Behaviorism
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I'd be grateful for a Behaviorist take on the following story: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/rights-group-files-urgent-appeal-alleging-torture-school-disabled/ particularly, the Center's response: http://www.judgerc.org/EmailToMinton.pdf -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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Glen,
Not clear why a behaviorist should stand up for this. Cruelty is cruelty from the point of view of any theory. Behaviorists didn't invent reward and punishment -- nor it's abuses. But reading down, if these kids come to them in as bad shape as they appear to ... constant gruesome self manipulation, etc. ... I can imagine how therapists might get drawn into some pretty dark places. Behaviorism is (for me, anyway) a conversation about what makes sense to talk about, if you want to understand people. And its only ethical implication (for me) is that when people start claiming that they "Really Feel X -- No, REALLY!" when their behavior implies a belief in "Not-X" (Think Goldman Sachs), I move my wallet to an inside pocket. My only thought was that Mishkin's satire of aura's and spirit and all the other "crap" that "Storm" was shilling, really applies equally to "mind". Well, almost equally. Nick . Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 5/4/2010 9:46:55 AM > Subject: [FRIAM] Behaviorism > > > I'd be grateful for a Behaviorist take on the following story: > > orture-school-disabled/ > > particularly, the Center's response: > > http://www.judgerc.org/EmailToMinton.pdf > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 01:10 PM:
> Not clear why a behaviorist should stand up for this. Cruelty is cruelty > from the point of view of any theory. > > Behaviorists didn't invent reward and punishment -- nor it's abuses. But > reading down, if these kids come to them in as bad shape as they appear to > ... constant gruesome self manipulation, etc. ... I can imagine how > therapists might get drawn into some pretty dark places. Right. That was what I wanted clarity on. I'm totally ignorant on what constitutes behaviorism (despite the lectures in this forum). And it seems to me that the defense the JRC puts forth is believable. I've also had more than a few friends who've suffered under chemical mistreatment (I stop just before calling it cruelty) by their doctors. But I've only had 1 friend who has been treated with electro-shock therapy. And he rejected both the chemicals and the shock treatments as, again not cruel, but wrong-headed. Where does a behaviorist draw the line between treatment and mistreatment? It's easy to see where a non-behaviorist might draw that line, which I think conflates efficacy with empathy. But how does a behaviorist draw the line? I have similar considerations about nursing home facilities and Alzheimer's Disease. The sheer unpredictability (indicator for complexity) of the AD sufferer's behavior makes me think that the behaviorist _must_, at some point, consider higher level constructs like cruelty or "mental processes" in order to practically treat a patient. (Eric's first option.) If a doctor knows that behavioral treatment like shocking an AD patient will never result in, e.g., the dissolution of amyloid plaques (i.e. the treatment is really mistreatment), then he won't treat the patient that way. But what if the physiology is unknown but the treatment seems to work in some cases? Is it "cruel" if it works? Or is it just NEVER a question of a higher level mental process like "cruelty" at all? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
glen,
Bunch of interesting issues there. In a rush this afternoon, so wont "lecture". Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism. Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But notice that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral criteria. Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult signs on for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript to war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic, is the doctor who performs the procedure cruel? The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to disavow his own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an ethical decision accordingly. rushing, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 5/4/2010 3:16:36 PM > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism > > Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 01:10 PM: > > Not clear why a behaviorist should stand up for this. Cruelty is cruelty > > from the point of view of any theory. > > > > Behaviorists didn't invent reward and punishment -- nor it's abuses. But > > reading down, if these kids come to them in as bad shape as they appear to > > ... constant gruesome self manipulation, etc. ... I can imagine how > > therapists might get drawn into some pretty dark places. > > Right. That was what I wanted clarity on. I'm totally ignorant on what > constitutes behaviorism (despite the lectures in this forum). And it > seems to me that the defense the JRC puts forth is believable. I've > also had more than a few friends who've suffered under chemical > mistreatment (I stop just before calling it cruelty) by their doctors. > But I've only had 1 friend who has been treated with electro-shock > therapy. And he rejected both the chemicals and the shock treatments > as, again not cruel, but wrong-headed. > > Where does a behaviorist draw the line between treatment and > mistreatment? It's easy to see where a non-behaviorist might draw that > line, which I think conflates efficacy with empathy. But how does a > behaviorist draw the line? > > I have similar considerations about nursing home facilities and > Alzheimer's Disease. The sheer unpredictability (indicator for > complexity) of the AD sufferer's behavior makes me think that the > behaviorist _must_, at some point, consider higher level constructs like > cruelty or "mental processes" in order to practically treat a patient. > (Eric's first option.) If a doctor knows that behavioral treatment like > shocking an AD patient will never result in, e.g., the dissolution of > amyloid plaques (i.e. the treatment is really mistreatment), then he > won't treat the patient that way. But what if the physiology is unknown > but the treatment seems to work in some cases? Is it "cruel" if it > works? Or is it just NEVER a question of a higher level mental process > like "cruelty" at all? > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
Eric,
You asked: "Getting better?" My answer is no, you didn't answer my question. The closest you came was the following. "You get at [the answers to my qu4estions] faster and more efficiently if you don't muddle them with mind-talk." I tried very hard not to ask my questions in terms of mind talk. I asked them in empirical terms. And I asked what the best behaviorist answers over the past 100 years have been. To say that the best answers are those that don't use mind talk is not answering the question. One other thing. When I said that there are no computer reinforcers, I was wrong. There are computer reinforcers. I can write a program that when loaded in to a computer will result in an increased frequency of some given behavior. That sounds like it meets your definition of a reinforcer. It is something done to an entity that leads to an increased frequency of some behavior. If we take that as a model, it makes sense to say that a reinforcer programs (or reprograms) the entity being reinforced in some way. With a computer I know how the computer works and can therefore say how the reinforcer works. Behaviorists seem unwilling to look at what they call reinforcers the same way. They seem unwilling to ask how the entity being reinforced works so that they can explain how the reinforcer works. That just seems like bad science. -- Russ On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:17 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Russ sayeth: "They [behaviorists] seem unwilling to ask how the entity
being reinforced works so that they can explain how the reinforcer works. That
just seems like bad science."
