On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:35:01 -0400, Christopher D. Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Mike Palij wrote: >> Chris Green wrote: >>>Danziger's focus is on the way the term started to be used by >>>behaviorists early in the 20th century. >> >>Uh, which behaviorists? Given that there were several different >>perspectives (one could hardly confuse Skinner's version of >>behaviorism with Tolman's), it might help to provide some details >>on this point. > >Indeed. "Early in the 20th century" was supposed to indicate the runup >to Watson. I probably erred in calling these folks "behaviorists" >though. The ones I meant were those who first assembled the generalized >meaning for the term "learning" which made behaviorism/s and its/their >"learning theory/ies" possible. In discussing Pavlov, Danziger writes >that the very idea of there being general laws of learning "relied on a >very recent historical construction, namely, a category of learning >phenomena that was sufficiently unified to be explicable in terms of a >single set of regularities.... In the early days of modern psychology >would have seemed prepostrous.... There were a number of contexts in >which the term 'learning' cropped up, but, at best, they were linked by >only the vaguest analogies" (p. 103). That ought to give you an idea of >where he's going. The story is quite complicated, however. For more, see >chapter 6 of _Naming the Mind_ (Sage, 1997).
I've just read through Chap 6 of "Naming the Mind" and I am somewhat puzzled by it. Perhaps you can clarify a couple of points? It seems to me that Danziger is dismissing both "behavior" and "learning" as essential components of psychology, at least as American psychologists conceived and used these terms (in contrast to continental/European psychologists) in the early 20th century -- "pre-Watsonian behaviorists", if one could characterize them that way. Is this a correct reading of the text? Implicit in Danziger's chapter is a theory of mind as well as what "learning" may be but it seems to me that he does not define either "mind" or "learning" in this chapter. Is this correct? Presumably, he does define it elsewhere, if so, where? In the Chap 6, Danziger contrasts the German psychologist Ernst Meumann with E.L. Thorndike. Danziger describes Meumann's work as focusing as "memorizing symbol material" (p106) while describing Thorndike's work as focusing on trans-species learning processes or regularities. Am I correct in viewing Danziger as providing a somewhat negative evaluation of Thorndike's work? I am confused by Danziger's writing -- is he saying that there are no trans-species learning processes? Earlier in this thread, you wrote the following: On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:31:10 -0400, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Yes. "Where did the very eccentric definition of "learning" that >dominated (parts of) psychology during the 20th century come from?" >Answer: read Kurt Danziger's book _Naming the Mind_ (which is about the >historical sources of many key concepts in psychology). What struck me about this passage is the phrase "very eccentric definition of 'learning' " which I interpreted as meaning that learning was defined in an "oddball" way or (using the American Heritage's definition) "departing from a conventional pattern". However, it seems to me that Danziger and perhaps yourself are attacking the "conventional" definitions of behavior and learning, as used by pre-Watsonian behaviorists, Watsonian behaviorists, and neo-behaviorists and their descendents. You have not provided a definition of "learning" and I am curious as to how you define it. I've provided three definitions in this thread that represent different theoretical perspectives but outside of the "behavioral" definition which you rejected you haven't specified whether the other definitions were reasonable or acceptable or conventional or "eccentric". How do you define "learning" or what definition do you consider "standard"? -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
