David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:

In article <bsmqu0$djg$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert
rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes

Science is basically pragmatic -- looking for what works. Religion
purports to be seeking some imagined metaphysical truth.

And historically - pre 1951 - science was (by the logical positivists at
least) defined as "the pursuit of truth" (synthetic statements), and

And that has a lot to do with why logical positivism was so nonsensical.

philosophy the analysis of meaning. Hence Quine's summary book "Pursuit
of Truth" (1992).

It is based on the nonsense that is logical positivism.

This has nothing to do with seeking metaphysical truth.

Science constructs its own pragmatically based criteria for truth.
Logical positivism presumes that some sort of truth pre-exists
without such construction. You cannot make sense of that except on
the assumption that "truth" is used as a metaphysical notion (even if
positivists claimed to reject metaphysics).

Don't bother; it's not supposed to make sense.

There's many of these obviously self-instructed anti-behaviorists
pouting around and spewing nonsense. Apparently it's safer to knock
down imaginary straw men than it is to learn something. If there
weren't so many different ones, I'd say they're trolls. They never do
get specific about who these behaviorists really are, but when you
tell them they're boneheads, they accuse you of being a behaviorist.

Drawing parallels between this behavior and any number of
fundamentalist something-or-others is left as an exercise for the
reader.

snip

Dr. D. It really only emphasizes the fact that you're arguing from formula
rather than substance that you continue to accuse me, as below, of being a
behaviorist, when I've made it abundantly clear to all but the most brain
dead that I am a professional neuroscientist. If you had the slightest
inkling of what that meant, you'd understand that it's about as
antithetical
as you can get from being a behaviorist.

snip

GS: Hi. Not that I disagree with much of what you wrote but, for the
record,
what I view as behaviorism is not antithetical to neuroscience.
Behaviorism
simply says that behavior can be understood as a subject matter in its own
right, and can be so considered without viewing it as a symptom of the
activities of the "mind" or brain. The position also typically holds that
the elucidation of behavioral processes at the behavioral level is
essential
to the goal of eventually understanding the relation between behavior and
neurophysiology. Behavioral facts (especially uncovered by behavior
analysis, since they are known to be reliable and general and to have
relevance to the behavior of individuals) are "what is to be explained."

Respectfully,

Glen

"Doktor DynaSoar" <targeting@OMCL.mil> wrote in message

On 27 Dec 2003 07:14:59 -0800, erayo@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural
exa) wrote:
If you can find someone to help you stay on track while you follow a
simple instruction, please do, and then go read what I wrote. I said
absolutely nothing regarding supporting behaviorism. What I said, in
summary, is that you're a common, garden variety loon, arguing a point
you've invented against a counterpoint of your own devising, based on
an obvious complete lack of knowledge in that area. The
"anti-behaviorism" garbage has been floating around the net for over
10 years, and it's always some ignorant amateurs who've picked up the
thread left by prior bozos, contributing nothing of substance.

Read that carefully: You've said nothing I haven't seen from equally
ignorant feebs for more than a decade.

Now, all of that may stand on its own. It really only emphasizes the
fact that you're arguing from formula rather than substance that you
continue to accuse me, as below, of being a behaviorist, when I've
made it abundantly clear to all but the most brain dead that I am a
professional neuroscientist. If you had the slightest inkling of what
that meant, you'd understand that it's about as antithetical as you
can get from being a behaviorist.

} You have not even understood that the intention

I know precisely what your intention was, and I know from whence it
comes. This is what I'm trying to explain to you.

} was to indicate how
} off-topic it may get when you write about people in the same
} self-righteous and counter-intellectual way which you have learnt from

From you, spankard. I copied your overblown self-absorbed rhetoric
quite well I thought.

Now, since I've proven that you're not arguing from any intellectual
platform whatsoever, but rather punching holes in the sky out of
frustration for not actually knowing enough to speak intelligently
about the subject, I leave it for you in your next paragraph to
reindite yourself and provide yet more evidence that I'm correct.

Rant on:

} a pseudo-scientist called B.F. Skinner and an armchair philosopher
} called Quine who was a master of verbal confusion. David Longley
} pursues the same route as yourself. His hypocritical deconstructionism
} and circular clownery is not unique to himself; it is a hallmark of
} behaviorist "movement", as if the dead and buried can be said to move.
} You can only declare your position as "unassailable" or
} "unfalsifiable" like David Longley, and then assault your critics
} because they are using the language of folk psychology, as if you have
} been able to eliminate abstract concepts from the discourse. You will
} then pretend that your philosophical position has a priviledged access
} to metaphysical truth while all of your claims have turned out to be
} mere assumptions. Every paper by Quine on human mind is a large
} circle. Every paper by Skinner concerning the ontology of animal and
} human psychology is a stack of empty sheets.

