Chip with simple program for Toy

[Bill Hobba]

"Lawson English" <LawsonE@nowhere.none> wrote in message
news:bpDRh.248340$ia7.228010@newsfe14.lga...

Bill Hobba wrote:
[...]
As I pointed out your inability to conceptualise and abstract away
inessentials will not enable you to make progress in physics; just like a
failure to realize that the points drawn in a diagram used to resolve
problems in geometry having an actual size does not affect the result.
If you can't see what is obvious to a 10 year old - so be it. But just
as flat earth nuts can't see what is obvious to anyone else does not
affect the fact the earth is not flat, you inability to understand that
the earth is not a strictly inertial frame in no way affects the
conclusions drawn from assuming it is in inertial for many problems.



I see, so the following shows that I don't understand that the Earth is
not a strictly inertial frame?

No - it shows your inability to abstract away inessentials.

Bill

The distinction made [between accelerating car
and the Earth's surface] in elementary texts is flawed.

 

[C. Nick Kruzer]

Hi Dave, you wrote:

I've bought a 22 inch electric bike...impressive
Problem ...is the battery...
(36v 12 amp lead acid battery)
... idea of extending the range.

I wish I had an electric bike. I ride a mountain bike where ever I go. I
live close to the Pacific Ocean in Southern California.

You want to extend your range by battery augmentation. Lead acid
batteries are heavy. Look into surplus Lithium-ion rechargable.

New Lithium ion batteries are expensive. I purchased some surplus
batteries which were from overstock, and were in never-used condition
from www.allelectronics.com when they had a sale. They came with
recharging info and gave ideas on how to make battery packs and provided
safety tips.

If you can get enough lithium-ion batteries at a good price and can
build packs and a recharger set-up you would probably end up dumping
that lead-acid dinosaur and go one hundred percent Lithium-ion, the now
battery of the electric vehicle. In your case a hybrid Human-electric
bike...

C.N.K.

 

[Lawson English]

Bill Hobba wrote:

"Lawson English" <LawsonE@nowhere.none> wrote in message
news:bpDRh.248340$ia7.228010@newsfe14.lga...
Bill Hobba wrote:
[...]
As I pointed out your inability to conceptualise and abstract away
inessentials will not enable you to make progress in physics; just like a
failure to realize that the points drawn in a diagram used to resolve
problems in geometry having an actual size does not affect the result.
If you can't see what is obvious to a 10 year old - so be it. But just
as flat earth nuts can't see what is obvious to anyone else does not
affect the fact the earth is not flat, you inability to understand that
the earth is not a strictly inertial frame in no way affects the
conclusions drawn from assuming it is in inertial for many problems.


I see, so the following shows that I don't understand that the Earth is
not a strictly inertial frame?

No - it shows your inability to abstract away inessentials.

Thanks so much for your valuable insights.

 

[HMSBeagle]

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:00:12 GMT, Stephen Harris
<cyberguard-1048@yahoo.com> wrote:

Bob Myers wrote:
"RichD" <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1175748815.465976.230070@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
You read about that on some website.
Yeah, Volume 3 of Feynman's 1963 website...

Well, sure, but all HE had was a Nobel Prize. How
about citing some reputable authority? ;-)

Bob M.





I notice there is a section, 1-5 The interference of electron waves,
online, Feynman Lectures on Physics Volume 3 Chapter 01
phy.syr.edu/~czhang/book/feynman3/Ch01_1962-04-03_QuantumBehavior.pdf

"Now let us try to analyze the curve of Fig. 1-3 to see whether we
can understand the behavior of the electrons. The first thing we
would say is that since they come in lumps, each lump, which we may
as well call an electron, has come either through hole 1 or through
hole 2. Let us write this in the form of a "Proposition":
Proposition A: Each electron either goes through hole 1 or it goes
through hole 2." ...

So what? That's a thought experiment. There has never been a
double-slit experiment carried out PHYSICALLY on electrons. (You can't
even do it because of the de broglie wavelength.) They use these
wires called an Electron Biprism.

 

[Glen M. Sizemore]

"Joe Durnavich" <joejd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news28g13tqisci55dsobd4l4ndvl7hi1782b@4ax.com...

Glen M. Sizemore writes:

"Joe Durnavich" <joejd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:4hdf139t3tg20alj411nm7qn32g319uimg@4ax.com...

