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is this true?

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Nick Thompson

Re: is this true?

Limping Lizards, Eric!

Still in transit so won’t write long. I think my point was more dumb EVEN than if you break my leg and I limp the behavior (limp) did not arise from my brain. I only mean to say that that all behavior is mediated through the brain. So when people say that some behavior was caused by circumstances and other behavior is caused by drugs, or locutions like that, they are not sorting into brain and non-brain. The sort is of another type. And I am hoping that (1) people will stop talking about non=brain-mediated behaviors and (2) tell me, because I really don’t know, what the implied dualism actually refers to. All therapy, all drugs, all behavior-change operations are mediated through the brain, almost by definition, no?

Gotta go!

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 8:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

Nick, et al,

Reinforcing Steve's message: This conversation is hard because, in humans, doing humaney things, it is the case, factually, that most changes in behavior that we are wont to discusses entail changes in the brain. However, as a good student of animal behavior, you (Nick) are of course aware that behavioral changes can result from bodily changes in non-brain areas. This is especially obvious when we generate behavioral change in organisms without brains at all :- P Even if we stick with humans, the recent explosion of research on the importance of gut bacteria in mental health speaks to this. In many of the human cases we are wont to discuss there are "interactions" between "body" and "brain" changes (ugh, a false dualism if ever there was one), for example, we might discuss the numerous changes in the brain that occur after removal of testes or ovaries, due to the changes in circulating hormones and hormone responsivity. Or take the leg injury Steve mentions: To some extent, I limp because my leg is injured. However, if you track my limp from the moment of the break forward, you will find that the particular limp I display a month out is, in a large part, the result of some optimization problem for walking-with-such-and-such-injuries that certainly involves adjustments somewhere in my brain. (Not all animals do this mind you, but most people do. I've seen no detectable change in the limps of injured lizards, for example, after very long stretches of time.)

Back to the very beginning of this thread... there has been research for a long time about therapy and neurochemistry. Let's examine 3 research findings: 1) Depressed people (as a group) have lower dopamine, on average, than non-depressed people. 2) Depressed people (as a group) who are given dopamine are, on average, less depressed later. 3) Depressed people (as a group) who undergo behaviorist therapy to replace the behaviors-patterns-that-are-depression with other behavior patterns (with no mind-diving involved) are later found (on average) to have higher dopamine than when they started the therapy. Ditto those that are successful (as a group) with mind-oriented therapeutic approaches.

So, do drugs cause the same changes in the brain as therapy? I'm not sure. However, successful therapy seems to causes the same changes in the brain that the drugs are intended to produce. Note the implications of this for causal attributions regarding neurotransmitter levels and mental illness.

Best,

Eric

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Personnel Psychologist

Drug Enforcement Administration

On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 12:33 PM Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick -
A) Autonomic bodily function. Biomechanical body changes. We can walk with a limp (or choose not to walk) because our leg is damaged without any change to the brain. Perhaps our brain WILL change in response to our constant limping (or not leaving our chair/bed), but it isn't a brain change that changes our behaviour. IN the small, the signals to the brain that something is wrong might not even get there, or be scrambled, trusting/deferring to the autonomic system to "do the right thing" and at best "keep the brain informed of changes".
B) Bio/Neurochemistry. Changes in blood glucose, hormones, introduced mood-altering substances. Misbehaving glands (thyroid, pancreas, etc.) can trigger all kinds of mood/behaviour changes. Glen reminds us that our microbiome can change our behaviour/mind/mood as well... people have had huge shifts in mood/behaviour after overzealous use of antibiotics or a failure of the GI tract. You can call these brain (chemistry) changes, but the change in mind/mood/behaviour is more the way the brain function changes in response to the changed chemical milieu than changes *to* the brain.
B) Plastic vs elastic changes. A shot of coffee or juice (or mood-altering substance of choice) can shift the *brain metabolism* in ways that radically and quickly change behavior. As the neurochemistry returns to "normal" (alcohol leaves the system (sober up) and we rehydrate (recover from hangover)), the enduring changes to the brain are minimal (thought they can endure/accrue over time). Similarly a therapy session, some deep prayer, or a new years resolution can lead us to a "change of heart/mind" but it is unlikely to LAST unless there are attendant changes in habits and relationships. It is those changes in behaviour, related to the "habits and relationships" that I contend *change the brain* and that a great deal of the long-lasting change doesn't even happen IN the brain, though it may be that the brain's interaction with/response to changes in biochemistry (and biomechanics?) lead to changes in brain (and mind) function. Put the weight back on, crash your gut bacteria, go off your meds, and by golly you may end up right back where you were before you made those bodily/environmental changes in the first place. If your *brain changed* when you made those other changes in habit/behaviour, why did it change back so precisely? Had it ever really *changed* at all? Or was it just responding differently to a different milieu/stimulus?
- Steve
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Steve Smith

Re: is this true?

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Eric -

Thanks for adding to this conversation with plenty more grounding than I
have in the details.

Since Glen's OP referenced Ketamine which seems to be a new entry into
the psychologist's pantheon (or is it more an addition to the quiver?),
I wonder if you have anything to say about the specific differences
between it and other on/off label drugs used for depression.