Very nice, thanks. How about an excuse for your behavior now?

} You also do not understand how specific anti-behaviorist critics have
} been on comp.ai.philosophy and sci.cognitive in response to the
} behaviorist infestation and widespread sabotage carried out by minions
} of Skinner and Quine.

Perfect. Those bad people made you have to do it.

} There is no need to re-iterate the valid scientific and philosophical
} objections to your obsolete doctrine. I believe even you are advanced
} enough to use search engines on the web.

Gee, you were so full of bluster, as well as yourself before. That was
rather ... weak. Run out of steam?

} Read what I wrote in my previous post well. There is a lesson or two
} there for simpletons such as yourself. And another point is that one
} can verbally assault someone without the idiotic sexual insults you
} are generating.

OH, NO! LOOK OUT!

} Perhaps you are mirroring the behavior of others in
} your environment, who knows?

Darn, you stepped right in it. That was very behaviorist of you. You
sure you don't want to come out of the behaviorist closet?

} You are likening anti-behaviorists to fundamentalists while
} philosophical behaviorism itself is one of the few amazing
} fundamentalist positions in philosophy of mind. How ironic. How sad.

Yet how true. It stems primarily from the fact that those who claim to
be anti-behaviorists are not truly anti-behaviorism, but rather are
anti-something-entirely-self-deluded.

} If you had any level of sophistication, you could talk about
} behaviorism as a matter of hypothesis ("what if..."), not as unfounded
} assertions ("it is true that ..."), and we could have had an actual
} philosophical exchange about the merits and defects of such an
} approach to philosophy of mind.

If you had any level of understanding regrading my sophistication, as
evidenced by publication in peer reviewed professional journals, you'd
understand just how goofy you look thrashing around making unsupported
and unsupportable accusations. That, however, is your modus operandi,

As for "philosophy of mind", I've had my fill. I was a charter
subscriber to the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and was appaled to
see that it consisted almost entirely of philosophy. It was worse than
useless, it was obsfucation which some otherwise rational
neuroscientists were wasting their time on, making lots of words and
saying nothing. Come volume 3, #2 of JCS, they had a "special issue"
on "zombies". Since no one associated with the journal could provide
me with a source of such beings, so that I might obtain some for
testing in my laboratory, I bade them farewell.

I measure real phenomena. I do not have time or inclination to engage
in such intellectual masturbation. You, on the other hand, seem to
have all the time in the world for it. Lack of anything substantive, I
must assume.

} As I said, I will not indulge myself with the ways of sub-human. You
} shall find comfort in your philosophy of nothingness for that is what
} your mind can afford.

Can't stop trying to pin the tail on the furniture, and try make
everyone else believe it's a donkey, can you? That's pitiful. You
deparately need some new matieral. Unfortunately, that would require
learning.

In other words the only way behaviorism has to analyze behavior is to
characterize various behavioral forms in purely nominal terms
amounting to nothing more than simplistic and naive distinctions like
public, private, emitted or whatever. And what makes such distinctions
significant? Because behaviorists can reliably define words like these
without reference to behavior in general.

In article <3FEEFBCC.7080002@xympatico.ca>, Joe Legris
jalegris@xympatico.ca> writes
David Longley wrote:
In article <3FED9523.6@xympatico.ca>, Joe Legris
jalegris@xympatico.ca> writes

David Longley wrote:

In article <1461e0ed.0312262050.37ba21de@posting.google.com>,
abwatson <albertbwatson@yahoo.com> writes

David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<bI9JTMDeGI7$EweF@longley.demon.co.uk>...


This newsgroup is about the philosophy or methodology of AI. Silly
people like Zero, Ozkural, Michaels etc just don't understand
enough to
be able to see that what Glen, I and a few others have been trying to
get folk to see, is how the good research is actually done, and where
it's effective, why it's effective. It's effective because the
approach
is fundamentally behaviourist - it's effective because it applies the
extensional stance.




It's effective because it applies the scientific method. It gives us
new understanding because of the new technologies invented over the
past 50 years, and applied every day in new experiments. New knowledge
bootstraps off older knowledge. You can call it what you like.

And those new technologies have come from application of the
extensional stance.
The scientific method is the extensional stance (at least as Quine
explicates "the scientific method"). Science is really just another
word for "knowing" and the extensional stance is something we have
collectively learned to do a refinement of our natural folk
psychology. For that reason, we eschew our intensional folk
psychology when engaged in "the pursuit of truth" (science).
For some time now, efforts have been made to show how Radical
(Skinner etc) and Evidential (Quine etc) Behaviourism is
pragmatically what matters when we report effective scientific
research. Many people ignore the rest, or regard it as harmless
speculation.


This all makes sense, but what have you got against the concepts of
information processing and storage? They are hardly just "metaphors"
- metaphors for what? Modern science could not exist without them.

You can trust Glen on this. What he says he says well, and he says
representatively. I'm also a little surprised that you find "Verbal
Behavior" an easy read by the way - it rings warning bells. When one
starts psychology one tends to go for the "interesting ideas" - in
time, one comes to appreciate how hard it is to do the sort of
research that Skinner did, and how hard it is to write as clearly and
directly as he and Quine. All too many in this (and related)
newsgroups are seduced by what really amounts to good creative
writing - or neat logical game playing - if you look closely you'll
see that's what many seem to be attracted to - not clear empirical
content. Sadly, many can't see this as they never get to see the real
scope of Skinner's work and its applicability to all forms of
behavioural engineering (which is basically what comp.ai.philosophy
is really addressing in my view). As well as reading "Verbal
Behavior" you really should make sure you have read some of the work
on contingencies of reinforcement - playing with SNIFFY is something I'd
recommend as well.
(This was a much longer post, but I thought better of it - hope this
suffices).

Sizemore's view of information processing, "It is irrelevant to call
the neurons 'information processors' because, at least as far as I can
see, anything may be called 'information processing'.", cannot be taken
seriously. It is obvious that many things in the brain are not
profitably seen as IP. And the things that do appear to be IP are not
all the same, they have particular characteristics.

Well, I think Glen's views on this *can* be taken seriously. Miller and
Frick tried applying Shannon's theory to operant conditioning work in
Miller's first work back in 1949. After that, attempts were made to
apply it to just about everything form neurones to reaction time. There
were attempts to apply it to most of the data summarised by the
Rescorla-Wagner model in one contribution to a series of volumes on
Behavior Analysis in the early 80s and it was really all of this that
allowed Chomsky to use Information Theory as a foil to introduce his
Recursive Function Theoretic analysis of languages back in the late 50s.

The facts are that Information Theory never really caught on in
psychology, and the reason why it didn't was because it was empirically
sterile. Most of what it led to as "Cognitive Psychology" has proven
sterile too - and those responsible for it have been pretty much as
critical as Glen and I have if you look into it. In time, those who have
been critical of what we have said will see this for themselves - the
papers are out there.

The point is that the brain may change as a function of experience but
what people like to call information or meanings are not in the head per
se. If one looks into the recent philosophy of all of this, one will
find that even the philosophers of mind are saying this. It may all
sound like Glen and I are fighting a rear-guard action, but in fact,
time will show that we are up there at the front. It's people like
Ozkural and Michaels, Zero etc who just don't know enough of what's been
done, what's been rejected and where we are now. That's because despite
their claims, they are not bona fide researchers - they're amateurs and
students.

Do you think IP concepts would apply to SNIFFY's behavior?

You could look at it that way I guess - it's a program - but apart from
that, its a simulation.

I didn't say that VB is an easy read, Sizemore did (this tactic gives
him a convenient position to ridicule, especially if others blindly
believe him). I said the book is not particularly difficult. Kant is
difficult.


OK - compared to Kant it may be an easier read - I'll grant you that.
I'm not sure Glen's purpose is to ridicule you. If you say something
silly he may well do so - would that be such a bad thing? In my
experience he tends to be fair.

In article <bsn727$id3$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert
rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes
David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:

In article <bsmqu0$djg$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert
rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes

Science is basically pragmatic -- looking for what works. Religion
purports to be seeking some imagined metaphysical truth.

And historically - pre 1951 - science was (by the logical positivists at
least) defined as "the pursuit of truth" (synthetic statements), and

And that has a lot to do with why logical positivism was so nonsensical.

philosophy the analysis of meaning. Hence Quine's summary book "Pursuit
of Truth" (1992).

