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

[Eric Charles-2]

Jon,

"Decide" is a weird way to put it.

Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", and we also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely not momentum. 

Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we already covered, that distinction isn't just a matter of falling, because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck. 

Note that, if you aren't interested in that distinction that is a different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. 

Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. 

In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning our wheels. 

 

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric,

I have some concern that once we decide the dead duck was not behaving,

that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to

apply the verb flailing to the coin except perhaps in a moment of poetry.

This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might

be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,

which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave

meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate

to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, behavior?

Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose

behavior it would be?

Frank,

Thank you for mentioning covariant tensors, I enjoyed walking

around my neighborhood thinking of them and of a response to you.

While it seems to me that a coffee cup is less abstract than a covariant

tensor, the latter isn't free of material or phenomenal foundation. If I

witness a grade schooler attempting to pushforward what I know to be

a covariant tensor, then I know that they are not likely thinking about a

covariant tensor, even if they wished that they were. If on the other hand,

they were clear on pullingback whatever it is they believed acted like a

covariant tensor, then I would likely believe they had a covariant tensor

in mind. Where the coffee cup, arguably is just a thing. A covariant

tensor is a thing which obeys strict rules of behavior. For example, while

I could use a coffee cup as a hammer, I am not convinced that I could

use a covariant tensor as a hammer. It may be the case that to resolve a

covariant tensor with an fMRI, we would need to witness one thinking of

a covariant tensor through time.

Glen,

Maybe we could also use the term bracketed for those things which

we wish to keep outside of the Bekenstein bound. Like yourself, I am

not really a stickler for what terms we use. I would and have claimed

that this is how the inductor behaves in this circuit while explaining

to family or friends how one of my synthesizers works. What I would

like to glean in the context of this conversation is whether or not this

attribution to the inductor is a metaphor. If it is a metaphor here, then

I would like to understand why.

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[gepr]

FWIW, I've found this concept very helpful for such considerations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey_sentence

On 5/14/20 9:57 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

> Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", /and /we also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant
> unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely /not /momentum. 
>
> Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we already covered, that distinction isn't /just /a matter of falling, because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck. 
>
> Note that, if you aren't interested in /that /distinction that is a different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. 
>
> Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. 
>
> In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning our wheels.
>
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
>     Eric,
>     I have some concern that once we /decide/ the dead duck was not behaving,
>     that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to
>     apply the verb /flailing/ to the coin except perhaps in a moment of poetry.
>     This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might
>     be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,
>     which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave
>     meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate
>     to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, behavior?
>     Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose
>     behavior it would be?

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[thompnickson2]

Jon and cottonwood seeds,

 

See, that’s why I want to talk about tornadoes.  We need to know the point of view from which you are viewing the seed before we say that it is behaving.  So if we limit our view to the motions of the seed, we might want to say that it is behaving.  We might later account, through intricate micro dopplar radar that it’s motions are entirely accountable to eddies in the wind.  This discovery, on my account, would be an explanation of its behavior, not a demonstration that it is not behaving. 

 

Why does nobody want to talk about tornadoes?

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

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

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2020 10:57 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

 

Jon,

"Decide" is a weird way to put it.

 

Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", and we also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely not momentum. 

 

Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we already covered, that distinction isn't just a matter of falling, because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck. 

 

Note that, if you aren't interested in that distinction that is a different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. 

 

Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. 

 

In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning our wheels. 

 

-----------

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

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric,

I have some concern that once we decide the dead duck was not behaving,

that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to

apply the verb flailing to the coin except perhaps in a moment of poetry.

This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might

be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,

which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave

meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate

to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, behavior?

Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose

behavior it would be?

 

Frank,

Thank you for mentioning covariant tensors, I enjoyed walking

around my neighborhood thinking of them and of a response to you.

While it seems to me that a coffee cup is less abstract than a covariant

tensor, the latter isn't free of material or phenomenal foundation. If I

witness a grade schooler attempting to pushforward what I know to be

a covariant tensor, then I know that they are not likely thinking about a

covariant tensor, even if they wished that they were. If on the other hand,

they were clear on pullingback whatever it is they believed acted like a

covariant tensor, then I would likely believe they had a covariant tensor

in mind. Where the coffee cup, arguably is just a thing. A covariant

tensor is a thing which obeys strict rules of behavior. For example, while

I could use a coffee cup as a hammer, I am not convinced that I could

use a covariant tensor as a hammer. It may be the case that to resolve a

covariant tensor with an fMRI, we would need to witness one thinking of

a covariant tensor through time.