Uhm.... weird assertion. Lets say that I am a digestive biologist, and you ask me to explain the atomic structure underlying differences between stomach and intestinal walls. Am I not justified in telling you that you have asked a great question that is simply not in my area of expertise. Am I not justified in telling you that there are people who specialize in answering such questions, that they are molecular biologists, and that they work down the hall? Would you really tell me that I cannot talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance? Would you really tell me that digestive biology seems like bad science? I doubt you would tell me any of those things. Why should psychology be different? There are perfectly good people who study the relevant animal innards. They are physiologists and neuro-biologists. They have offices down the hall. Their work is fascinating and I like to hear their talks. There are some people who work cross-disciplines. Some of them do cool work, others do crap work, and still others do cool work that they explain in crap ways. What more do you want me to say? --------- Also, I told you that we know a lot about what makes something a reinforcer. Let us pick an arbitrary set of neutral stimuli, say a card with vertical lines. I can make a rat such that the vertical lines reinforce the rat's behavior. THE THINGS I DO TO THE RAT explain why the vertical lines act as a reinforcer. When you ask "why" the vertical lines reinforce the rat, I will answer by telling you about how I put the rat through such-and-such procedure.* Thus I WILL have explained why vertical lines reinforce this rat. Again, this explains not only the origins of the behavioral phenomenon, but also the origins of the concurrent neural phenomenon that are a component part of the process in question. If you asked why the volcano in iceland blew its top, and I told you that it blew because the rocks at the top of the mountain flew into the air, you would stare at me like I was an idiot. Why? Because you asked me to explain something that happened, and I answered by merely describing back a part of the thing to be explained. Similarly, all neuronal happenings are part of "the thing to be explained" when you are explaining reinforcement. Eric *Most likely my story will involve repeatedly pairing the vertical lines with food, but there are other options available. Heck, I can make a rat that does not find food reinforcing. I can even make a rat that is born not finding food reinforcing. Alas, those rats won't live very long. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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Eric, you said, "Would you really tell me that I cannot talk
intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without
knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance?" Yes, I would say that you probably can't talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without
knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance. How else are you claiming to talk intelligently about it?
If your point is that the digestive biologist doesn't care why the stomach wall resists acid because all she cares about is what goes on inside the stomach. And if you are also saying that she assumes that other people can explain how the stomach wall keeps all that stuff contained without damage to itself. Then that's fine. It's like me saying that I don't know the details of computer engineering. All I care about is that the computer interprets instructions in a certain way. But I and the digestive biologist both acknowledge that there is an explanation of the issues we are ignorant of and that other people know what those explanations are. That seems to be different from the behaviorist who says that it is pointless to ask for an explanation because it doesn't make sense to ask the questions I'm asking. -- Russ On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:51 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote:
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boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I'm changing the subject line again because this is _not_ in direct lineage with the [Beat Poet] thread. Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 02:36 PM: > Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism. > > Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But notice > that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises > because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to > whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral > criteria. Sorry, I was working under the idea that "cruelty" was a purely mental construct. It seems to me that a cruel act is one where, in general, the actor disregards the thoughts and feelings of the acted upon (actee) and, especially, where the thoughts and feelings of the actee are the Spinozan "Sadness" (i.e. the hypothetical mind is in a worse state after the thoughts/feelings). Granted, the vernacular use of "cruel" has connotations of deriving pleasure from actions that cause the "Sadness"; but that's not necessary. I think it's sufficient for the actor to _know_ they're causing "Sadness", even if the actor (rightly or wrongly) believes that "Sadness" is somehow arithmetically (economically) compensated for by a greater "Joy" that will ensue from the actions. The essence of my naive understanding of Behaviorism is: "Take whatever tangible actions work and the intangibles will take care of themselves." Of course, _if_ a novel tangible arises, the Behaviorist _will_ take it into account. But it still leaves the Behaviorist open to the criticism that she intentionally, knowingly takes actions that cause "Sadness". I don't mean to descend into the semantics of "cruelty". I'm just trying to show why I don't think the criticism of the JRC's methods and the JRC's response are orthogonal to the mentalism <-> behaviorism axis. It seems that some people hold the short-term mental state of the actees in higher esteem than the JRC. I.e. the JRC are more purely behaviorist. (And if we take them at their word, the JRC isn't intentionally cruel and their methods do, indeed, work.) > Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult signs on > for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript to > war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic, is > the doctor who performs the procedure cruel? Like I say above, I'm not trying to _parse_ the word "cruel" so much as I'm trying to get at the extent to which a Behaviorist (a real one... not some ideologically stereotyped one) considers the thoughts and emotions of her subject. A clarifying question might be something like: When the actee tells the (behaviorist) Dentist to drill out the root of a tooth without anesthetic, does the Dentist explain in very clear terms: "You will FEEL pain and probably hate me afterwards."?? Or does the Dentist ignore such intangibles (except to the extent they have to strap the patient down more firmly ;-) and merely state the actions she'll take? (My dad could've been described as a behaviorist when he'd hit me after behaving badly. He didn't much care what I thought or felt as long as I stopped behaving badly. [grin]) > The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a > discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to disavow his > own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide > whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an > ethical decision accordingly. This seems too coarse to me. Clearly, if the actor understands more about the cause-effect behaviors than the actee, then the actor gets to decide whether the "Sadness" is fully compensated by the subsequent "Joy" effected. But, regardless of that, how much _respect_ does the behaviorist actor give to the subjective experience of the actee? This is very important in situations like Alzheimer's disease or pain management, where we have no credible treatments to actually fix the problem. We only have treatments to treat the symptoms, for example the epiphenomenal thoughts and feelings of the subject. Do behaviorists subscribe to concepts like pain management? Do behaviorists participate in treatments like end-of-life hospice care? Or do they restrict themselves to actions that have been credibly shown to "fix" behavior? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
Russ,
I don't think either Eric and I suppose that internal events are not part of a full explanation of behavior; we are just asserting that it is not the only part. History of the behavior is another. A psychologist's job is to relate behavior to its history. The people whose job it is to relate it those history-behavior relations to internal events live "down the hall".
What drives Eric and me nuts is when people start talking AS if they are talking about internal events when in fact they are just redescribing relations between the history of behavior and patterns of that behavior. EG, the vernacular, "I felt it in my gut" or the highly sophisticated, "The child was unhappy because of its 'internal working model' of its mother." I just went to a conference here in Santa Fe in which people banged on relentlessly that conscience was IN the brain. Such talk is a redirection, from something that we know a lot about (people's conscientious behavior) and something we know almost nothing about (the manner in which that behavior is mediated in the nervous system ... the neural correlates of that behavior). And even if we know exactly which part of the brain lights up when Jones feels guilty, we will still have the problem of the history by which Jones comes to feel guilty about THAT. Discovering the histories that lead people to feel that way and characterizing the higher order behavior patterns that constitute "feeling guilty" is what the psychology of guilt is all about, INAO.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
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Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
Glen,
We are at wildly cross purposes here. To bring you over to my side, here, I would have to convince you that "subject experiences" are not what you actually think they are. I tried to do that with Russ Abbott last summer and it almost killed both of us. Behaviorists and mentalists each have a problem. The behaviorist problem is that everybody else in the world, since Descartes, thinks there is a space "inside" some where experience happens, a little theatre in which pain happens and I "experience" it. In response, I have to say: " You are all wrong about that! And what's more, if you REALLY believed it, you would never have another argument with your teen aged daughter, because you would simply have to trust what she says. (What possible evidence would you have to the contrary?)" YOUR problem is to explain why, if consciousness is an inner state, how come you ... and juries .... and therapists ... spend so much time talking about what they cannot, on their account, have any evidence of. In the long run, the decision whether to be a behaviorist or not boils down to which problem you are most comfortable having. I am less comfortable being a mentalist because it leaves me no way to organize all the gazillions of bits of information that I have about what people do and when they do it. If you think being a behaviorists let's one off the pain hook, you are wrong. I believe in pain. I feel the drill and I see my grandson flinch when he is drilled. I feel pain. Anyway, I think this is probably as far as we can take this conversation. It certainly is as far as Russ and I took it last summer, and I don't have any more wisdom or energy for it now than I did then. but I still love you, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([hidden email]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> > Date: 5/4/2010 6:15:32 PM > Subject: [FRIAM] boundary permeability (was Behaviorism) > > > I'm changing the subject line again because this is _not_ in direct > lineage with the [Beat Poet] thread. > > Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 02:36 PM: > > Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism. > > > > Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But > > that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises > > because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to > > whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral > > criteria. > > Sorry, I was working under the idea that "cruelty" was a purely mental > construct. It seems to me that a cruel act is one where, in general, > the actor disregards the thoughts and feelings of the acted upon (actee) > and, especially, where the thoughts and feelings of the actee are the > Spinozan "Sadness" (i.e. the hypothetical mind is in a worse state after > the thoughts/feelings). Granted, the vernacular use of "cruel" has > connotations of deriving pleasure from actions that cause the "Sadness"; > but that's not necessary. I think it's sufficient for the actor to > _know_ they're causing "Sadness", even if the actor (rightly or wrongly) > believes that "Sadness" is somehow arithmetically (economically) > compensated for by a greater "Joy" that will ensue from the actions. > > The essence of my naive understanding of Behaviorism is: "Take whatever > tangible actions work and the intangibles will take care of themselves." > Of course, _if_ a novel tangible arises, the Behaviorist _will_ take it > into account. But it still leaves the Behaviorist open to the criticism > that she intentionally, knowingly takes actions that cause "Sadness". > > I