Hi Nick, I was wondering how long you could resist getting drawn into this.
History is fine. I have no problem talking about historical sequences and how they hang together.
What I don't know is whether Eric/you/behaviorists in general are interested in the answer to the question of what makes a reinforcer work.I tried to get Eric's answer to that, but I didn't.
Is his/(your/behaviorists answer that he/you/they are interested in how reinforcers work, but that's not what they are studying? That they believe that there is a reasonable scientific answer to that question, but that someone else is pursuing it? If so, I find that a reasonable answer -- although I'd like to know who he/you/they think are doing that work and how he/you/they think that work is coming. How would you/he/they describe the results so far? What do we know about how reinforcers work and what are the questions now being asked about that? Even if you don't work in the field as someone as concerned about reinforcers as he/you/they, he/you/they must at least know the state of our current knowledge of the field.
Or is his/your/behaviorists' answer that how reinforcers work is not a valid question because attempting to describe what goes on inside the entity being reinforced is meaningless?
In all this, I'm happy to use as a model the example of a computer. We understand how computer "reinforcers" (i.e., programs) work because we understand how computers work. Do you/he/they expect that we will (hopefully soon) have a similarly concrete answer to how biological reinforcers work?
-- Russ
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Russ,
I don't think either Eric and I suppose that internal events are not part of a full explanation of behavior; we are just asserting that it is not the only part. History of the behavior is another. A psychologist's job is to relate behavior to its history. The people whose job it is to relate it those history-behavior relations to internal events live "down the hall".
What drives Eric and me nuts is when people start talking AS if they are talking about internal events when in fact they are just redescribing relations between the history of behavior and patterns of that behavior. EG, the vernacular, "I felt it in my gut" or the highly sophisticated, "The child was unhappy because of its 'internal working model' of its mother." I just went to a conference here in Santa Fe in which people banged on relentlessly that conscience was IN the brain. Such talk is a redirection, from something that we know a lot about (people's conscientious behavior) and something we know almost nothing about (the manner in which that behavior is mediated in the nervous system ... the neural correlates of that behavior). And even if we know exactly which part of the brain lights up when Jones feels guilty, we will still have the problem of the history by which Jones comes to feel guilty about THAT. Discovering the histories that lead people to feel that way and characterizing the higher order behavior patterns that constitute "feeling guilty" is what the psychology of guilt is all about, INAO.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
To: [hidden email]
Sent: 5/4/2010 6:05:59 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorism
Eric, you said, "Would you really tell me that I cannot talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance?" Yes, I would say that you probably can't talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance. How else are you claiming to talk intelligently about it?
If your point is that the digestive biologist doesn't care why the stomach wall resists acid because all she cares about is what goes on inside the stomach. And if you are also saying that she assumes that other people can explain how the stomach wall keeps all that stuff contained without damage to itself. Then that's fine. It's like me saying that I don't know the details of computer engineering. All I care about is that the computer interprets instructions in a certain way.
But I and the digestive biologist both acknowledge that there is an explanation of the issues we are ignorant of and that other people know what those explanations are. That seems to be different from the behaviorist who says that it is pointless to ask for an explanation because it doesn't make sense to ask the questions I'm asking.
-- Russ
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:51 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Russ sayeth: "They [behaviorists] seem unwilling to ask how the entity being reinforced works so that they can explain how the reinforcer works. That just seems like bad science."
Uhm.... weird assertion. Lets say that I am a digestive biologist, and you ask me to explain the atomic structure underlying differences between stomach and intestinal walls. Am I not justified in telling you that you have asked a great question that is simply not in my area of expertise. Am I not justified in telling you that there are people who specialize in answering such questions, that they are molecular biologists, and that they work down the hall? Would you really tell me that I cannot talk intelligently about the ability of the stomach wall to resist acid without knowledge of the atomic structures underlying acid-resistance? Would you really tell me that digestive biology seems like bad science?
I doubt you would tell me any of those things.
Why should psychology be different? There are perfectly good people who study the relevant animal innards. They are physiologists and neuro-biologists. They have offices down the hall. Their work is fascinating and I like to hear their talks. There are some people who work cross-disciplines. Some of them do cool work, others do crap work, and still others do cool work that they explain in crap ways. What more do you want me to say?
---------
Also, I told you that we know a lot about what makes something a reinforcer. Let us pick an arbitrary set of neutral stimuli, say a card with vertical lines. I can make a rat such that the vertical lines reinforce the rat's behavior. THE THINGS I DO TO THE RAT explain why the vertical lines act as a reinforcer. When you ask "why" the vertical lines reinforce the rat, I will answer by telling you about how I put the rat through such-and-such procedure.* Thus I WILL have explained why vertical lines reinforce this rat.
Again, this explains not only the origins of the behavioral phenomenon, but also the origins of the concurrent neural phenomenon that are a component part of the process in question.
If you asked why the volcano in iceland blew its top, and I told you that it blew because the rocks at the top of the mountain flew into the air, you would stare at me like I was an idiot. Why? Because you asked me to explain something that happened, and I answered by merely describing back a part of the thing to be explained. Similarly, all neuronal happenings are part of "the thing to be explained" when you are explaining reinforcement.
Eric
*Most likely my story will involve repeatedly pairing the vertical lines with food, but there are other options available. Heck, I can make a rat that does not find food reinforcing. I can even make a rat that is born not finding food reinforcing. Alas, those rats won't live very long.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org