The problem, and I see a bit of it with Daryl, too, is that you both
want
to reduce pain to a specific "something". But pain-language doesn't
lend
itself to that except, perhaps, metaphorically. Daryl, however,
recognizes
that the wider context is what is ultimately relevant.

Yet, "pains" must have sufficient "family resemblance" for there to be
generalization to novel circumstances.

Yes, to point out that pain doesn't have to be a distinct entity is not to
say that it is a fiction.

I won't comment on Cybulski's
position right now - there is just too much wrong with it. Daryl's
position
is somewhat like methodological behaviorism, arguing, I think, that
"feeling
pain" is, in fact, something real, but it is to be left out of a
scientific
analysis.

I find that the words "real" and especially "exists" tend to lead to more
confusion than clarity in philosophical discussions. People want to
resolve the issue by narrowing down to a single something when sometimes
it
is better to step back and consider the entire person getting on with his
life in his environment.

I never take any other perspective. I am describing methodological
behaviorism, Daryl's position. It holds that the subjective world is real
(not just "pain" but "mental" imagery, etc., but it is not amenable to
scientific analysis. I myself do not have too much trouble with "real" and
"exists" - post-synaptic receptors (once hypothetical constructs) are real,
phlogiston is not. I can see meaning to your statement about "real" and
"exists" - the "mental" exists in the sense that we label people with them
in the 3rd person all the time. So the "mental" is real in that the terms
are simply names for behavior (at least in much ordinary usage), but the
academic usage ( a distortion of ordinary usage) where the "mental" is
described as a cause of the behavior and said to be "inferred" from
behavior, is not.

What is missed, of course, is the view that objective vs.
subjective is a matter of accessibility, not ontology. "Subjective
experience" can be dealt with in terms of the science of stimulus control;
we are trained to respond to parts of the world and to, thereby, "become
aware of them,"

So, I smell smoke, I go to investigate and I discover that a garbage can
has caught on fire. I get a fire extinguisher and put the fire out. The
burning garbage can and my interaction with it are what constitutes my
awareness.\

By some ordinary usages, yes. But the mainstream academic view is that such
behavior implies a private seeing of the fire and the extinguisher, and a
private smelling of the smoke. Methodological behaviorism says that the
smoke evoked a subjective experience that you call "smelling smoke," and you
then act on that private experience. Since the link between smoke and the
private experience is lawful, and the link between the private experience of
smelling smoke and our action is lawful, we can simply treat the data
excluding the middle link. Radical behaviorism does not follow this pattern.
One may "smell smoke and investigate," etc. but this does not mean that one
must be aware of one's own behavior. Speaking colloquially, we are compelled
to say that the subject "was aware of the fire" but we do not have to say
that the person "was aware of their response to the fire."

and part of the world that we respond to is accessible only
to one person. There is no difference, from a behavioral process
standpoint,
between responding to someone else's behavior or responding to one's own,
except for the contact that can be made. Because of this, we may respond
to
aspects of our own behavior that only we can see, but "consciousness" in
th
sense of "self-awareness" is simply a matter of ou own bhavior, public or
private, exerting operant stimulus control over some other response.

Now in regards to pain, do I likewise investigate and discover this "some
other response" of mine? That is, do I find out that I am in pain?

I'm not sure I understand this. You "find out that you are in pain" when the
verbal community establishes verbal behavior under stimulus control of your
response to painful stimuli. A person or non-human animal may behave in
simple (elicited behavior) or complex ways (escape, avoidance) in situations
involving painful stimuli, but not "know they are in pain." Just as the
world can consist of green things and red things, but you don't "see the
difference." Consider this paper:



Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1987 Jul;48(1):1-15



An animal model of the interpersonal communication of interoceptive
(private) states.



Lubinski D, Thompson T

Pigeons were taught to interact communicatively (i.e., exchange
discriminative stimuli) based on 1 pigeon's internal state, which varied as
a function of cocaine, pentobarbital, and saline administration. These
performances generalized to untrained pharmacological agents (d-amphetamine
and chlordiazepoxide) and were observed in the absence of aversive
stimulation, deprivation, and unconditioned reinforcement. The training
procedure used in this study appears similar to that by which humans learn
to report on (tact) their internal environments and may be construed as a
rudimentary animal model of the interpersonal communication of private
events.