don't mean to descend into the semantics of "cruelty". I'm just > trying to show why I don't think the criticism of the JRC's methods and > the JRC's response are orthogonal to the mentalism <-> behaviorism axis. > > It seems that some people hold the short-term mental state of the actees > in higher esteem than the JRC. I.e. the JRC are more purely > behaviorist. (And if we take them at their word, the JRC isn't > intentionally cruel and their methods do, indeed, work.) > > > Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult > > for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript to > > war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic, is > > the doctor who performs the procedure cruel? > > Like I say above, I'm not trying to _parse_ the word "cruel" so much as > I'm trying to get at the extent to which a Behaviorist (a real one... > not some ideologically stereotyped one) considers the thoughts and > emotions of her subject. A clarifying question might be something like: > > When the actee tells the (behaviorist) Dentist to drill out the root of > a tooth without anesthetic, does the Dentist explain in very clear > terms: "You will FEEL pain and probably hate me afterwards."?? Or does > the Dentist ignore such intangibles (except to the extent they have to > strap the patient down more firmly ;-) and merely state the actions > she'll take? > > (My dad could've been described as a behaviorist when he'd hit me after > behaving badly. He didn't much care what I thought or felt as long as I > stopped behaving badly. [grin]) > > > The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a > > discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to disavow > > own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide > > whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an > > ethical decision accordingly. > > This seems too coarse to me. Clearly, if the actor understands more > about the cause-effect behaviors than the actee, then the actor gets to > decide whether the "Sadness" is fully compensated by the subsequent > "Joy" effected. But, regardless of that, how much _respect_ does the > behaviorist actor give to the subjective experience of the actee? > > This is very important in situations like Alzheimer's disease or pain > management, where we have no credible treatments to actually fix the > problem. We only have treatments to treat the symptoms, for example the > epiphenomenal thoughts and feelings of the subject. > > Do behaviorists subscribe to concepts like pain management? Do > behaviorists participate in treatments like end-of-life hospice care? > Or do they restrict themselves to actions that have been credibly shown > to "fix" behavior? > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Anyway, I think this is probably as far as we can take this conversation. > It certainly is as far as Russ and I took it last summer, and I don't have > any more wisdom or energy for it now than I did then. Some music then.. ;-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQ2W6117zc ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Hi Nick, I was wondering how long you could resist getting drawn into this.
History is fine. I have no problem talking about historical sequences and how they hang together. What I don't know is whether Eric/you/behaviorists in general are interested in the answer to the question of what makes a reinforcer work.I tried to get Eric's answer to that, but I didn't. Is his/(your/behaviorists answer that he/you/they are interested in how reinforcers work, but that's not what they are studying? That they believe that there is a reasonable scientific answer to that question, but that someone else is pursuing it? If so, I find that a reasonable answer -- although I'd like to know who he/you/they think are doing that work and how he/you/they think that work is coming. How would you/he/they describe the results so far? What do we know about how reinforcers work and what are the questions now being asked about that? Even if you don't work in the field as someone as concerned about reinforcers as he/you/they, he/you/they must at least know the state of our current knowledge of the field. Or is his/your/behaviorists' answer that how reinforcers work is not a valid question because attempting to describe what goes on inside the entity being reinforced is meaningless? In all this, I'm happy to use as a model the example of a computer. We understand how computer "reinforcers" (i.e., programs) work because we understand how computers work. Do you/he/they expect that we will (hopefully soon) have a similarly concrete answer to how biological reinforcers work? -- Russ On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Glen,
These are tough questions for many reasons. One is that a behaviorists first instinct would be to wrestle with you over several of the terms. The most explicit ethical stance I have seen a behaviorist take as a behaviorist is Skinner's dislike of the use of punishment, which was at least partially justified by the evidence that reinforcement will work better at shaping behavior. That's not much, but its something. Ethics is a tough business, and I'm not sure there has been much progress in the last 3-4,000 years, nevertheless the last 100. I will say that behaviorist methods have been shown to be effective at treating "thoughts" and "feelings". The behaviorist conceives of what they are doing in such cases in ways most will find unintuitive, but the techniques work irrespective (the whole philosophy vs. science distinction). Behaviorist's CAN do things for pain management, in no small part because behavioral control is often important in pain control. Aside from that, nothing about behaviorism bars giving drugs, so its not like they would say "I'm a behaviorist, I don't believe in morphine drips." (Of course, being a behaviorist leads one to think there are often better alternatives to drugs, but that is a different point.) Overall though, I think that the distinction between mentalist and behaviorist does not place one with specific ethical obligations any more than a distinction between string-theorist and quantum-mechanist has ethical implications. Sure, there are people who write as if quantum mechanics has ethical implications (inherent uncertainty, blah, blah, blah), but I'm not convinced it does. I suspect that it just so happens that the same person is interested in both subjects. --explanation (sort-of)-- The question of what we think people are doing when they verbally self-report does not tell us what to do after getting the self reports, unless we throw in lots of other rules and assumptions. When we get all that other stuff figured out, we are likely to find that the first part isn't as important as it initially appeared. For example, I like