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Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):

Abstract

The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric Charles,

As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.

You hint at something I have wondered about. Psychologists seem to have physics envy. They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible. But some (not I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of replication. I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate undergraduates with his self-perception ideas. He was also an amateur magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium full of amazed people. Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions. He must have been expelled from the magicians union.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank,
So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions that are radically different.

In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
[hidden email]

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought must not have it. I don't mean that as an insult. It's that for me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

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gepr

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Hm. Well, I've been talking about hidden states the whole time. So, I suppose you're simply not talking to me, despite having mentioned things I've said and using my name in some posts. I'll bow out.

On 5/10/20 1:44 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I offered the dead-duck vs the live-duck and Weekend at Bernie's as examples of movement that is not behavior. We can also talk about avalanches, the babbling brook, the explosion of the tree struck by lightening, the clouds blowing through the sky. The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of movement that occurs in the universe in not behavior.
>
> Also, I am exactly not talking about hidden states. We could talk about that at some point, for sure, but I wasn't talking about it before. I'm not sure what I might have said that lead you to think anything "hidden" was at issue. Certainly there are physically-internal states when we discuss organisms, but my exact point is that the phenomenon in question do not exist at that level of analysis. Back to Holt:

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Oh never mind. Forget I ever participated.

On 5/10/20 10:36 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Ok. Glen. Please, what the dickens is an "internal" state? And, once I become aware of it, does it become external?

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Prof David West

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by gepr

Suppose Nick falls out of an airplane. He moves toward the ground at an increasing, until terminal velocity, rate. This is movement. Wildly flapping his arms in hopes of evolving avian capabilities is also movement. Would both be considered behavior?

As to scale: is Brownian movement molecular behavior?

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 8:34 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire
> point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored
> distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive.
> Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*.
> Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its
> movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate
> that behavior is orthogonal to life.
>
> Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper
> subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that
> is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you
> quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category
> and celery and antennas fit right in.
>
> But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed
> intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about
> is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to
> "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order
> objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do
> that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we
> could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able
> to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can
> talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general
> *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to
> talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated
> solely from their I&O.
>
> We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the
> complexity of I⇔O maps.
>
> On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> > [...]
> > P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .-
> ... .... . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>

Prof David West

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Psi is vastly more extensive (types) and complicated than Daryl seems to recognize. Based on the abstract, his experimental method precludes the possibility of obtaining any but negative results. I would attempt to explain why, but I doubt anyone on the list is interested.

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):

Abstract
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric Charles,

As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.

You hint at something I have wondered about. Psychologists seem to have physics envy. They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible. But some (not I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of replication. I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate undergraduates with his self-perception ideas. He was also an amateur magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium full of amazed people. Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions. He must have been expelled from the magicians union.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank,
So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions that are radically different.

In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought must not have it. I don't mean that as an insult. It's that for me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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--
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

I unintentionally omitted the citation:

Citation

Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021524

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, May 11, 2020, 5:51 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Psi is vastly more extensive (types) and complicated than Daryl seems to recognize. Based on the abstract, his experimental method precludes the possibility of obtaining any but negative results. I would attempt to explain why, but I doubt anyone on the list is interested.

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):

Abstract
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric Charles,

As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.

You hint at something I have wondered about. Psychologists seem to have physics envy. They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible. But some (not I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of replication. I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate undergraduates with his self-perception ideas. He was also an amateur magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium full of amazed people. Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions. He must have been expelled from the magicians union.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank,
So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions that are radically different.

In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought must not have it. I don't mean that as an insult. It's that for me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

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thompnickson2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Eric,

I couldn’t understand the Bem abstract, and I am on YOUR side of the argument.

Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective.

Could you perhaps provide a bit of a gloss on what’s going on, here?

Are we talking, here, about déjà vu? Or are we talking about more than that? I confess that the discussion has gone faster than I have had time to follow, over the last few days, so, “Nick: Read the damned posts!” might be an appropriate response.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2020 5:51 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):

Abstract
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric Charles,

As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.

You hint at something I have wondered about. Psychologists seem to have physics envy. They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible. But some (not I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of replication. I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate undergraduates with his self-perception ideas. He was also an amateur magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium full of amazed people. Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions. He must have been expelled from the magicians union.