The same experiment could be done with "pain" being communicated. Unstated
by Lubinski and Thompson is the radical behaviorists take on it - to train
the "communicative response" is NOT to merely train the animal to respond to
"what it is already aware of," but is to "make the animal aware of private
events." It may be even clearer with drug-discrimination procedures (and
Lubinski and Thompson is largely a straight drug discrimination procedure -
except they try to free the response from a particular state of deprivation
as is thought to occur when humans "learn to describe the world" - that is
part of the definition of the "tact" in Skinner's "Verbal Behavior") because
we can imagine a drug producing a behavioral effect, but we are not aware of
the change in our behavior. Then we are "made aware" when verbal behavior is
brought under stimulus control of those drug-induced behavioral changes.



Cordially,

Glen

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 6, 10:06 am, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie says...



stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
Look, let's consider a fire alarm. If there is a fire, you
pull the lever, an alarm sounds, and the fire department
shows up. There is a causal chain here: Presence of fire
gets you to pull the alarm, which brings the fire department.

Now, of course the fire department can show up even if
you *haven't* pulled the alarm.

Pain is like the fire alarm. It is an indication that
something needs to be done.

Let's extend this example:

You and I are standing outside a building. You claim that the fire
alarm brings the fire department, and so therefore if the fire
department shows up the fire alarm was activated.

No, I specifically did *not* say that. I said "of course the
fire department can show up even if you haven't pulled the alarm".
The implication is the other way around: *If* the alarm is
activated, *then* the fire department will eventually show up.

If this is what you are only saying, then you cannot claim that pain
just "is" what causes the fire department to show up, at least not in
any meaningful way. You'd need more in your analogy to be able to
make that definitional. Basically, you're making too strong a claim
for the arguments that you are making.

No one will disagree that pain can cause behaviour. The disagreement
is if pain is anything OTHER than the behaviour it causes. You seemed
to be arguing that it isn't, which means that I have to be able to
point at the behaviour that pain is causing and say "That's pain", or
"Pain is present there". If you don't want to say that, then what
reason can you advance for your oft-repeated claims that all it means
to be in pain is just to cause that behaviour to occur?

So we're watching, and the fire department shows up. And then
someone wanders out from inside the building and we ask them if
the fire alarm was activated. And they say "No". What we've
done is show that saying "The fire department showed up" is NOT
equivalent to saying that the fire alarm was activated, since
it can happen without the fire alarm being activated at all.

My point is that what makes a particular object a "fire alarm"
is the role it plays in the scenario: A person notices a fire.
He pulls the alarm. The fire department comes and puts out the
fire.

Now, if he, for example (and you used this one, I believe) calls 911
instead, is that a fire alarm example, or not?

The alarm could be replaced by "Shooting off a flare gun" or
"Ringing a loud bell" or "shining the Bat Signal on the clouds".
There is nothing particularly "alarmlike" about the alarm. It's
just a convention.

So the question is: are these all instances of alarms in your analogy,
or are they all different things that all happen to cause the same
behaviour (the fire department arriving)?

This is CRITICAL, since if you claim that these are different ways to
get the fire department to arrive I will point out that under the
analogy what this would mean is that pain is ONE way to cause the
behaviour, and there is a specific way (for the subject at least) to
tell the difference, and thus pain isn't just the causal role it plays
in producing those reactions, but is one specific identifiable WAY to
produce those reactions.

If you claim that these are all alarms, along with the 911 call, then
you aren't saying anything particularly interesting, since all you are
saying is that anything that causes that behaviour is simply what you
call pain. And then in the analogy when we ask the person inside if
the fire alarm went off (or was pulled) and he says "No" by your
definition he must be wrong. And what this would mean for pain is
that the actor in fact has pain, since the fact that he didn't have
the experience is insufficient under your view to claim that he
doesn't have pain.

Or, you could mean something else, but I can't see what it is unless
it's just arbitrary.

I think that pain is the same sort of thing as an alarm.
Physical damage to the body triggers a certain response
pattern in the nervous system. This in turn triggers
certain behavior (or at modulates existing behavior).
There is nothing particularly "painlike" about the
response pattern. What makes it "pain" is the role
it plays in the scenario: Body is damaged, pain is
registered, body responds.