to point out to my class that the result of introspection is what it obviously is: When you attend the things you say to yourself, <drum roll> you find out what types of things you say to yourself. So, the guy at the Thai restaurant asks, "How spicy do you want it?" You think for a second and say "As high as you can go!" All I learn from that (at best) is that you are the type of person who tells yourself you want it as spicy as possible - I don't learn whether or not you are ACTUALLY the type of person who likes it spicy as possible. If it is your first time at a Thai restaurant, you might well learn something new about yourself. Transport to the Alzheimer's patient. You ask "Do you know where you are?" The patient thinks for a second and says "Yes." I assert that we learned nothing more than that he is the type of person who tells himself he knows where he is. In this case, I have evidence that others agree with me. The typical follow up question is "Where are you?" Often it is answered incorrectly. We, as outside observers of the patient's behavior declare that he does not know where he is, despite his insistence otherwise. Again, I can think of ways to take that, add other stuff, and create ethical implicature... but on its own, I'm not sure it has much. If we decide, for example, that we have an obligation to care for people so damaged that they don't even know where they are... well, behaviorists and mentalists might argue over how to tell if people know where they are, but the eventual ethical course of action has already been laid out. Eric On Tue, May 4, 2010 08:14 PM, "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]> wrote: I'm changing the subject line again because this is _not_ in direct lineage with the [Beat Poet] thread. Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 02:36 PM: > Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism. > > Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But notice > that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises > because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to > whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral > criteria. Sorry, I was working under the idea that "cruelty" was a purely mental construct. It seems to me that a cruel act is one where, in general, the actor disregards the thoughts and feelings of the acted upon (actee) and, especially, where the thoughts and feelings of the actee are the Spinozan "Sadness" (i.e. the hypothetical mind is in a worse state after the thoughts/feelings). Granted, the vernacular use of "cruel" has connotations of deriving pleasure from actions that cause the "Sadness"; but that's not necessary. I think it's sufficient for the actor to _know_ they're causing "Sadness", even if the actor (rightly or wrongly) believes that "Sadness" is somehow arithmetically (economically) compensated for by a greater "Joy" that will ensue from the actions. The essence of my naive understanding of Behaviorism is: "Take whatever tangible actions work and the intangibles will take care of themselves." Of course, _if_ a novel tangible arises, the Behaviorist _will_ take it into account. But it still leaves the Behaviorist open to the criticism that she intentionally, knowingly takes actions that cause "Sadness". I don't mean to descend into the semantics of "cruelty". I'm just trying to show why I don't think the criticism of the JRC's methods and the JRC's response are orthogonal to the mentalism <-> behaviorism axis. It seems that some people hold the short-term mental state of the actees in higher esteem than the JRC. I.e. the JRC are more purely behaviorist. (And if we take them at their word, the JRC isn't intentionally cruel and their methods do, indeed, work.) > Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult signs on > for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript to > war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic, is > the doctor who performs the procedure cruel? Like I say above, I'm not trying to _parse_ the word "cruel" so much as I'm trying to get at the extent to which a Behaviorist (a real one... not some ideologically stereotyped one) considers the thoughts and emotions of her subject. A clarifying question might be something like: When the actee tells the (behaviorist) Dentist to drill out the root of a tooth without anesthetic, does the Dentist explain in very clear terms: "You will FEEL pain and probably hate me afterwards."?? Or does the Dentist ignore such intangibles (except to the extent they have to strap the patient down more firmly ;-) and merely state the actions she'll take? (My dad could've been described as a behaviorist when he'd hit me after behaving badly. He didn't much care what I thought or felt as long as I stopped behaving badly. [grin]) > The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a > discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to disavow his > own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide > whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an > ethical decision accordingly. This seems too coarse to me. Clearly, if the actor understands more about the cause-effect behaviors than the actee, then the actor gets to decide whether the "Sadness" is fully compensated by the subsequent "Joy" effected. But, regardless of that, how much _respect_ does the behaviorist actor give to the subjective experience of the actee? This is very important in situations like Alzheimer's disease or pain management, where we have no credible treatments to actually fix the problem. We only have treatments to treat the symptoms, for example the epiphenomenal thoughts and feelings of the subject. Do behaviorists subscribe to concepts like pain management? Do behaviorists participate in treatments like end-of-life hospice care? Or do they restrict themselves to actions that have been credibly shown to "fix" behavior? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
Hi, Russ,
See my answer to Glen. And the cop out that ends it.
I think that Eric and i have both been clear at least on this point. How pain "is implemented" (do I dare?) is an interesting question, and an excellent scientific question, but it is not the psychological question, unless one happens to be a physiological psychologist or a neuro-psychologist. I can ask and answer lots of interesting questions about my word processor's behavior without knowing jack squat about how word processing is implemented on my computer. I fact, I can use the same word processor on two different computers and see very little evidence that the are implemented differently. This does not mean that I deny the importance of the programmers who implement word processing on computers or the scientists who would reverse engineer the programs to find out how they are implemented.
I hope I don't get murdered for the metaphor.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
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Great. I agree completely!Â
-- Russ On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
Excellent! Thanks, Eric. But I still wonder why you (and Nick) have inferred that I'm talking about ethics. I'm not really interested in ethics. I'm interested in the differences between treatment that works and treatment that fails. That was my point about the JRC story. Forget the accusations that the JRC is being "cruel" or other mental hoo-ha. Focus on the JRC's response that some of their treatments have been shown to work, emphasis on the word _some_. It seems to me that there ought to be a percentage threshold where the treatment is determined not to be effective enough to continue using. E.g. let's say skin shock treatment works in 60% of cases. Then perhaps that's above the threshold and skin shock treatment should be tried, "cruel" or not. But if it only works in 20% of cases, then perhaps it shouldn't be used... or extra explicit consent has to be acquired ... or whatever. THAT'S the interesting part of the story and that's why I'd be grateful for a behaviorist response. I don't care about the ethics of the treatment. I care about the efficacy of the treatment, which is why I tried to use the word "mistreatment". You approached this with your answer to my question about Alzheimer's. But it didn't really target my question like I wanted it to. Let me try again. My experience has been that AD patients will often lash out at family members and caregivers for no obvious reason. E.g. My grandma would sometimes spit and scratch at her children when they were talking to her. Now, it's not clear to me that _any_ behaviorist technique will change this behavior. Perhaps it would, though. We could mount a skin shock backpack to someone like my grandma and shock her every time she threw her bedpan or spit on someone to see if it would work. I don't know. If we decided to do some research on AD patients to find out, at what point would we decide that some particular treatment worked? And at what point would we decide that it fails to work? When does the behaviorist "give up" and hand the problem completely over to the biologists who work on amyloid plaques? ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 05/04/2010 10:07 PM: > These are tough questions for many reasons. One is that a behaviorists > first instinct would be to wrestle with you over several of the terms. > The most explicit ethical stance I have seen a behaviorist take as a > behaviorist is Skinner's dislike of the use of punishment, which was at > least partially justified by the evidence that reinforcement will work > better at shaping behavior. That's not much, but its something. Ethics > is a tough business, and I'm not sure there has been much progress in > the last 3-4,000 years, nevertheless the last 100. > > I will say that behaviorist methods have been shown to be effective at > treating "thoughts" and "feelings". The behaviorist conceives of what > they are doing in such cases in ways most will find unintuitive, but the > techniques work irrespective (the whole philosophy vs. science > distinction). Behaviorist's CAN do things for pain management, in no > small part because behavioral control is often important in pain > control. Aside from that, nothing about behaviorism bars giving drugs, > so its not like they would say "I'm a behaviorist, I don't believe in > morphine drips." (Of course, being a behaviorist leads one to think > there are often better alternatives to drugs, but that is a different > point.) > > Overall though, I think that the distinction between mentalist and > behaviorist does not place one with specific ethical obligations any > more than a distinction between string-theorist and quantum-mechanist > has ethical implications. Sure, there are people who write as if quantum > mechanics has ethical implications (inherent uncertainty, blah, blah, > blah), but I'm not convinced it does. I suspect that it just so happens > that the same person is interested in both subjects. > > --explanation (sort-of)-- > The question of what we think people are doing when they verbally > self-report does not tell us what to do after getting the self reports, > unless we throw in lots of other rules and assumptions. When we get all > that other stuff figured out, we are likely to find that the first part > isn't as important as it initially appeared. > > For example, I like to point out to my class that the result of > introspection is what it obviously is: When you attend the things you > say to yourself, <drum roll> you find out what types of things you say > to yourself. So, the guy at the Thai restaurant asks, "How spicy do you > want it?" You think for a second and say "As high as you can go!" All I > learn from that (at best) is that you are the type of person who tells > yourself you want it as spicy as possible - I don't learn whether or not > you are ACTUALLY the type of person who likes it spicy as possible. If > it is your first time at a Thai restaurant, you might well learn > something new about yourself. > > Transport to the Alzheimer's patient. You ask "Do you know where you > are?" The patient thinks for a second and says "Yes." I assert that we > learned nothing more than that he is the type of person who tells > himself he knows where he is. In this case, I have evidence that others > agree with me. The typical follow up question is "Where are you?" Often > it is answered incorrectly. We, as outside observers of the patient's > behavior declare that he does not know where he is, despite his > insistence otherwise. > > Again, I can think of ways to take that, add other stuff, and create > ethical implicature... but on its own, I'm not sure it has much. If we > decide, for example, that we have an obligation to care for people so > damaged that they don't even know where they are... well, behaviorists > and mentalists might argue over how to tell if people know where they > are, but the eventual ethical course of action has already been laid out. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
Ooooh, that is a much more specific question than it initially seemed!