Can any parallels be drawn between those effects and the microdosing of
psychedelics?

- Steve

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Nick Thompson

Re: is this true?

Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.

Am I wrong about that?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 10:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

Eric -

Thanks for adding to this conversation with plenty more grounding than I have in the details.

Since Glen's OP referenced Ketamine which seems to be a new entry into the psychologist's pantheon (or is it more an addition to the quiver?), I wonder if you have anything to say about the specific differences between it and other on/off label drugs used for depression.

Can any parallels be drawn between those effects and the microdosing of psychedelics?

- Steve

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gepr

Re: is this true?

The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/

Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.

On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>
> Am I wrong about that?

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: is this true?

And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic.

And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination".

Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth.

On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/
>
> Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.
>
>
> On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>>
>> Am I wrong about that?
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: is this true?

In my mind "affect" as a noun means behavior determined by a mood or feeling complex. For example, "He has flat affect".

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic.

And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination".

Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth.

On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/
>
> Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.
>
>
> On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>>
>> Am I wrong about that?
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Nick Thompson

Re: is this true?

In reply to this post by gepr

Hi, Glen,

See Larding below:

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 11:24 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result

[NST==>Nifty succinct way of putting it. <==nst]

[NST==><==nst]

is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html

[NST==> Ok. So I looked at this. There seems to be a lot of baffle gab about the caudate nucleus. Let’s just stipulate for the moment that therapy and drugs had exactly the same effect on the caudate nucleus. Then they would be two different techniques for having the SAME EFFECT VIA THE SAME ANATOMICAL STRUCTURE.

Now, as Glen points out, there is no need for this to be the case. The two modalities could work on entirely different parts of the central nervous systems, yet have pretty much the same effect for our purposes on behavior, right?.

What gets my goat here is the Times headline:

Like Drugs, Talk Therapy Can Change Brain Chemistry

What is the source of the headline writer’s surprise? Of course therapy affects the brain. UNLESS, one is a body/mind dualist and believes that God has given us souls and there are two quite separate routes by which to change behavior, through the activities of the soul/mind and through the activities of the body. I assume that none of us on this site are that sort of dualist, yet we can all get hooked by articles with that sort of title. Why? That’s NOT a rhetorical question. Working conditions here terrible Have to stop and send. Sorry if typos. n <==nst]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/

Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part

[NST==><==nst] Yes. I am nervous about this way of thinking. If you meant literally sliced out, the organism would be dead, so the operation would be irrelevant; if you meant conceptually sliced out, then we’re back in spherical cow territory. (Never slice an organ from a spherical cow.)

of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.

On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.

> Am I wrong about that?

☣ uǝlƃ

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Nick Thompson

Re: is this true?

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

And this gives me an opening to report the conference presentation title I am the proudest of. It was on experimental elicitation of emotional vocalizations In crows:

CAWS AND AFFECT IN THE COMMUNICATION OF THE COMMON CROW.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 12:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

In my mind "affect" as a noun means behavior determined by a mood or feeling complex. For example, "He has flat affect".

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic.

And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination".

Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth.

On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/
>
> Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.
>
>
> On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>>
>> Am I wrong about that?
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: is this true?

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

On 3/13/19 11:24 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> */Now, as Glen points out, there is no need for this to be the case. The two modalities could work on entirely different parts of the central nervous systems, yet have pretty much the same effect for our purposes on behavior, right?. /*

I think the answer depends on whether or not the system exhibits robustness (multiple generators produce the same result). This *is* what I want to ask. My own belief is, yes, the organism is complex, which means it's prone to both robustness and polyphenism. But I don't know that's the case, which is why I want to see the evidence that the organism is NOT robust and/or polyphenic as the "changes the brain in similar ways" assertion implies.

Where is the evidence that similar outcomes imply similar causes? ... the so-called inverse problem?

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Prof David West

Re: is this true?

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

A point of view:

We are accustomed to talking about complex adaptive systems. I propose that the brain is a "complex reactive system," in that it reacts in a complex fashion (patterns, strange attractors,never exactly the same in any two instances) to a complex, and constantly changing, set of signals.

Nick would, (I am putting words in his mouth, kind of) insist that the "brain" is co-extensive with the skin.(for whatever reason, this statement immediately reminded me of the fact that an octopus has more neurons in its skin that it does in its three brains combined.) Whenever stimulus is detected the brainBody reacts, and the reaction takes the form of neruons firing, connections established, parts of the brain body emitting energy (e.g. warm skin radiating the heat from redirected blood flow), etc.

if, apparently, widely different stimuli seem to evoke fairly similar reaction patters (same area of the brain, overlapping synapse firing, alpha or beta wave emissions of energy, etc.) we might say the they have the same effect. But that is really saying that they seem to evoke sufficiently similar reactions that an observer sees a "pattern" or "similarity."

