[DS] 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.
[Krimel] Ok, you can call whoever whatever. You are right it isn't worth the ink we are spilling over it. [DS] 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. [Krimel] My point here is that the study of reflexes has a rich history and substantial literature. In the early days of neurophysiological study it was thought that all behavior might be explained in terms of reflexes. Things like memory and learning are precisely the areas where these attempts broke down. Why you think it is a good idea to use terms this way is a mystery. You can call it whatever you want but if you want to be understood you ought to stick with existing concepts or have a dam good reason for changing them. As I said reflexes always involve movement. Transduction of light into neural impulses in automatic but it is not reflexive. No motion is involved. Scanning of the visual field might be considered reflexive but not vision. 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/