 

Glen,

Maybe we could also use the term bracketed for those things which

we wish to keep outside of the Bekenstein bound. Like yourself, I am

not really a stickler for what terms we use. I would and have claimed

that this is how the inductor behaves in this circuit while explaining

to family or friends how one of my synthesizers works. What I would

like to glean in the context of this conversation is whether or not this

attribution to the inductor is a metaphor. If it is a metaphor here, then

I would like to understand why.

 

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[jon zingale]

Eric,

I mean to use the word decide in a similar way that I might

use the word fix or given. While you may find my usage strange,

I am not sure that my goals are all that different from your own.

If we choose to progress with the conversation, and to develop

models/linguistic frameworks/science, I agree that we are likely

going to need to fix, decide, or set as given some ideas.

My son, Tycho, is named after the geocentricist whose incorrect

assumptions and careful observations paved the way to a more

correct understanding of the cosmos. In these conversations, I am

more interested in the models we build than the reality described.

Tycho is still in his first two months of life and still has his

Moro reflex. My concern with the falling coin and the maple seedpods

examples is connected to my witnessing these reflexes. I suspect we

would agree that the reflex is a behavior exhibited by Tycho and yet

it may be of a different type than Nick's flailing. Perhaps the model

we create here will not be adequate to answer such questions. This

will be ok with me. Again, I am interested in models on their own

merit. In theory, I could be interested enough in whatever distinctions

we wish to make. Please understand that my probing is an attempt

to elucidate what will be our collective notion of behavior.

Glen,

Thank you for hearing my point about domains and elaborating to

include a discussion of where pathologies like assumed continuity

(for instance) can sneak in. If we agree that a coil of wire behaves

like an inductor and that this is not a metaphor, I am ok with this.

To some extent I am also probing Eric for his feeling about this.

I project that his interest in behavior is motivated by his interest

in animals, Eric writes as motivating questions: "Why did he do

that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder

"Why is he angry at me?". I thought it would be helpful if we

lay those cards-on-the-table.

From my perspective, it is fine to talk about the wire as an inductor,

a capacitor and a resistor in nearly every physical instance. It appears

to me that what concepts we import are a matter of what concepts we

wish to describe. Providing a mechanism for reasoning about domains,

I feel frees us to, OTOH, determine when we are talking past on another,

and OTO, acknowledge the power of parallax when we move between

domains. Additionally, I appreciate that you explicitly introduced topology

and measure into the discussion. It is good for me to be reminded that

spaces more-often-than-not are far from Hausdorff and that questions of

boundaries, cut-points and openness are subtle. I wish to state here a perspective

that I assume you share, that these topological considerations were born in

pure mathematics but exist to aid our understanding of lived experience.

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[gepr]

Yes! Just like with the Ramsey sentence ... and pretty much every concept I'm incompetent to apply in its proper context but can *pretend* to understand well enough to sharpen my behavior (Ha!). I often wonder which came first, though, the intuitive concept or the mathematical concept ... dovetailing with Steve's threads on Mu and inspiration. I'm sure it differs for each case.

On 5/14/20 11:40 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> I wish to state here a perspective
> that I assume you share, that these topological considerations were born in
> pure mathematics but exist to aid our understanding of lived experience.


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[Prof David West]

Eric said: "Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic ... But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force."

We need to nail down the metaphors: momentum, mass, velocity, constant, force, not to mention, particle, wave, string, quantum, atom. et. al.

davew

On Thu, May 14, 2020, at 10:57 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

Jon,

"Decide" is a weird way to put it.

Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", and we also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely not momentum. 

Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we already covered, that distinction isn't just a matter of falling, because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck. 

Note that, if you aren't interested in that distinction that is a different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. 

Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. 

In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning our wheels. 

 

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric,

I have some concern that once we decide the dead duck was not behaving,

that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to

apply the verb flailing to the coin except perhaps in a moment of poetry.