It is based on the nonsense that is logical positivism.

This has nothing to do with seeking metaphysical truth.

Science constructs its own pragmatically based criteria for truth.
Logical positivism presumes that some sort of truth pre-exists
without such construction. You cannot make sense of that except on
the assumption that "truth" is used as a metaphysical notion (even if
positivists claimed to reject metaphysics).

It has nothing to do with "truth" pre-existing - it is about statements
being true or false.

The point to grasp (especially in this forum) is
the scope and language of science.

The theory of truth in this context
is basically Tarski's "disappearance, or disquotational" theory.

lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in message news:<3feb8787.2647984@netnews.att.net>...
In other words the only way behaviorism has to analyze behavior is to
characterize various behavioral forms in purely nominal terms
amounting to nothing more than simplistic and naive distinctions like
public, private, emitted or whatever. And what makes such distinctions
significant? Because behaviorists can reliably define words like these
without reference to behavior in general.

This is probably a paragraph worth discussing. I wish I had not jumped
on Doktor DynaSaur's attack on you and had answered this instead.

You are essentially saying that behaviorists are rejecting the
existence of complex problems because they can only deal with very
simple cases. Is that right?

That would be valid meta philosophy I guess. :)

If you could give a few examples from behaviorist literature where
they do that, it would be supportive of your argument.

This isn't a very new argument, but it seems to be a nice summary of
your observations.

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 13:52:58 +0000, David Longley
David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote:

} Whilst I think you are right to pick Ozkural up on his irrational
} rhetoric, I'm not sure why a professional neuroscientist would say that
} their position is "as antithetical as you can get from being a
} behaviorist". I trained in neuroscience, and worked with some of the
} best in their field. I don't think any of them would subscribe to that
} view.
}

Quite so. Part of my reaction was due to my own viewpoint, which I
described just prior in my response to Glen. Not anti-thetical, but
definitely the required extension, as per Skinner himself.

As for my delivery, I'll make no apologies. Sometimes it takes deft
application of a clue by four to make a point, and sometimes that
point really just focuses on "shut up".

Consider it corrective phrenology.

On 28 Dec 2003 07:29:59 -0800, erayo@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural
exa) wrote:

} Let the readership decide who is an idiot:

Fine. Let's make it easy on them and take it a bit at a time. You can
help.

} 1. A computer scientist who explores the philosophical problems
} regarding the computational view of the mind.

A field which is as close to drowning in irrefutable rhetoric as any
other fundamentalist religion. Typically they jump into "quantum" or
"holographic" or similar improperly understood and applied concepts,
and generate untestable "theories".

OK, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Let's see a computer
science reference. NOT philosophy, NOT irreducible abstrractions such
as "mind" or "consciousness". Computer SCIENCE.

} 2. A USENET crank with a silly handle as yourself who claims to be a
} reputable scientist (I don't care what your field is)

Here's mine. I'm second author on this one. But this is the first
published instance of my nonlinear analysis technique (ref: your
spankage regarding "mathematical ability").

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&lis
t_uids=11755262&dopt=Abstract

Enhancement of auditory sensory gating and stimulus-bound gamma band
(40 Hz) oscillations in heavy tobacco smokers. Neurosci Lett. 2002 Jan
14;317(3):151-5.

} and at the same
} time believes in an outdated philosophical theory which was ridiculed,
} dismantled and eradicated several decades ago.

You really do have some sort of serious cognitive deficiency, don't
you? You just can't seem to grasp that someone who understands the
fact that your boneheaded anti-behaviorist blather is rancid, recycled
brain tripe, is not necessarily a behaviorist.

David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:
In article <bsn727$id3$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert
rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes
David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> writes:

In article <bsmqu0$djg$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert
rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> writes

Science is basically pragmatic -- looking for what works. Religion
purports to be seeking some imagined metaphysical truth.

And historically - pre 1951 - science was (by the logical positivists at
least) defined as "the pursuit of truth" (synthetic statements), and

And that has a lot to do with why logical positivism was so nonsensical.

philosophy the analysis of meaning. Hence Quine's summary book "Pursuit
of Truth" (1992).

It is based on the nonsense that is logical positivism.

This has nothing to do with seeking metaphysical truth.

