Posted by
Nick Thompson on
May 05, 2010; 4:39am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Behaviorism-tp5003979p5007212.html
Glen,
We are at wildly cross purposes here. To bring you over to my side, here,
I would have to convince you that "subject experiences" are not what you
actually think they are.
I tried to do that with Russ Abbott last summer and it almost killed both
of us.
Behaviorists and mentalists each have a problem. The behaviorist problem
is that everybody else in the world, since Descartes, thinks there is a
space "inside" some where experience happens, a little theatre in which
pain happens and I "experience" it. In response, I have to say: " You are
all wrong about that! And what's more, if you REALLY believed it, you
would never have another argument with your teen aged daughter, because you
would simply have to trust what she says. (What possible evidence would
you have to the contrary?)" YOUR problem is to explain why, if
consciousness is an inner state, how come you ... and juries .... and
therapists ... spend so much time talking about what they cannot, on their
account, have any evidence of.
In the long run, the decision whether to be a behaviorist or not boils down
to which problem you are most comfortable having. I am less comfortable
being a mentalist because it leaves me no way to organize all the
gazillions of bits of information that I have about what people do and when
they do it.
If you think being a behaviorists let's one off the pain hook, you are
wrong. I believe in pain. I feel the drill and I see my grandson flinch
when he is drilled. I feel pain.
Anyway, I think this is probably as far as we can take this conversation.
It certainly is as far as Russ and I took it last summer, and I don't have
any more wisdom or energy for it now than I did then.
but I still love you,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
> [Original Message]
> From: glen e. p. ropella <
[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 5/4/2010 6:15:32 PM
> Subject: [FRIAM] boundary permeability (was Behaviorism)
>
>
> I'm changing the subject line again because this is _not_ in direct
> lineage with the [Beat Poet] thread.
>
> Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 02:36 PM:
> > Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism.
> >
> > Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But
notice
> > that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises
> > because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to
> > whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral
> > criteria.
>
> Sorry, I was working under the idea that "cruelty" was a purely mental
> construct. It seems to me that a cruel act is one where, in general,
> the actor disregards the thoughts and feelings of the acted upon (actee)
> and, especially, where the thoughts and feelings of the actee are the
> Spinozan "Sadness" (i.e. the hypothetical mind is in a worse state after
> the thoughts/feelings). Granted, the vernacular use of "cruel" has
> connotations of deriving pleasure from actions that cause the "Sadness";
> but that's not necessary. I think it's sufficient for the actor to
> _know_ they're causing "Sadness", even if the actor (rightly or wrongly)
> believes that "Sadness" is somehow arithmetically (economically)
> compensated for by a greater "Joy" that will ensue from the actions.
>
> The essence of my naive understanding of Behaviorism is: "Take whatever
> tangible actions work and the intangibles will take care of themselves."
> Of course, _if_ a novel tangible arises, the Behaviorist _will_ take it
> into account. But it still leaves the Behaviorist open to the criticism
> that she intentionally, knowingly takes actions that cause "Sadness".
>
> I don't mean to descend into the semantics of "cruelty". I'm just
> trying to show why I don't think the criticism of the JRC's methods and
> the JRC's response are orthogonal to the mentalism <-> behaviorism axis.
>
> It seems that some people hold the short-term mental state of the actees
> in higher esteem than the JRC. I.e. the JRC are more purely
> behaviorist. (And if we take them at their word, the JRC isn't
> intentionally cruel and their methods do, indeed, work.)
>
> > Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult
signs on
> > for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript
to
> > war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic,
is
> > the doctor who performs the procedure cruel?
>
> Like I say above, I'm not trying to _parse_ the word "cruel" so much as
> I'm trying to get at the extent to which a Behaviorist (a real one...
> not some ideologically stereotyped one) considers the thoughts and
> emotions of her subject. A clarifying question might be something like:
>
> When the actee tells the (behaviorist) Dentist to drill out the root of
> a tooth without anesthetic, does the Dentist explain in very clear
> terms: "You will FEEL pain and probably hate me afterwards."?? Or does
> the Dentist ignore such intangibles (except to the extent they have to
> strap the patient down more firmly ;-) and merely state the actions
> she'll take?
>
> (My dad could've been described as a behaviorist when he'd hit me after
> behaving badly. He didn't much care what I thought or felt as long as I
> stopped behaving badly. [grin])
>
> > The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a
> > discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to disavow
his
> > own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide
> > whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an
> > ethical decision accordingly.
>
> This seems too coarse to me. Clearly, if the actor understands more
> about the cause-effect behaviors than the actee, then the actor gets to
> decide whether the "Sadness" is fully compensated by the subsequent
> "Joy" effected. But, regardless of that, how much _respect_ does the
> behaviorist actor give to the subjective experience of the actee?
>
> This is very important in situations like Alzheimer's disease or pain
> management, where we have no credible treatments to actually fix the
> problem. We only have treatments to treat the symptoms, for example the
> epiphenomenal thoughts and feelings of the subject.
>
> Do behaviorists subscribe to concepts like pain management? Do
> behaviorists participate in treatments like end-of-life hospice care?
> Or do they restrict themselves to actions that have been credibly shown
> to "fix" behavior?
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://agent-based-modeling.com>
>
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