Frank

---
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140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank,
So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions that are radically different.

In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought must not have it. I don't mean that as an insult. It's that for me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

--
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Quite to the contrary, Bem created a huge scandal in psychology by reporting a series of such experiments that succeeded. See further discussion here:

http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-special-year-of-scandals-in.html

On Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:51 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Psi is vastly more extensive (types) and complicated than Daryl seems to recognize. Based on the abstract, his experimental method precludes the possibility of obtaining any but negative results. I would attempt to explain why, but I doubt anyone on the list is interested.

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):

Abstract
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric Charles,

As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.

You hint at something I have wondered about. Psychologists seem to have physics envy. They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible. But some (not I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of replication. I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate undergraduates with his self-perception ideas. He was also an amateur magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium full of amazed people. Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions. He must have been expelled from the magicians union.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
Frank,
So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions that are radically different.

In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought must not have it. I don't mean that as an insult. It's that for me thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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505 670-9918
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Prof David West

David,

I'm pretty sure that - in a world where we distinguish some movements as behavior and others as not behavior - Nick's falling at an accelerating speed until reaching terminal velocity is not behavior, and neither is Brownian motion. His wild flapping, however, counts. Though note the Weekend at Bernie comparison: If Nick was dead, and his falling body was strapped to someone else who was flapping, such that Nick's flapping resulted purely from the other faller's flapping... Nick's flapping would then be back in the "mere movement" bucket, while the other faller's flapping would be behavior.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 7:40 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Suppose Nick falls out of an airplane. He moves toward the ground at an increasing, until terminal velocity, rate. This is movement. Wildly flapping his arms in hopes of evolving avian capabilities is also movement. Would both be considered behavior?

As to scale: is Brownian movement molecular behavior?

davew

On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 8:34 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire
> point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored
> distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive.
> Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*.
> Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its
> movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate
> that behavior is orthogonal to life.
>
> Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper
> subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that
> is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you
> quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category
> and celery and antennas fit right in.
>
> But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed
> intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about
> is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to
> "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order
> objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do
> that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we
> could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able
> to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can
> talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general
> *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to
> talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated
> solely from their I&O.
>
> We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the
> complexity of I⇔O maps.
>
> On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> > [...]
> > P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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> ... .... . ...
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>

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen,

I'm happy to talk about the celery, so long as we all admit that all our categories have fringe cases, and that that isn't the core of the category, so it is likely to have many aspects we won't be able to understand clearly until we go back and forth to the core examples several times. Off the top of my head, I would say the movement of the water in the celery probably will not count as behavior, but that the leaf-turning probably is. Do you think something different?

Also, is there a "hidden state" of the celery we should be looking for?

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive. Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*. Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is orthogonal to life.

Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ... maybe I missed it? Anyway, that's the important category and celery and antennas fit right in.

But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness"). So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about, say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive* movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.

We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the complexity of I⇔O maps.

On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue, following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is descriptive, /not /explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.
> [...]
> P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for implications like those.

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gepr

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

OK. Thanks. I'll try again.

It's not the movement of the water that concerns me as much of the movement of the *cells* that cause the movement of the water. If we can credibly talk about pond scum behaving, then we can talk about a) individual cellular behavior and b) tissue behavior. This is why I insist on talking about scale.

When you look at the stick of clipped celery sitting in the colored water, a coarse scale of the behavior is the change in color. A finer-grained scale is the tissue behavior. An even finer-grained scale is the cellular behavior. When you look at it with your naked eye, you cannot see the latter two, but you can see the 1st one. So, the latter two are *hidden*. (I don't want to play word games around "state"... so if you like "process" or "whateverwordyouwant", then fine.) But the point is that there is something *inside* the celery that you cannot see with your naked eye. Change the measuring instrument, and you change what's hidden. E.g. with a magnifying glass, you can see the color change and may be able to see the water moving and *maybe* even the tissue behavior, depending, but you still won't see the cellular behavior. With a high-power microscope, you'll be able to see the cellular behavior and, depending, maybe the color and the tissue.

It is that sort of conversation that has to happen when we talk about "thinking", "feeling", and "consciousness".

The assertion you made was: "there are no valid questions about psychology that are not properly understood as empirical questions about behavior." -- On 5/4/20 5:20 PM

I agree completely. But what you ignored or assumed in your statement was SCALE. The question in the context of the celery is: Are there valid questions about the tissue or cellular behavior that can be properly understood in terms of the naked eye visible behavior? I'd argue *yes*. Just because the tissue and cellular behavior are hidden does not mean you can't formulate (proper) questions about that finer-grained scale behavior. In fact, that's a huge component of science. Similarly, just because there are hidden parts of the human (e.g. thinking) that may be hidden given our current measuring devices, does not mean we can't (properly) formulate hypotheses about that hidden behavior.

Further, we don't necessarily *need* high-power measuring devices in order to accumulate evidence for a given hypothesis about those hidden behaviors. We can falsify and accumulate evidence for *hidden* behavior that we can't *directly* measure with a device. And *that's* where my proposal to look at compression, state-space reconstruction, entropy, (apparent) randomness, etc. enter the rhetoric.

On 5/11/20 2:46 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Off the top of my head, I would say the movement of the water in the celery probably will not count as behavior, but that the leaf-turning probably is. Do you think something different?
>
> Also, is there a "hidden state" of the celery we should be looking for?

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jon zingale

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Glen, Eric,

I am enjoying how the conversation is developing. The celery

example strikes me as being important, but where Glen refers

to scale I would speak of domain of definition. That a shift in

domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual

specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case

Glen, please let me know. With respect to Eric's points it seems

fair to me to say that a paddle wheel is behaving, but perhaps not

in the larger context of the river. The celery is behaving, but not

not in the smaller context of capillary action. Here I am using

the language of large and small, but perhaps other modalities

have a place as well. One can say Nick's behavior appears

spontaneously, but in fact was necessitated by something prior.

Here an earlier Nick could play the role of the river.

Frank,

Would you say that the mind is as public as RSA encryption?

gepr

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Yes, you're right. Scale is merely one parameter by which the domain can be shifted. The only problem is that "domain" is a pretty abstract concept. So choosing a concrete example (like scale) helps move the discussion along without getting too caught up in the generalization. This bears directly on the hedging Nick shows with "internal states" and I suspect lingers with the word "hidden". Why some thing/process/state/behavior is hidden shouldn't get in the way of recognizing that it's hidden. It can be hidden by the perspective (I can't see that far) or by definition ("There are many like it, but this one is mine.") or standard control theory unreachability or the complexity of the gen-phen map or whatever. And too much talk of the abstraction (domain) allows the conversation to blossom in too many ambiguous directions. But once the particular examples are well-handled, the abstraction is necessary in order to make the full point (a kind of holographic principle).

On 5/12/20 9:58 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> but where Glen refers
> to /scale/ I would speak of /domain of definition/. That a shift in
> domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual
> specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case
> Glen, please let me know.

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Less public. Last I heard with fMRI they might be able to detect that you're thinking of a coffee cup. I rarely think of cups. Could the detect that I was thinking of a covariant tensor?

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On Tue, May 12, 2020, 10:58 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen, Eric,

I am enjoying how the conversation is developing. The celery
example strikes me as being important, but where Glen refers
to scale I would speak of domain of definition. That a shift in
domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual
specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case
Glen, please let me know. With respect to Eric's points it seems
fair to me to say that a paddle wheel is behaving, but perhaps not
in the larger context of the river. The celery is behaving, but not
not in the smaller context of capillary action. Here I am using
the language of large and small, but perhaps other modalities
have a place as well. One can say Nick's behavior appears
spontaneously, but in fact was necessitated by something prior.
Here an earlier Nick could play the role of the river.

Frank,
Would you say that the mind is as public as RSA encryption?
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen,

That is excellent! However, I think it brings us back to the problem of starting with borderline examples.

I might be willing to talk about pond scum behaving, but certainly not without further analysis. Did we agree to use Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from mere movement? If so, we can evaluate whether the cells in the celery or the tissues are "behaving." I think both are unlikely to make the cut, but, as with the pond scum, I'm willing to be convinced. The issue isn't size/scale, the issue is how to properly describe the movements in question. What is the goal of the celery cell? How does the celery cell vary its movements to accomplish that goal? Please feel free to speculate for now, if necessary... so long as everything you speculate can, in principle, be confirmed or refuted by experiment.

Remember, in a casual conversation, you could talk about the "behavior" of a rock rolling down a hill, the "behavior" of the planets in the sky, the "behavior" of a stream, etc., etc. But once we start trying to be rigorous with our terms, that stops working pretty quickly. The same restriction happens with the central terms of all sciences.

The issue of what is or is not "hidden" is a different issue from "scale", so I'm not sure where to go in regards to that part of your comment. In the way of thinking Nick and I are talking advancing, small behaviors definitely still count as behaviors, including ones you would need a microscope to detect. Those are still in-principle visible. You could construct Holt's base example of behavior with well under 100 cells for the whole organism.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 10:24 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

OK. Thanks. I'll try again.

It's not the movement of the water that concerns me as much of the movement of the *cells* that cause the movement of the water. If we can credibly talk about pond scum behaving, then we can talk about a) individual cellular behavior and b) tissue behavior. This is why I insist on talking about scale.

When you look at the stick of clipped celery sitting in the colored water, a coarse scale of the behavior is the change in color. A finer-grained scale is the tissue behavior. An even finer-grained scale is the cellular behavior. When you look at it with your naked eye, you cannot see the latter two, but you can see the 1st one. So, the latter two are *hidden*. (I don't want to play word games around "state"... so if you like "process" or "whateverwordyouwant", then fine.) But the point is that there is something *inside* the celery that you cannot see with your naked eye. Change the measuring instrument, and you change what's hidden. E.g. with a magnifying glass, you can see the color change and may be able to see the water moving and *maybe* even the tissue behavior, depending, but you still won't see the cellular behavior. With a high-power microscope, you'll be able to see the cellular behavior and, depending, maybe the color and the tissue.

It is that sort of conversation that has to happen when we talk about "thinking", "feeling", and "consciousness".

The assertion you made was: "there are no valid questions about psychology that are not properly understood as empirical questions about behavior." -- On 5/4/20 5:20 PM

I agree completely. But what you ignored or assumed in your statement was SCALE. The question in the context of the celery is: Are there valid questions about the tissue or cellular behavior that can be properly understood in terms of the naked eye visible behavior? I'd argue *yes*. Just because the tissue and cellular behavior are hidden does not mean you can't formulate (proper) questions about that finer-grained scale behavior. In fact, that's a huge component of science. Similarly, just because there are hidden parts of the human (e.g. thinking) that may be hidden given our current measuring devices, does not mean we can't (properly) formulate hypotheses about that hidden behavior.

Further, we don't necessarily *need* high-power measuring devices in order to accumulate evidence for a given hypothesis about those hidden behaviors. We can falsify and accumulate evidence for *hidden* behavior that we can't *directly* measure with a device. And *that's* where my proposal to look at compression, state-space reconstruction, entropy, (apparent) randomness, etc. enter the rhetoric.

On 5/11/20 2:46 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Off the top of my head, I would say the movement of the water in the celery probably will not count as behavior, but that the leaf-turning probably is. Do you think something different?
>
> Also, is there a "hidden state" of the celery we should be looking for?

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Frank,

Well.... I think conclusions drawn from fMRI results are dramatically overblown, but the results themselves are mostly decent.... but if we side-step that discussion to focus on your broader question as I understand it:

If you, personally, did the type of experiment that got that result, but use thought of a covariant tensors instead of cups at every appropriate point, then yes, you would probably end up with a highly-constrained multi-variate regression equation that could do a pretty good job predicting whether or not you were thinking of a covariant tensor during a given trial.

Of course, you couldn't use a typical college freshman for that experiment, which makes it a lot harder to do the work, and the result wouldn't get as much press afterwards, which makes it harder to find a researcher willing to put in the effort. ;- )

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 1:45 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Less public. Last I heard with fMRI they might be able to detect that you're thinking of a coffee cup. I rarely think of cups. Could the detect that I was thinking of a covariant tensor?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, May 12, 2020, 10:58 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
Glen, Eric,

I am enjoying how the conversation is developing. The celery
example strikes me as being important, but where Glen refers
to scale I would speak of domain of definition. That a shift in
domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual
specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case
Glen, please let me know. With respect to Eric's points it seems
fair to me to say that a paddle wheel is behaving, but perhaps not
in the larger context of the river. The celery is behaving, but not
not in the smaller context of capillary action. Here I am using
the language of large and small, but perhaps other modalities
have a place as well. One can say Nick's behavior appears
spontaneously, but in fact was necessitated by something prior.
Here an earlier Nick could play the role of the river.