Now, if you include the neural states, then you can be making an
interesting claim: pain is just the neural state produced by an event
that then causes certain reactions. Fine and dandy. But then we
still have room to say that we can determine this neural state without
examining the neurons from inside the subject by how pain FEELS. In
addition, this view causes problems for AI since AI doesn't have
neurons to play with. This seems to leave you falling back to either
one of the positions I outlined above.

This is what my objection is: Pain can't just be the behaviour
normally produced by pain because that behaviour can be produced in
cases where pain was not experienced. So pain is something more than
that, and you cannot simply claim -- at a minimum -- that if something
acts as if it is in pain it really is. It may not be.

Calling it "something more" is a misleading way of saying
things. Is a fire alarm "something more" than a way of summoning
the fire department? Not really. That's its only significance.

Um, be careful. In most cases, the ACTUAL purpose of the fire alarm
is to warn people inside the building to leave before they perish in
the fire [grin]. The fire department is tangential. But I see your
point.

My point, however, is that pain and the fire alarm are both SPECIFIC
ways to produce a certain behaviour, and that they are identifiable
and have good and bad points. That's what I mean by "something more";
they aren't just ways just like any other way to produce behaviour,
but they are ONE way to do that but there's more to them than just
that.

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 6, 11:50 am, stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie says...

stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
To act like a human, the zombie must yank it's hand away
when it touches something hot. So *something* is monitoring the
zombie's environment and acting on that information. How
is such monitoring to be distinguished from "having experience"?

Well, let's look at our own experiences. Imagine that your hand is
anaesthetized, and you're leaning on the stove, and someone says "Your
hand's on the hot burner". Or you smell flesh burning, and look down
to see that your hand's on the hot burner. Do you think that you
won't yank your hand away in that case? Do you agree that you didn't
have any pain experience at all?

Well, a person with anaesthetized hand will *not* be behaviorally
equivalent to a person with an unanaesthetized hand. So the zombies
that I'm talking about are (by assumption) behaviorally identical
to a normal human being.

If the zombie is just doing a deduction "Hey, my hand is getting
burnt. I should probably remove it." then it's not likely that he
will be behaviorally equivalent to a regular human.

Except that this isn't what would happen. You would indeed YANK your
hand away, not just think "La-de-da, I guess I should move my hand
now".

Yes, certain pain reactions wouldn't be there AFTER you moved your
hand, but that doesn't seem to be what you're on about here. So I'm
interested in what behaviours you think would be missing and why you
think that they're important. Note that even the pain reactions can
be suppressed by certain people in certain circumstances.

As for the zombie, your intuitions about HOW the zombie is doing it
are mostly irrelevant to the thought experiment. No one may any
claims about how the zombie did it. My example is just to show you a
physical, real-world example of partial zombification.

In order to see the example, you have to actually LOOK at experiences
and determine what they are. Since you eschew introspection and work
only from an external view, you seem to be loathe to even examine
that.

No, I don't eschew introspection, but I don't believe that it
is an infallible guide to what is going on, either. I take Dennett's
"heterophenomenological" approach. The fact that I am able to
distinguish between two different situations, and that I call one
"feeling pain" but not the other is indeed an important clue as
to what's going on. Any complete model of the human mind must be
able to explain why people claim to be in pain in some circumstances
and not in others.

By casting it this way, you eschew introspection. Why wouldn't we
take the obvious answer to this based on our introspection and say
that people claim to be in pain because they have a specific
experience -- like the one _I_ have in those cases -- of pain? Why is
this even an interesting question?

Basically, for the zombie, all that happens is that the brain state
changes and the behaviour changes, with no inner states or experiences
occurring at all.

What is the distinction between "brain states" and "inner states"?

The inner experience is the inner state. It may or may not be
equivalent to brain states. The basic idea is this: while it may or
may not be the case that inner states are, physically, nothing more
than brain states they are logically distinguishable since that
doesn't HAVE to be the case: it isn't logically necessary that brain
states be or produce inner experiences or feelings.

If the word "feelings" hasn't been defined, then it's *logically*
possible that rocks have feelings or that the number 7 has feelings.

