Jim Clark wrote:
> Notice that this counter-example returns once again to the human
> sciences. Even so, I would disagree with Paul's final "OR
> explained by reference to their purely physical descriptions" if
> we admitted into the physical such things as the physical events
> that underly schema, motivations, and the like.
I would certainly "admit" those, but I strongly suspect that any true
physical descriptions of such things _in general_ must take the form of
those infinite disjunctions. That is, I don't believe that it will be
possible to give a finite length physical description of (for example) a
motivation to perform well academically. Each token of that motivation will
be a physical thing, and perhaps may even have a finite physical
description. But one will never be able to say "Here is what academic
motivation looks like as a physical description".
> My biasses are
> probably showing once again, but I also wonder to what extent
> most economic "laws" actually fit the fuzzy criteria for
> scientific laws. In my very limited experience, they often seem
> more analogous to religous or political pronouncements that lack
> any sort of mechanistic underpinning. Perhaps requiring more
> physicalist modelling would rectify this alleged (by me)
> shortcoming.
A purely behavioral psychology MAY avoid the problem I'm describing, but I
suspect that it won't. That is, I suspect that whatever changes take place
with operant conditioning do not have a simple physical description any more
than "monetary exchanges" do. I'm quite convinced that any cognitive
psychology will have to face the fact that mental representations cannot be
reduced as useful types to physical descriptions. But again, none of this
implies that there are non-physical things going on in parallel with the
physical events.
Paul Smith