Frank,
Would you say that the mind is as public as RSA encryption?
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Jon,

This is a great expansion of the issue, and it might take me a bit to build up to an adequate response.

You are definitely right that "scale" is one of many dimensions we might look at when evaluating whether or not something is a behavior. The evaluation of whether or not something is behaving involves comparisons, and those comparisons have to be "fair" in some sense that suggests a "domain". For example, if we drop a dead duck out a window, and then agree that falling in that fashion does not evidence behavior, we wouldn't want to then move to a coin-drop in water (where the coin spins and slides erratically, moving down at various speeds) and assert the coin was alive because it's movement didn't look like the dead-duck's movement.

Does that get us anywhere?

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 12:58 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen, Eric,

I am enjoying how the conversation is developing. The celery
example strikes me as being important, but where Glen refers
to scale I would speak of domain of definition. That a shift in
domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual
specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case
Glen, please let me know. With respect to Eric's points it seems
fair to me to say that a paddle wheel is behaving, but perhaps not
in the larger context of the river. The celery is behaving, but not
not in the smaller context of capillary action. Here I am using
the language of large and small, but perhaps other modalities
have a place as well. One can say Nick's behavior appears
spontaneously, but in fact was necessitated by something prior.
Here an earlier Nick could play the role of the river.

Frank,
Would you say that the mind is as public as RSA encryption?
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gepr

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

I think Jon's contribution (and my response) argue that the entire space can be spanned by such domain specifiers. So, I don't think we're dealing with borderline examples, only examples that demonstrate the spanning.

I don't think agree with Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from movement. The example of the antenna (or *any* passive and maybe even purely *reactive*) demonstrates that such things behave. The passive and reactive sense of behaving is necessary for me in order to get at the hidden states, memory-laden, hysterical (hysteretical?), processes I think we need in order to approach human thought. If, e.g. an inductor, can be considered "behaving" according to Holt's criteria, then it might be OK. But if an inductor's or capacitor's behavior is classified as "mere movement", then no, I disagree.

It's good to hear that you're willing to allow behavior *composition* (e.g. cellular behavior composes into tissue behavior composes into object behavior). But I reject the concept of "in principle visible". We either have a seeing-device or we don't. And if we don't have the device with which to measure it, then it's not directly [†] measurable. (Now, as I've implied before, we can *indirectly* measure something that's hidden. That's what I'd like to eventually talk about. We can indirectly measure celery cell behavior by watching the color. We can indirectly measure someone's thoughts by EEG ... or asking them questions. But those things are still hidden, not directly measurable.) Your holographic principle asserts that there is a *bound* (or limit) to the spanning parameter such that any hypothetical thing beyond it, hidden, is "invalid". (The analogy is to the Bekenstein bound, if I understand that correctly.) In your language, you might say that talking about anything inside the bound is "invalid", whereas talking about things outside the bound is "understood as empirical questions about behavior". My contribution is simply to formulate this so that it can apply across the board, everywhere, to antennas and humans. And if I'm lucky, we might be able to start arguing about *where* that bound/limit lies.

And, again Jon's contribution demonstrates that at least the celery (organism-eye, tissue-scope, cell-scope) example *is* about scale. But not all hiding need be about scale.

[†] I imagine there's an argument waiting for me out there that I'm kicking the can down the road with "direct" and "indirect". But we can define a graph/network of transformations and a hop number across those transformations. By that, we can define a "distance" between the measuring device (e.g. eyeball) and the thing measured (e.g. cells). The greater that distance, the more indirect it is, the more hidden the target is. Another way to demonstrate this point would be to say something like some microscopes are more powerful than others, or some telescopes allow you to see further than others. The hiddenness, directness, hop distance is described by these words "power" and "further".

[‡] Of course, Jon's generalization to domains also allows discrete/disjoint domains that can't be spanned by a continuous thing like a scalar. It opens us up to, say, changing types or even changing the entire algebra. And that might be required to capture the historicity, stigmergy, developmental trajectory of an individual human. E.g. Nick can't continuously turn some knob like scale to get to Frank's perspective. He'd have to change the whole universe of discourse (domain) in order to do that. But if I can't even get others to understand hiddenness of scale, there's no way in Hell I'll be able to get someone to understand the hiddenness of more radical domain changes.

On 5/12/20 3:51 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> That is excellent! However, I think it brings us back to the problem of starting with borderline examples.
>
> I /might /be willing to talk about pond scum behaving, but certainly not without further analysis. Did we agree to use Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from mere movement? If so, we can evaluate whether the cells in the celery or the tissues are "behaving." I think both are unlikely to make the cut, but, as with the pond scum, I'm willing to be convinced. The issue isn't size/scale, the issue is how to properly describe the movements in question. What is the goal of the celery cell? How does the celery cell vary its movements to accomplish that goal? Please feel free to speculate for now, if necessary... so long as everything you speculate can, in principle, be confirmed or refuted by experiment.
>
> Remember, in a casual conversation, you could talk about the "behavior" of a rock rolling down a hill, the "behavior" of the planets in the sky, the "behavior" of a stream, etc., etc. But once we start trying to be rigorous with our terms, that stops working pretty quickly. The same restriction happens with the central terms of all sciences.
>
> The issue of what is or is not "hidden" is a different issue from "scale", so I'm not sure where to go in regards to that part of your comment. In the way of thinking Nick and I are talking advancing, small behaviors definitely still count as behaviors, including ones you would need a microscope to detect. Those are still in-principle visible. You could construct Holt's base example of behavior with well under 100 cells for the whole organism.

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Ok.... so how do we distinguish behavior from non-behavior movements within the system you are proposing? In what way do we distinguish the dead duck from the living duck? Or, to stick with the example you prefer, the changing color of the celery from the changing color of a paper towel placed part-way into the same solution?

I'm also not sure what you mean to refer to with "holographic principle." My assertion is that psychologists are not, in their basic activity, trying to infer about internal processes. That claim is similar to the claim that chemists are not, in their basic activity, trying to infer about the inside of atoms. Or that Newton, in formulating his physics, was not trying to infer about the inside of planets. The phenomenon in question can be taken apart if you want, but that is a fundamentally different path of inquiry. A rabbit trying to escape a fox is made up of cells, but the cracking open its skulls and looking inside won't tell you that it is trying to escape the fox. The trying-to-escape is not inside it's head, it is in the rabbit's behavior relative to the fox, and can be observed. When someone says "Hey, come quick! Look, that rabbit is trying to get away from that fox!", they are not making some mysterious inference about a hidden state within the rabbit, they are describing what they are observing.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 8:10 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I think Jon's contribution (and my response) argue that the entire space can be spanned by such domain specifiers. So, I don't think we're dealing with borderline examples, only examples that demonstrate the spanning.

I don't think agree with Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from movement. The example of the antenna (or *any* passive and maybe even purely *reactive*) demonstrates that such things behave. The passive and reactive sense of behaving is necessary for me in order to get at the hidden states, memory-laden, hysterical (hysteretical?), processes I think we need in order to approach human thought. If, e.g. an inductor, can be considered "behaving" according to Holt's criteria, then it might be OK. But if an inductor's or capacitor's behavior is classified as "mere movement", then no, I disagree.

It's good to hear that you're willing to allow behavior *composition* (e.g. cellular behavior composes into tissue behavior composes into object behavior). But I reject the concept of "in principle visible". We either have a seeing-device or we don't. And if we don't have the device with which to measure it, then it's not directly [†] measurable. (Now, as I've implied before, we can *indirectly* measure something that's hidden. That's what I'd like to eventually talk about. We can indirectly measure celery cell behavior by watching the color. We can indirectly measure someone's thoughts by EEG ... or asking them questions. But those things are still hidden, not directly measurable.) Your holographic principle asserts that there is a *bound* (or limit) to the spanning parameter such that any hypothetical thing beyond it, hidden, is "invalid". (The analogy is to the Bekenstein bound, if I understand that correctly.) In your language, you might say that talking about anything inside the bound is "invalid", whereas talking about things outside the bound is "understood as empirical questions about behavior". My contribution is simply to formulate this so that it can apply across the board, everywhere, to antennas and humans. And if I'm lucky, we might be able to start arguing about *where* that bound/limit lies.

And, again Jon's contribution demonstrates that at least the celery (organism-eye, tissue-scope, cell-scope) example *is* about scale. But not all hiding need be about scale.

[†] I imagine there's an argument waiting for me out there that I'm kicking the can down the road with "direct" and "indirect". But we can define a graph/network of transformations and a hop number across those transformations. By that, we can define a "distance" between the measuring device (e.g. eyeball) and the thing measured (e.g. cells). The greater that distance, the more indirect it is, the more hidden the target is. Another way to demonstrate this point would be to say something like some microscopes are more powerful than others, or some telescopes allow you to see further than others. The hiddenness, directness, hop distance is described by these words "power" and "further".

[‡] Of course, Jon's generalization to domains also allows discrete/disjoint domains that can't be spanned by a continuous thing like a scalar. It opens us up to, say, changing types or even changing the entire algebra. And that might be required to capture the historicity, stigmergy, developmental trajectory of an individual human. E.g. Nick can't continuously turn some knob like scale to get to Frank's perspective. He'd have to change the whole universe of discourse (domain) in order to do that. But if I can't even get others to understand hiddenness of scale, there's no way in Hell I'll be able to get someone to understand the hiddenness of more radical domain changes.

On 5/12/20 3:51 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> That is excellent! However, I think it brings us back to the problem of starting with borderline examples.
>
> I /might /be willing to talk about pond scum behaving, but certainly not without further analysis. Did we agree to use Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from mere movement? If so, we can evaluate whether the cells in the celery or the tissues are "behaving." I think both are unlikely to make the cut, but, as with the pond scum, I'm willing to be convinced. The issue isn't size/scale, the issue is how to properly describe the movements in question. What is the goal of the celery cell? How does the celery cell vary its movements to accomplish that goal? Please feel free to speculate for now, if necessary... so long as everything you speculate can, in principle, be confirmed or refuted by experiment.
>
> Remember, in a casual conversation, you could talk about the "behavior" of a rock rolling down a hill, the "behavior" of the planets in the sky, the "behavior" of a stream, etc., etc. But once we start trying to be rigorous with our terms, that stops working pretty quickly. The same restriction happens with the central terms of all sciences.
>
> The issue of what is or is not "hidden" is a different issue from "scale", so I'm not sure where to go in regards to that part of your comment. In the way of thinking Nick and I are talking advancing, small behaviors definitely still count as behaviors, including ones you would need a microscope to detect. Those are still in-principle visible. You could construct Holt's base example of behavior with well under 100 cells for the whole organism.

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thompnickson2

Re: Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

In reply to this post by gepr

Hi, everybody,

This has been one heluva discussion, and, given the brush-back I got from Glen a couple of days ago, I thought I had better stay out of it unless I could really throw myself into it, and I have been tied up with other things. It's the kind of conversation that makes me thing we really ought to be writing a book. The perspectives I get out of reading what you write I get nowhere else in the world.

At the risk of getting my ears boxed again, I would like to highlight the passage below. It is for me the crux of one of the matters we are discussing here. What a colleague of mine used to call "interiority".

But I reject the concept of "in principle visible". We either have a seeing-device or we don't. And if we don't have the device with which to measure it, then it's not directly [†] measurable. (Now, as I've implied before, we can *indirectly* measure something that's hidden. That's what I'd like to eventually talk about.

Visible, here, is, I take it, a metaphor. I reject, I think, the fundamental notion of “hidden” and perhaps of the entire black box idea. The trouble with the black box model is that it implies that we experience the outside of the box directly but have to infer what we learn about the insides of the box. But all experience is the product of inference, including everything we know about the outside of the box as well as everything we know about the inside of the box. To say that some inferences are to inner things and some to outer things is to say SOMETHING, but I have never understood exactly what. What is this dimension of “interiority”? Does it refer to anything except our difficulty at getting at whatever we take ourselves to be talking about? And is talk about the mind as inner (and the hard problem, and all that) just the foolish abduction that just because the brain is hidden by the skull, and the mind is hidden by it’s conceptual obscurity, the latter must be the “seat” of the former?

I still don’t have the ability to dig into the 50 excellent posts that we have made on this subject to try and articulate the positions and to understand particularly those posts that appeal at length to computation talk. I suspect that Glen is saying something quite similar but more precise than what I have said above. But, if it’s not the same, I would recommend that before we talk about how we are to “indirectly” measure the “inner”, that we come to some sort of understanding of what it is to say that something is inner. What are the rules by which we deploy this metaphor. What implications of it are essential, of which confirmation is required for us even to use the metaphor. And what heuristic value does the metaphor offer.

I hope I have not blotted my copybook again. In any case, keep heating this iron and hammering away at it, until you get into shape.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 6:10 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

I don't think agree with Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from movement. The example of the antenna (or *any* passive and maybe even purely *reactive*) demonstrates that such things behave. The passive and reactive sense of behaving is necessary for me in order to get at the hidden states, memory-laden, hysterical (hysteretical?), processes I think we need in order to approach human thought. If, e.g. an inductor, can be considered "behaving" according to Holt's criteria, then it might be OK. But if an inductor's or capacitor's behavior is classified as "mere movement", then no, I disagree.

It's good to hear that you're willing to allow behavior *composition* (e.g. cellular behavior composes into tissue behavior composes into object behavior). But I reject the concept of "in principle visible". We either have a seeing-device or we don't. And if we don't have the device with which to measure it, then it's not directly [†] measurable. (Now, as I've implied before, we can *indirectly* measure something that's hidden. That's what I'd like to eventually talk about. We can indirectly measure celery cell behavior by watching the color. We can indirectly measure someone's thoughts by EEG ... or asking them questions. But those things are still hidden, not directly measurable.) Your holographic principle asserts that there is a *bound* (or limit) to the spanning parameter such that any hypothetical thing beyond it, hidden, is "invalid". (The analogy is to the Bekenstein bound, if I understand that correctly.) In your language, you might say that talking about anything inside the bound is "invalid", whereas talking about things outside the bound is "understood as empirical questions about behavior". My contribution is simply to formulate this so that it can apply across the board, everywhere, to antennas and humans. And if I'm lucky, we might be able to start arguing about *where* that bound/limit lies.

And, again Jon's contribution demonstrates that at least the celery (organism-eye, tissue-scope, cell-scope) example *is* about scale. But not all hiding need be about scale.

[†] I imagine there's an argument waiting for me out there that I'm kicking the can down the road with "direct" and "indirect". But we can define a graph/network of transformations and a hop number across those transformations. By that, we can define a "distance" between the measuring device (e.g. eyeball) and the thing measured (e.g. cells). The greater that distance, the more indirect it is, the more hidden the target is. Another way to demonstrate this point would be to say something like some microscopes are more powerful than others, or some telescopes allow you to see further than others. The hiddenness, directness, hop distance is described by these words "power" and "further".

[‡] Of course, Jon's generalization to domains also allows discrete/disjoint domains that can't be spanned by a continuous thing like a scalar. It opens us up to, say, changing types or even changing the entire algebra. And that might be required to capture the historicity, stigmergy, developmental trajectory of an individual human. E.g. Nick can't continuously turn some knob like scale to get to Frank's perspective. He'd have to change the whole universe of discourse (domain) in order to do that. But if I can't even get others to understand hiddenness of scale, there's no way in Hell I'll be able to get someone to understand the hiddenness of more radical domain changes.

On 5/12/20 3:51 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

> That is excellent! However, I think it brings us back to the problem

> of starting with borderline examples.

> I /might /be willing to talk about pond scum behaving, but certainly

> not without further analysis. Did we agree to use Holt's criteria for distinguishing behavior from mere movement? If so, we can evaluate whether the cells in the celery or the tissues are "behaving." I think both are unlikely to make the cut, but, as with the pond scum, I'm willing to be convinced. The issue isn't size/scale, the issue is how to properly describe the movements in question. What is the goal of the celery cell? How does the celery cell vary its movements to accomplish that goal? Please feel free to speculate for now, if necessary... so long as everything you speculate can, in principle, be confirmed or refuted by experiment.

> Remember, in a casual conversation, you could talk about the

> "behavior" of a rock rolling down a hill, the "behavior" of the planets in the sky, the "behavior" of a stream, etc., etc. But once we start trying to be rigorous with our terms, that stops working pretty quickly. The same restriction happens with the central terms of all sciences.

> The issue of what is or is not "hidden" is a different issue from "scale", so I'm not sure where to go in regards to that part of your comment. In the way of thinking Nick and I are talking advancing, small behaviors definitely still count as behaviors, including ones you would need a microscope to detect. Those are still in-principle visible. You could construct Holt's base example of behavior with well under 100 cells for the whole organism.

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