It may be possible that rocks have feelings, but so what? This does
not mean that "feelings" haven't been defined, BTW; it's defined as
the phenomenal experiences that you have. You can't define ANYTHING
below that level, it seems to me, so demanding that we define
experiences seems to demand something that can never be done. Either
you have experiences, or you do not. If you do, then you know what I
mean when I talk about feelings and phenomenal experiences. If you
don't, then you are a zombie, and your view of phenomenal experiences
is irrelevant to those of us who have them.

If you are relying exclusively on introspection for your primary
notion of what a "feeling" is, then I don't see how you can ever
generalize that notion to someone besides yourself. On the other
hand, you certainly can generalize to others by using functional
roles: What plays the same (or similar) role for another person
that feelings play for you.

Who says that I'm TRYING to generalize that notion? I'm simply asking
someone that I think HAS these experiences to examine their own
experiences to test out the points. I actually argue that the Other
Minds problem can't be solved except by assumption of similar
structure, so why you'd think I'm trying to generalize it is beyond
me. Moreover, I don't CARE about generalizing it. I KNOW that I
experience, and when I talk to others when we talk about mind we talk
about experiences. Thus, mind is experiences. If you adopt the
functional view, that's fine, but you end up giving up ANY pretense of
talking about phenomenal experiences and what we call "mind" in doing
so. Thus, building a computer on that model would prove NOTHING about
whether or not it had a mind, or phenomenal experiences. However, I'm
perfectly willing to allow you to do that and actually advocate doing
so to build an intelligent machine. Just don't claim that you've
therefore given it a "mind".

It depends on why you want such an explanation. If you are interested
in building intelligent robots, then "as if" mentality is good enough.

But why can't I then claim that MIND isn't required either, and that's
what you really mean?

It's not what I really mean, because that assumes that the
word "mind" has a unique referent, which isn't at all clear
to me. You can say that it is perfectly clear to you what
*YOUR* mind is, but that doesn't actually mean that the
word "mind" as applied to others *BESIDES* yourself has a
clear referent.

But since I don't make that claim, this is irrelevant. _I_ have a
mind; you may not. And the same thing applies to you; to you, YOU
have a mind, and I may not. However, one thing is clear to me: if you
have a mind, it means that you have phenomenal experiences that are at
least similar in kind -- if not in specifics -- to what I have in
those circumstances.

 

[Allan C Cybulskie]

On Apr 7, 11:23 am, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Allan C Cybulskie writes:
This is what my objection is: Pain can't just be the behaviour
normally produced by pain because that behaviour can be produced in
cases where pain was not experienced. So pain is something more than
that, and you cannot simply claim -- at a minimum -- that if something
acts as if it is in pain it really is. It may not be.

I think the problem is in the question itself: What is pain? Philosophy
tends to ask such questions, but they mislead you into looking for a
distinct "something" that is the referent of the word "pain". Notice here,
Allan, that you talk about pain indirectly: Pain must be something other
than behavior.

That's just a reply to Daryl, pointing out that pain is something, but
that it isn't just behaviour. In short, he just hasn't explained it
yet.

As for pain, I'm not necessarily calling it a specific thing.
Basically, pain is an event, but an event that has certain qualities,
which we basically call "an experience". What that maps to is still
an open question.

No, pain is the name we give to the phenomenal experience that occurs
due to certain environmental stimuli and causes certain behaviours to
occur.

I would say that it is a brain state that
occurs due to environmental stimuli and causes behaviors.
Adding "phenomenal experience" doesn't add anything.

Sure it does: the feeling itself. Which is what everyone except you
calls pain.

What feeling is that? Can you say? How do you know you have been calling
the right feeling "pain" all these years? Perhaps the feeling you have is
different from what the rest of us have. Would you then be wrong about
what pain is?

Could I be trained to act as if I was in pain even if I felt, say,
pleasure at all painful things? Certainly. This is one of the
reasons that most people claim that it's the specific TYPE of
experience itself that matters, and not how you react to it. How one
would tell the difference in these cases is still an open question,
but its possibility precludes "how you act" as being the litmus test
for pain.

The problem, and I see a bit of it with Daryl, too, is that you both want
to reduce pain to a specific "something". But pain-language doesn't lend
itself to that except, perhaps, metaphorically. Daryl, however, recognizes
that the wider context is what is ultimately relevant.