I suppose there is a practical answer and a philosophical answer. The philosophical answer would set out some criterion that would be correct in some global sense. I fear that would get us back to ethical stuff, and keep things muddled. The practical answer is that such decisions are based on a) the availability of money and time, and b) the individual behavior analyst's interest in the problem. I can tell you that regardless of the level of plaque, the shocking backpack, if set correctly WILL reduce (though probably not completely eliminate) the rate of spitting and bedpan throwing. On the other hand, other behaviors are likely to arise that are equally annoying to you (hence Skinner's dislike of punishment). The other behaviors will arise because the contingencies controlling the spitting and bedpan throwing are still available to other behaviors. In my lower level behaviorism class (which focuses on application rather than theory), by the end of the class we have a list of techniques that can be used to reduce undesirable behaviors: Punishment (aka 'positive punishment') Penalty (aka 'negative punishment') Punishment by prevention (of access to other contingencies) Differential punishment of high rates Extinction Differential reinforcement of low rates Differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior The establishing operation We could write an almost parallel list for methods of increasing the rates of desirable behaviors. Such techniques are routinely used with people even with sever Alzheimer to positive effects. Of course, whether you think increasing the rate of coherent sentences from 30% to 60% is a miracle or just an okay job depends on your perspective. Probably the rate of your grandmother's offensive behaviors could have been cut in half with a pretty simple plan. Unfortunately, the difficulties in getting every single person who goes into her room to follow the 'pretty simple plan' can be quite difficult. For example, if we try extinction, we might need to let her spit on us without reacting, and good luck getting the night shift worker to follow that plan at 3 in the morning. Returning to the original question I think that if I were an applied behavior analyst, I would keep working with the patient as long as there was money for me to keep working with the patient. At some point we will stop getting a return on investment of our time, and at that point we might switch from trying to innovate new strategies to focusing on maintenance of the strategies that worked (i.e., getting people to stick with the plan even when I am not there). Maintenance will take fewer hours of my time than trying new things, but I will never completely leave the situation. How little improvement do I need to see before I switch from active investigation to maintenance? Well, it depends on the behavior and the customer. Honestly, I wouldn't care much about getting the rate of spitting from once a week to once a month. In the case of the bedpan, was it empty or full when it was thrown? If empty, then a small improvement matters less than if full. On the other hand, if you are rich and really would like to see your dad go from 60% coherent sentences to 62%, well, then I might keep at it (and you bet your life I'll keep good data, because I don't trust you to tell the difference between those percentages). If I am a pure researcher... well, I guess I would need a more exact criterion. That is, I wouldn't ask for government money unless I expected the improvement to be at least X amount. Still though, the size of X would vary based on the population and the problem. To test strategies to reduce the rate of violent outbursts in a prison population, maybe only a small effect size would justify a massive study. I still feel like I haven't fully answered your question, but I think that is a solid start. Eric On Wed, May 5, 2010 11:16 AM, "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]> wrote: Eric CharlesExcellent! Thanks, Eric. But I still wonder why you (and Nick) have inferred that I'm talking about ethics. I'm not really interested in ethics. I'm interested in the differences between treatment that works and treatment that fails. That was my point about the JRC story. Forget the accusations that the JRC is being "cruel" or other mental hoo-ha. Focus on the JRC's response that some of their treatments have been shown to work, emphasis on the word _some_. It seems to me that there ought to be a percentage threshold where the treatment is determined not to be effective enough to continue using. E.g. let's say skin shock treatment works in 60% of cases. Then perhaps that's above the threshold and skin shock treatment should be tried, "cruel" or not. But if it only works in 20% of cases, then perhaps it shouldn't be used... or extra explicit consent has to be acquired ... or whatever. THAT'S the interesting part of the story and that's why I'd be grateful for a behaviorist response. I don't care about the ethics of the treatment. I care about the efficacy of the treatment, which is why I tried to use the word "mistreatment". You approached this with your answer to my question about Alzheimer's. But it didn't really target my question like I wanted it to. Let me try again. My experience has been that AD patients will often lash out at family members and caregivers for no obvious reason. E.g. My grandma would sometimes spit and scratch at her children when they were talking to her. Now, it's not clear to me that _any_ behaviorist technique will change this behavior. Perhaps it would, though. We could mount a skin shock backpack to someone like my grandma and shock her every time she threw her bedpan or spit on someone to see if it would work. I don't know. If we decided to do some research on AD patients to find out, at what point would we decide that some particular treatment worked? And at what point would we decide that it fails to work? When does the behaviorist "give up" and hand the problem completely over to the biologists who work on amyloid plaques? ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 05/04/2010 10:07 PM: > These are tough questions for many reasons. One is that a behaviorists > first instinct would be to wrestle with you over several of the terms. > The most explicit ethical stance I have seen a behaviorist take as a > behaviorist is Skinner's dislike of the use of punishment, which was at > least partially justified by the evidence that reinforcement will work > better at shaping behavior. That's not much, but its something. Ethics > is a tough business, and I'm not sure there has been much progress in > the last 3-4,000 years, nevertheless the last 100. > > I will say that behaviorist methods have been shown to be effective at > treating "thoughts" and "feelings". The behaviorist conceives of what > they are doing in such cases in ways most will find unintuitive, but the > techniques work irrespective (the whole philosophy vs. science > distinction). Behaviorist's CAN do things for pain management, in no > small part because behavioral control is often important in pain > control. Aside from that, nothing about behaviorism bars giving drugs, > so its not like they would say "I'm a behaviorist, I don't believe in > morphine drips." (Of course, being a behaviorist leads one to think > there are often better alternatives to drugs, but that is a different > point.) > > Overall though, I think that the