This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might

be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,

which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave

meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate

to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, behavior?

Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose

behavior it would be?

Frank,

Thank you for mentioning covariant tensors, I enjoyed walking

around my neighborhood thinking of them and of a response to you.

While it seems to me that a coffee cup is less abstract than a covariant

tensor, the latter isn't free of material or phenomenal foundation. If I

witness a grade schooler attempting to pushforward what I know to be

a covariant tensor, then I know that they are not likely thinking about a

covariant tensor, even if they wished that they were. If on the other hand,

they were clear on pullingback whatever it is they believed acted like a

covariant tensor, then I would likely believe they had a covariant tensor

in mind. Where the coffee cup, arguably is just a thing. A covariant

tensor is a thing which obeys strict rules of behavior. For example, while

I could use a coffee cup as a hammer, I am not convinced that I could

use a covariant tensor as a hammer. It may be the case that to resolve a

covariant tensor with an fMRI, we would need to witness one thinking of

a covariant tensor through time.

Glen,

Maybe we could also use the term bracketed for those things which

we wish to keep outside of the Bekenstein bound. Like yourself, I am

not really a stickler for what terms we use. I would and have claimed

that this is how the inductor behaves in this circuit while explaining

to family or friends how one of my synthesizers works. What I would

like to glean in the context of this conversation is whether or not this

attribution to the inductor is a metaphor. If it is a metaphor here, then

I would like to understand why.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

"We need to nail down the metaphors: momentum, mass, velocity, constant, force, not to mention, particle, wave, string, quantum, atom. et. al."

My dad was a member of a team that designed and built nuclear submarines successfully.  I wonder if they realized they were working with metaphors.

Frank

On Thu, May 14, 2020, 3:58 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric said: "Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic ... But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force."

We need to nail down the metaphors: momentum, mass, velocity, constant, force, not to mention, particle, wave, string, quantum, atom. et. al.

davew

On Thu, May 14, 2020, at 10:57 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

Jon,

"Decide" is a weird way to put it.

Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", and we also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely not momentum. 

Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we already covered, that distinction isn't just a matter of falling, because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck. 

Note that, if you aren't interested in that distinction that is a different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. 

Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. 

In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning our wheels. 

 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.

Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric,

I have some concern that once we decide the dead duck was not behaving,

that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to

apply the verb flailing to the coin except perhaps in a moment of poetry.

This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might

be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,

which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave

meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate

to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, behavior?

Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose

behavior it would be?

Frank,

Thank you for mentioning covariant tensors, I enjoyed walking

around my neighborhood thinking of them and of a response to you.

While it seems to me that a coffee cup is less abstract than a covariant

tensor, the latter isn't free of material or phenomenal foundation. If I

witness a grade schooler attempting to pushforward what I know to be

a covariant tensor, then I know that they are not likely thinking about a

covariant tensor, even if they wished that they were. If on the other hand,

they were clear on pullingback whatever it is they believed acted like a

covariant tensor, then I would likely believe they had a covariant tensor

in mind. Where the coffee cup, arguably is just a thing. A covariant

tensor is a thing which obeys strict rules of behavior. For example, while

I could use a coffee cup as a hammer, I am not convinced that I could

use a covariant tensor as a hammer. It may be the case that to resolve a

covariant tensor with an fMRI, we would need to witness one thinking of

a covariant tensor through time.

Glen,

Maybe we could also use the term bracketed for those things which

we wish to keep outside of the Bekenstein bound. Like yourself, I am

not really a stickler for what terms we use. I would and have claimed

that this is how the inductor behaves in this circuit while explaining

to family or friends how one of my synthesizers works. What I would

like to glean in the context of this conversation is whether or not this

attribution to the inductor is a metaphor. If it is a metaphor here, then

I would like to understand why.

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[Stephen Guerin-5]

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 4:41 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

My dad was a member of a team that designed and built nuclear submarines successfully.  I wonder if they realized they were working with metaphors.

On the surface, they were probably working with semaphores 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

😄

On Thu, May 14, 2020, 7:07 PM Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 4:41 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

My dad was a member of a team that designed and built nuclear submarines successfully.  I wonder if they realized they were working with metaphors.

On the surface, they were probably working with semaphores 

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