And I disagree. If you jump to the wider context, you leave the
phenomenal behind. Attempting to then claim that you've explained the
phenomenal -- which is all that it means to be conscious for most
people -- is an invalid move.

Now, you can claim that the phenomenal isn't important, and I agree
that it isn't for AI. But I care about mind and so care about the
phenomenal. And building a mindless AI ain't gonna help me understand
the phenomenal [grin].

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Allan C Cybulskie writes:

On Apr 7, 11:23 am, Joe Durnavich <j...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Allan C Cybulskie writes:
This is what my objection is: Pain can't just be the behaviour
normally produced by pain because that behaviour can be produced in
cases where pain was not experienced. So pain is something more than
that, and you cannot simply claim -- at a minimum -- that if something
acts as if it is in pain it really is. It may not be.

I think the problem is in the question itself: What is pain? Philosophy
tends to ask such questions, but they mislead you into looking for a
distinct "something" that is the referent of the word "pain". Notice here,
Allan, that you talk about pain indirectly: Pain must be something other
than behavior.

That's just a reply to Daryl, pointing out that pain is something, but
that it isn't just behaviour.

You need to be careful of the indirect argument, which pervades these types
of discussions. It is common to hear something of the form, "It is not out
there, so by process of elimination, it must be somewhere inside of me."
Such deduction hold only when you can demonstrate that there are only two
alternatives.

When it comes to terms like "pain", it doesn't have to be the case that
pain is like a thing that has a home--be it in inner experience or in outer
behavior. It may be that people just use the term as though they were
referencing a distinct something. So, pain doesn't have to be out there or
in here. You have to open up to the possibility that language functions in
more complex ways than you may at first realize.

In short, he just hasn't explained it yet.

As for pain, I'm not necessarily calling it a specific thing.
Basically, pain is an event, but an event that has certain qualities,
which we basically call "an experience". What that maps to is still
an open question.

I inevitably get this response in these types of discussions. People
accuse me of totally missing the key thing, the important thing, and then
claim that what I say does not explain pain or whatever. Fine. But when I
press for details on their view, which is supposed to offer an explanation,
they balk and say it is still an open question. In other words, I get a
"Trust me. The experience will explain it. I'll get back to you when
science has the details worked out."

Adding "phenomenal experience" doesn't add anything.

Sure it does: the feeling itself. Which is what everyone except you
calls pain.

What feeling is that? Can you say? How do you know you have been calling
the right feeling "pain" all these years? Perhaps the feeling you have is
different from what the rest of us have. Would you then be wrong about
what pain is?

Could I be trained to act as if I was in pain even if I felt, say,
pleasure at all painful things? Certainly. This is one of the
reasons that most people claim that it's the specific TYPE of
experience itself that matters, and not how you react to it. How one
would tell the difference in these cases is still an open question,
but its possibility precludes "how you act" as being the litmus test
for pain.

Notice that you could not answer my question directly and had to rely on an
indirect (and circular at that) argument. You suggest that the type of
experience itself is the important thing, but you try to demonstrate it by
merely beating up on a behaviorist position.

For your argument to work here, you need to demonstrate a real difference
between behavior-with-pain and behavior-without-pain.

By the way, you cannot always mimic pain behavior. I had back spasms once
where my body was making sure I didn't move around by seizing up my lower
back muscles when I tried to move. I don't think you could fake such
intense muscle contractions.

(That is not to say that the muscle contractions are what pain is. Again,
my view in this debate is that there is no one thing you can point to or
refer to that will answer the question: What is pain?)

The problem, and I see a bit of it with Daryl, too, is that you both want
to reduce pain to a specific "something". But pain-language doesn't lend
itself to that except, perhaps, metaphorically. Daryl, however, recognizes
that the wider context is what is ultimately relevant.

And I disagree. If you jump to the wider context, you leave the
phenomenal behind. Attempting to then claim that you've explained the
phenomenal -- which is all that it means to be conscious for most
people -- is an invalid move.

But you are not explaining the phenomenal either. If I press for details
on your explanation, you will just give me a rain check.

Once you consider the wider context, you appreciate the amazing complexity
of the ways we get along in the world. If consciousness is about anything,
it more about this rich interaction than it is about an inner experience
you have while standing alone inside a dark closet.

--
Joe Durnavich

 

Thanks to everyone for your replies,

Today I found a hidden switch that lets the throttle take control,
and with very gentle cycling the range now is 35 miles at 9-10mph
(It's 9-10mph because the bike only has one gear)

A 2nd battery looks the way to go...especially a Li-on if they're
cheap enough.

Dave

 

[Aly]

"john jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4618dad5$0$16403$88260bb3@free.teranews.com...

SNIP
There's nothing special about these light box things. Don't allow
distraction by talk of weird and wonderful exotic materials.
The nail hardener thing (also insect killers, currency detectors et al)
wouldn't be worth the effort to break down and the UV tubes will be be
quite
weak. It's quite painful to look at the bare blue light of a real UV box.
Built a box 7 tears ago for small 'one off PCBs'. Works well. Vital key is
those UV tubes which Maplin offers at Ł16 for 2.
Mine uses 4 Maplin UV tubes just clipped into 2 of those cheap 12V dc,
camping florry lights thingies. Stuck in a MDF box lined with cooking
foil,
with a normal glass window and a 12V power supply.
High density black lines, printed on matt film and 7 minutes exposure
gives
lines as fine as I can deal with. (ie those thin buggers that end up going
in between the 0.1" IC pads).

Hey John

Perked up again this end. Must be something to do with Clint and his taxes.


Back on track.. Reading.. Those Maplin tubes I believe to be 8W 12" T5 UV
tubes. Two for Ł15 odd, Maplin YA39N. About the same at Rapid, 34-0707.

These are what I'm looking at on eBay which I believe to be the same at
Ł4.50ea.;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320101581708

Out local shop for local people is charging... Ł5.84ea. although I'm not
sure if they'll allow local pickup. I much prefer picking up locally.

http://www.bltdirect.com/products.php?cat=1037

I'm swaying towards thick perspex maybe, although have found that picture
framers are the ones to talk to about non-UV glass and offcuts. 4mm is a
minimum.

One of my electronic friends has mentioned banding caused by the intense UV
light in the area closest to the tubes, and is suggesting the Ł200 UV box
from Rapid, 34-0705 ;

http://www.rapidonline.com/searchresults.aspx?style=0&kw=34-0705

I just want to build one really. Spending Ł200 goes against why I even do
any of this. I do it for fun

The bits I can source at no cost; IDC, switch, ballast, starters. The
outlay will be the flight case, say Ł20. The tubes, say Ł20. Glass, say Ł5
odd. So give or take Ł50 for a decent little box.



Aly

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Joe Durnavich wrote:

For your argument to work here, you need to demonstrate a real
difference between behavior-with-pain and behavior-without-pain.

Hi Joe Durnavich!

Nice one. (relating: 'Why do you retract your hand, seeing it in a hot
[!] flame, but having your senses somehow disconnected that you feel no
pain, by an accident with brain damage or by anaesthesia, anyway')

Once you consider the wider context, you appreciate the amazing
complexity of the ways we get along in the world. If consciousness
is about anything, it more about this rich interaction than it is
about an inner experience you have while standing alone inside a dark
closet.

A nice Discussion. More it cannot be.... any hit will branch into two
new one. If they are on a raising or a lowering point, is oft neglected
:-|

(Righters). There's no Right, just Up and Down I




Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daryl McCullough]

Allan C Cybulskie says...

stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

No, I don't eschew introspection, but I don't believe that it
is an infallible guide to what is going on, either. I take Dennett's
"heterophenomenological" approach. The fact that I am able to
distinguish between two different situations, and that I call one
"feeling pain" but not the other is indeed an important clue as
to what's going on. Any complete model of the human mind must be
able to explain why people claim to be in pain in some circumstances
and not in others.

By casting it this way, you eschew introspection.

No, I don't. Introspection is necessary to be able to *describe*
what things feel like.

Why wouldn't we take the obvious answer to this based on our
introspection and say that people claim to be in pain because
they have a specific experience -- like the one _I_ have in
those cases -- of pain?

I don't see how that is an answer at all. The question is
what does it *mean* to have "the experience of pain"?

It may be possible that rocks have feelings, but so what? This does
not mean that "feelings" haven't been defined, BTW; it's defined as
the phenomenal experiences that you have.

That isn't saying anything. What *is* a phenomenal experience?