So, meditation, a specific kind of psychedelic drug, at least one "pharmaceutical" drug, and extreme early childhood evoke behavior 9oral utterances are a form of behavior) that an observer would characterize as "lack of awareness of the Self-Universe distinction and simultaneously a decrease (or total lack, in the ase of the extreme early child) in neural firings and activated circuits in a specific region of specific regions of brain tissue along with changes in heart and respiration rhythm, and other factors within the skin, but outside the 'brain'.

BTW — Nick did not want to start a discussion about the embodied brain, but if he eventually does, I will cheer him onward and insist that the embodied brain extends to culture and argue that it extends to and is coextensive with the Universe.

dave west

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, at 12:35 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

And this gives me an opening to report the conference presentation title I am the proudest of. It was on experimental elicitation of emotional vocalizations In crows:

CAWS AND AFFECT IN THE COMMUNICATION OF THE COMMON CROW.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 12:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

In my mind "affect" as a noun means behavior determined by a mood or feeling complex. For example, "He has flat affect".
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic.

And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination".

Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth.

On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/
>
> Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.
>
>
> On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>>
>> Am I wrong about that?
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Nick Thompson

Re: is this true?

Hi, David,

I keep giving these off-the-cuff responses because of my situation. I am not sure I am quite doing the argument justice. I am trying to fight off a certain kind of talk that The Press wants to engage in, without committing myself to any particular talk, but that’s not very productive. So, let me just say that people want to turn these relations into two-value relations. X is a y. I think I want to make all relations into three-valued relations. X is a Y from point-of-view P. Does that mean all truth is relative? No, because as a result of systematic inquiry, some points-of-view converge in the long run. When the converge, the thing toward which they converge is, by definition, a Truth concerning some matter.

The wonderful feature of the [point of view] metaphor is that it honors our separate points of view without giving up on finding a point of view that integrates them. Two blind New Realists groping an elephant: “OK, I’ll follow the snake toward the sound of your voice and you follow the tree toward the sound of my voice, and we’ll see what we feel along the way.” Pause. Together, “My God, it’s an elephant!”

Of course, having rebuked Glen for having excised a living liver from a living creature I should expect to rebuked for imaging two investigators who survived the groping of a living elephant. “Oh my God, it’s an elephant! Fred? FRED????” Spherical cow indeed.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 8:45 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

A point of view:

dave west

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, at 12:35 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

And this gives me an opening to report the conference presentation title I am the proudest of. It was on experimental elicitation of emotional vocalizations In crows:

CAWS AND AFFECT IN THE COMMUNICATION OF THE COMMON CROW.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 12:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] is this true?

In my mind "affect" as a noun means behavior determined by a mood or feeling complex. For example, "He has flat affect".
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 11:49 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
And, just to be as clear as I can, it's not lost on me that there's a common confusion between "affect" and "effect". However, I tend to think linguistic confusion is often an indicator for an underlying conceptual ambiguity. When I say "effect on the brain", I do NOT mean "affect on the brain". I mean something more linear, cause-effect. So, it seems reasonable to hear "the affects of talk therapy on the brain" as a behavioral measure. But it seems more analytic/synthetic to say "the effects of talk therapy on the brain". That is a more constructive (constructionist? constructivist?) measure. The former is more consequentialist, the latter is more axiomatic.

And the reason I believe the original author meant the latter is because the actual words were "changes the brain in similar ways". "Way" being more of a constructive concept than, say, "destination".

Technical writing has (painfully) verbose ways to handle this ambiguity. But since we're discussing snarkiness, we shouldn't need to point out that people *always* prefer pithy snark to technical verbosity. This is why bullsh¡t is more efficient than the truth.

On 3/13/19 10:23 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> The idea that the path of least resistance *names* the end result is interesting. But it's definitely NOT what *I* mean when I hear "similar effects on the brain". What I mean is along the same lines of the 3 links I posted:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/health/behavior-like-drugs-talk-therapy-can-change-brain-chemistry.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0128-4
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5957509/
>
> Patterns in PET scans (glucose uptake?) and the like are "effects on the brain" (and other parts of the body, it should go without saying). The "effect" is what we observe on the sliced out part of the object, not the whole organism. Maybe it would help to talk about the liver? When I talk about alcohol's "effect on the liver", I'm not talking about alcoholics over-sharing in church basements. Similarly, if I say, "slamming my hand on the table had an effect", the "effect" I'm talking about is that my hand start to hurt, not how the other people in the room react. And I believe that's how the author was using the word "effect" when they made their unjustified claim that talk therapy has similar effects to drug therapy. But I could easily be wrong about that, too.
>
>
> On 3/13/19 10:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Ok. I should stop being snarky and try to answer my own damned question. I think we parse things into "brain" effects and "therapy" effects depending on the lability of behavior with respect to the manipulation we are contemplating. Let's say the symptom is Thompson's Snarkiness. Let's say it could be cured either by a 25 cent pill or ten thousand hours of therapy. We would call this a brain effect. On the other hand, let's say it could be cured by a ten thousand dollar course of pills or one hour of therapy. We would call this a therapy effect. These attributions would apply even if it could be demonstated that they all acted on precisely the same part of the brain.
>>
>> Am I wrong about that?
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove