----- Original Message -----
From: "David Prince" <deprince@bellsouth.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: 11 September 2000 05:09
Subject: MD Skinner, Behaviorism, Science, and Value
>
> Suprisingly I find that Behaviorism is very beautiful. The definition of
> Positive Reinforcement is "Any environmental stimulus which increases the
> likelihood of a behavior recurring." Positive Reinforcement can be
nothing
> but Quality itself. Is anyone familiar with Thorndyke's law of effect?
>
>
David,
Thanks for reminding me to avoid "knee-jerk" reactions to things, in this
case the concept of Behaviourism.
I have to admit that my main objections to behaviourism revolve around that
which has been said in the name of behavourism, after the fact, rather than
Dr Skinner himself, who I also understand to have been a very humane man.
However, I also firmly believe behaviourism to be rooted in Newtonian
science (via Helmoholz), out of Gallileo and Descartes, and is an excellent
example of the application of Okham's (;Occam's) Razor.
Now, the attempt to explain the whole of reality, as it were, in terms of
the classical mechanics of matter, force ( actually an animistic concept on
a par with spirits etc) and energy is now generally regarded as a useful
metaphor for some situations, but overly simplistic, and inadequate in terms
of potential predictive power in many other circumstances.
Likewise, whilst Ockhams razor ( "entities may not be multiplied
unnecessarily", sometimes simplified into "the simplest explanation that
explains all the known facts is the best") has been empirically
demonstrated -in the form of science- to be an excellent philosophical tool,
but by no means an "absolute" rule. There are many conceptual domains where
application of this approach is totally innappropriate, and unlikely to
yield coherent results, for instance in the matters of 'faith', qualia, and
so on.
I believe that many criticisms of the scientific method are actually bound
up with this point.
To sum up, I think of behaviourism as a nice, beautifully simple pattern,
but essentially limited by that very simplicity. As an explanation of human
perception and subjective experience, it is totally inadequate, and further
is based on inadequate physical explanations of the nature of the universe.
Reaction against it has thrown up Gestalt psychology, Ecological psychology,
most of the current corpus of Experimental psychology.
I agree with you when you say that "science" (as epitomised above) is
unsuited to addressing matters of qualia and subjectivity in general. That
is because "science" - and indeed the very notion of "objective reality" is
actually a complex (yet still overly simplistic) hypothetical notion, like
mathematics, and is essentially unprovable. But is that to say that the
conceptual domain of science is inherently unsuitable for development into a
more complex domain which may incorporate multiple perspectives?
Further, the notion of empiricism itself is a little shaky, in that it
relies on fairly concrete assumptions as to how empirical observations may
be made, such as via "..the five senses" - but there are no such things! -
in that there has never been any consensus as to how many 'senses' we might
have, what exactly these sense might constitute, and so on. In fatc, whilst
we might characterise some of theses 'senses' by the fairly obvious organs
of sensation ( : ears,eyes, nose. etc), and it certainly does seem that
'senses' rely on discernible physical apparatus, we may just as well
identify a given 'sense' with the appropraite neurological system (which is
also a physical apparatus) and the conceptual "processing metaphors" (jury's
out on that one right now).
so it turns out that the empirical proofs of the physical world rely heavily
on subjective / individual characteristics. ( In other words, the world has
'objects' in it because we have inherent 'object detection systems').
Having said all this, I love your behaviourist universe, with the difference
between us 'sentient' beings and all the other 'inanimate' stuff being
completely quantitative rather than qualitative. Gets round Descartes'
dualism just fine. And reminds me of Hegel's sentience=the universe striving
to understand itself.
Lastly, as regards 'emergent properties'; it is my understanding that the
larger part of human perception of qualia comes into exactly this
category, - i.e. - not explicable in terms of underlying properties.
Nice chatting,
regards,
ppl
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