http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Beat-poet-defends-the-scientific-method-tp4993619p5005479.html
I am going to reply interlineally below and in html because Owen won't let me use caps.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
> [Original Message]
> From: Jochen Fromm <
[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 5/4/2010 5:30:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism [was Beat poet]
>
> Please excuse my ignorance, but
> don't we know it already? I think we
> know a lot about "What DOES go on
> in the skull, and what is an intelligible way
> to talk about it".
I agree! We have gotten a lot better at brain talk in the last 50 years; but brain talk is not mind talk. >
> Intentions are essential to understand
> decisions (Intentionality is the mark
> of the vital, right ?). It becomes clear
> why a person has done something, if it
> is examined in court, or if we know
> the goals, intentions and motives of
> the person.
The question is, what is an intention? Is it a complex behavior pattern, gotten at by gathering information about the basic behavior patterns of the person (he ALWAYS goes to the bookstore on thursday afternoons ), not a mysterious inner state gotten to only by asking him or sticking an electrode in his head.
>
> He has turned left because he had the
> intention to go to work or to buy a book
> in a nearby bookstore. He has turned
> right because he had the spontaneous
> goal to buy an icecream or to follow a
> beautiful woman.
>
> Therefore, the language that people
> already use, which means common sense
> reasoning about beliefs, desires, intentions
> and goals, seems to explain the behavior
> quite well,
Well, whether i would agree with you would depend a lot on what you think people are doing when they engage in such reasoning. I think they are talking about higher-order behavior patterns. If you agree, then we agree.
and it is consistent with
> neurophysiological structures (even if
> it sometimes suggests homunculi, if we
> take it literally, which is wrong).
If you mean that we are beginning to find some interesting correlations between higher order patterns of behavior (like recognizing that your pounding the table with your fist is the "same thing" as my pounding the table with my fist) and localized activity in the nervous system (as in "mirror neurons"), then I would agree with you. If you mean anything else by "consistent with neural structures", then I would have to have you explain what that meaning is before I could comment.
>
> The thing that has confused philosophers
> for centuries is that mental states like beliefs,
> desires, intentions are both, abstract and
> concrete. In daily language they are abstract
> terms, which can only be used and unterstood
> with metaphors. But in the brain, these abstract
> terms become concrete patterns and complex
> processes of real neural assemblies. We know
> that beliefs and intentions are located in form
> of complex neural assemblies in the higher sensoric
> and motoric regions (the prefontal cortex),
> respectively.
Do you have a good example of how a neural assembly constitutes an intention in an organism we could paw over for a while?
>
> Gilbert Ryle admits in his book "The
> concept of mind" (where he dismisses
> the idea of a single self or soul), that
> we already "posses a wealth of information
> about minds" (page 7, introduction).
> Don't you agree?
>
> -J.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: ERIC P. CHARLES
> To: Robert J. Cordingley
> Cc: Group ; Th
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 1:03 AM
> Subject: [FRIAM] Behaviorism [was Beat poet]
>
> [..] As Skinner would put it, the question is: What DOES go on in the
> skull, and what is an intelligible way to talk about it? The obvious answer
> is that the only things going on in the skull are physiological. For
> example, if one asks why someone chose to go left instead of right at a stop
> sign, [..]
>
>
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