in this field for forty years and have never seen a theory of how it might actually work as a biological machine responding to reality with appropriate and timely behaviour. That said, I'm with you on the mystics. There are no grounds to argue with them. -david swift Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