distinction between mentalist and > behaviorist does not place one with specific ethical obligations any > more than a distinction between string-theorist and quantum-mechanist > has ethical implications. Sure, there are people who write as if quantum > mechanics has ethical implications (inherent uncertainty, blah, blah, > blah), but I'm not convinced it does. I suspect that it just so happens > that the same person is interested in both subjects. > > --explanation (sort-of)-- > The question of what we think people are doing when they verbally > self-report does not tell us what to do after getting the self reports, > unless we throw in lots of other rules and assumptions. When we get all > that other stuff figured out, we are likely to find that the first part > isn't as important as it initially appeared. > > For example, I like to point out to my class that the result of > introspection is what it obviously is: When you attend the things you > say to yourself, <drum roll> you find out what types of things you say > to yourself. So, the guy at the Thai restaurant asks, "How spicy do you > want it?" You think for a second and say "As high as you can go!" All I > learn from that (at best) is that you are the type of person who tells > yourself you want it as spicy as possible - I don't learn whether or not > you are ACTUALLY the type of person who likes it spicy as possible. If > it is your first time at a Thai restaurant, you might well learn > something new about yourself. > > Transport to the Alzheimer's patient. You ask "Do you know where you > are?" The patient thinks for a second and says "Yes." I assert that we > learned nothing more than that he is the type of person who tells > himself he knows where he is. In this case, I have evidence that others > agree with me. The typical follow up question is "Where are you?" Often > it is answered incorrectly. We, as outside observers of the patient's > behavior declare that he does not know where he is, despite his > insistence otherwise. > > Again, I can think of ways to take that, add other stuff, and create > ethical implicature... but on its own, I'm not sure it has much. If we > decide, for example, that we have an obligation to care for people so > damaged that they don't even know where they are... well, behaviorists > and mentalists might argue over how to tell if people know where they > are, but the eventual ethical course of action has already been laid out. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 10-05-05 02:43 PM:
> Ooooh, that is a much more specific question than it initially seemed! Yes, exactly! Imagine my surprise when ethics entered the discussion. [grin] > I suppose there is a practical answer and a philosophical answer. The > philosophical answer would set out some criterion that would be correct in some > global sense. I fear that would get us back to ethical stuff, and keep things > muddled. I think there's an answer in between... the methodological answer, which you begin to treat with your 9 (18) methods below. > Punishment (aka 'positive punishment') > Penalty (aka 'negative punishment') > Punishment by prevention (of access to other contingencies) > Differential punishment of high rates > Extinction > Differential reinforcement of low rates > Differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior > Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior > The establishing operation > > We could write an almost parallel list for methods of increasing the rates of > desirable behaviors. Such techniques are routinely used with people even with > sever Alzheimer to positive effects. Of course, whether you think increasing > the rate of coherent sentences from 30% to 60% is a miracle or just an okay job > depends on your perspective. Probably the rate of your grandmother's offensive > behaviors could have been cut in half with a pretty simple plan. Unfortunately, > the difficulties in getting every single person who goes into her room to > follow the 'pretty simple plan' can be quite difficult. For example, if we try > extinction, we might need to let her spit on us without reacting, and good luck > getting the night shift worker to follow that plan at 3 in the morning. These are the issues I was hoping to get out of the "behaviorist" response to the JRC defense. In that defense, they tout that some of their skin shock and restraint methods have worked to good effect; but they don't really talk about the numbers other than citing Carr, where _only_ 38% of the 60 no longer required skin shocks ... and anecdotal stories like those of the former JRC "students" are nice; but we need a larger sample and a method for determining successful treatments over that larger sample. In other words, I (currently) don't care whether you increase the rate of coherent sentences in my dad _alone_, regardless of whether it's 30-60% or 1-100%. What I care about is whether you increase the rate of coherent sentences in a statistically significant portion of the population of patients by X-Y%. What percentage of patients, treated with the same method (to be scientific, we must be isometric and isotemporal), in a large population, respond to the 9 (or 18) methods you list above? If you reach 50/100, do you consider that a successful behaviorist method? Or do you need more or less? My point is (somewhat obviously, I think) that it seems behaviorism is dancing around some fuzzy line between the particular and the general that many other -isms won't dance around. Hysterical (those involving hysteresis - historical dependence) systems require a certain particularness, case-study oriented, approach. And hysterical methods are often characterized as unscientific because they are so case-study driven. My questions are targeting the degree to which behaviorism is hysterical. And, finally, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the JRC is a poor example of competent behaviorism. I'm just using them because they were in the headlines. It gave me a practical reason to become interested in this otherwise filosofickle topic. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
Glen sayeth" In other words, I (currently) don't care whether ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
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Excellent! I think I'm getting the gist at this point. Thanks for the
tutelage. With the combination of what you've said, here, and that list of 9 negative methods, I have a much better sense of the domain. ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 05/05/2010 07:22 PM: > The one place where I know that statistics of the type you are > looking for exist is in areas like clinical treatment of depression. > I know that behavioral therapy (broadly construed) performs as well > or better than cognitive oriented therapies in most studies. That is, > if you take a bunch of depressed kids and put them in behavioral > therapy, you get fewer depressed kids afterwards. Of course, that is > mixing and matching theoretical approaches is potentially icky ways. > I don't know the exact stats, but I know they exist. If such stats > would answer your question, I will dredged some up. I am interested in this data; but I can hunt for it myself. If you happen across it, please forward it along; but don't go hunting for it. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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