Science constructs its own pragmatically based criteria for truth.
Logical positivism presumes that some sort of truth pre-exists
without such construction. You cannot make sense of that except on
the assumption that "truth" is used as a metaphysical notion (even if
positivists claimed to reject metaphysics).

It has nothing to do with "truth" pre-existing - it is about statements
being true or false.

Statements, as physical objects, are marks on paper or patterns of
illuminated pixels, or vibrations in air. Neither "true" nor "false"
is a property of such marks or vibrations. Rather, "true" or "false"
is a property that people ascribe to those marks or vibrations.

You can ask what are the criteria by which they make these ascriptions
of truth or falsity. But philosophers always evade such questions.

Hmm, I suppose that a behaviorists might say that how people ascribe
truth is a matter of conditioning. But that would seem to imply that
truth is socially constructed.

The point to grasp (especially in this forum) is
the scope and language of science.

Well sure. That's about what I would expect. Namely, that Longley
thinks of science as some kind of language game. But that
characterizes pseudo-science, not real science.

The theory of truth in this context
is basically Tarski's "disappearance, or disquotational" theory.

Tarski's theory was on a theory of truth for a formal language, and
it presupposes that there is already notion of truth available in
natural language. Tarski gives no guidance at all to the basis for
truth of natural language statements.

On 28 Dec 2003 12:07:48 -0800, erayo@bilkent.edu.tr (Eray Ozkural
exa) in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in message
news:<3feb8787.2647984@netnews.att.net>...
In other words the only way behaviorism has to analyze behavior is to
characterize various behavioral forms in purely nominal terms
amounting to nothing more than simplistic and naive distinctions like
public, private, emitted or whatever. And what makes such distinctions
significant? Because behaviorists can reliably define words like these
without reference to behavior in general.

This is probably a paragraph worth discussing. I wish I had not jumped
on Doktor DynaSaur's attack on you and had answered this instead.

You are essentially saying that behaviorists are rejecting the
existence of complex problems because they can only deal with very
simple cases. Is that right?

That would be valid meta philosophy I guess. :)

If you could give a few examples from behaviorist literature where
they do that, it would be supportive of your argument.

This isn't a very new argument, but it seems to be a nice summary of
your observations.

I'm not sure I can give examples in the sense you mean. I think what
I'm suggesting is that if one cannot define some specific key concept
such as behavior, it is often better to complicate the analysis with
variants of the key concept that you can define. In other words if one
cannot define behavior exactly one might be better off embracing
variants of behavior like public, private, emitted and so on because
these latter terms are much more easily defined and will leave the
impression that one has defined behavior when all one is doing is
repeating the undefined term behavior in different contexts.

In point of fact we have no idea whether such things as public,
private, emitted and so on kinds of behavior represent necessary
distinctions in mechanical terms because we don't have any exact
understanding of what behavior itself means and behaviorism doesn't
shed any light on that subject. Just because behavior is public or
private or emitted or not doesn't mean it's significantly different in
mechanical terms from behavior in general. In other words these are
trivial distinctions unless the idea of behavior in cognitive beings
is defined first. And that is something behaviorism is unable to do.

So I think in response to your question I would have to say that
behaviorists are actually embracing complex behavioral issues to avoid
dealing with the simple issue of what behavior means in mechanical
terms. They simply evade the issue by claiming the definition of
behavior has been done somewhere else and quickly move on to the
analysis of behavioral variants they feel more comfortable with.

This is really the reason behaviorists insist on their own jargon. It
isn't that the terms they use are more precise. It's that their own
terms are all they understand behavior in terms of. They don't know
what behavior in cognitive beings actually means apart from those
variants of behavior so they have no way to relate the significance of
behavior in general to anyone elses ideas on the subject. The only
thing they have are those terms cast in terms of a subject they don't
understand. So they have to convey whatever thoughts they have on the
subject in those terms.

As for the attacks of behaviorists, I would suggest that you not
concern yourself so much. I really think that you, Omega, and some
others take behaviorists much too seriously. I've seen some very
esoteric arguments attacking the validity of behaviorism but what the
problem really amounts to is that behaviorists don't understand what
behavior is. So anything they have to say on the subject of behavioral
variants is really beside the point.

Now I don't necessarily think that cognitive science knows what
behavior represents in mechanical terms either. But at least they have
the locus of cognition much more firmly and correctly established.
Behaviorists on the other hand are out there in outer space looking
for environmental circumstances whose relevance they don't even
understand because they don't understand the nature of behavior to
begin with.



Regards - Lester