You can't define ANYTHING below that level, it seems to me,
so demanding that we define experiences seems to demand
something that can never be done.
Either you have experiences, or you do not.

If you do, then you know what I
mean when I talk about feelings and phenomenal experiences.

No, what I think that you don't know what you mean when you
talk about feelings and phenomenal experiences. You know
what it is like to be you, but that *doesn't* mean that
you know what the phrases "feelings" and "phenomenal
experiences" means when applied to someone besides you.

If you are relying exclusively on introspection for your primary
notion of what a "feeling" is, then I don't see how you can ever
generalize that notion to someone besides yourself. On the other
hand, you certainly can generalize to others by using functional
roles: What plays the same (or similar) role for another person
that feelings play for you.

Who says that I'm TRYING to generalize that notion?

If you ask whether someone else has feelings, then you
are talking about someone besides you. So you are generalizing
beyond your introspection. The way to avoid generalizing is
to only refer to your *own* feelings and pain.

I'm simply asking someone that I think HAS these experiences

You can't *talk* about "having these experiences" without
generalizing beyond your introspection. Your introspection
shows you what things are like for *you*. To talk about
someone *else* having "feelings and experiences" means
that you are generalizing from your own case. Which generalizations
count, and which ones don't.

I actually argue that the Other Minds problem can't be solved
except by assumption of similar structure, so why you'd think
I'm trying to generalize it is beyond me.

I don't understand. Talking about "similar structure" *is*
generalizing.

It's not what I really mean, because that assumes that the
word "mind" has a unique referent, which isn't at all clear
to me. You can say that it is perfectly clear to you what
*YOUR* mind is, but that doesn't actually mean that the
word "mind" as applied to others *BESIDES* yourself has a
clear referent.

But since I don't make that claim, this is irrelevant.

Then what are you talking about when you talk about
other people having experiences?

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

 

[Daryl McCullough]

Allan C Cybulskie says...

stevendaryl3...@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

I think that pain is the same sort of thing as an alarm.
Physical damage to the body triggers a certain response
pattern in the nervous system. This in turn triggers
certain behavior (or at modulates existing behavior).
There is nothing particularly "painlike" about the
response pattern. What makes it "pain" is the role
it plays in the scenario: Body is damaged, pain is
registered, body responds.

Now, if you include the neural states, then you can be making an
interesting claim: pain is just the neural state produced by an event
that then causes certain reactions. Fine and dandy. But then we
still have room to say that we can determine this neural state without
examining the neurons from inside the subject by how pain FEELS. In
addition, this view causes problems for AI since AI doesn't have
neurons to play with.

That was the point about using a bell, or a flare gun, or
whatever else as a substitute for a fire alarm. The importance
is not the specific details of the alarm, but the role it plays.
Neurons are the tools that we have available to store and process
information, so of course "pain" for us is a neural state. But
what makes it "pain" (as opposed to pleasure) is the role that
the state plays in our behavior, *not* the details of neural
structure.

This is what my objection is: Pain can't just be the behaviour
normally produced by pain because that behaviour can be produced in
cases where pain was not experienced. So pain is something more than
that, and you cannot simply claim -- at a minimum -- that if something
acts as if it is in pain it really is. It may not be.

Calling it "something more" is a misleading way of saying
things. Is a fire alarm "something more" than a way of summoning
the fire department? Not really. That's its only significance.

Um, be careful. In most cases, the ACTUAL purpose of the fire alarm
is to warn people inside the building to leave before they perish in
the fire [grin]. The fire department is tangential. But I see your
point.

My point, however, is that pain and the fire alarm are both SPECIFIC
ways to produce a certain behaviour, and that they are identifiable
and have good and bad points. That's what I mean by "something more";
they aren't just ways just like any other way to produce behaviour,
but they are ONE way to do that but there's more to them than just
that.

Okay, I agree with that. What we have to work with in processing
information is neurons, and the physical properties of neurons
end up affecting the way that we respond to things. In a certain
sense, they are just "implementation details", but details matter.
The fact that aspirin relieves our headaches or LSD makes us
act weird are details of the way that our brains are implemented.
The details certainly are important in understanding the brain.

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Glen M. Sizemore writes:

"Joe Durnavich" <joejd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news28g13tqisci55dsobd4l4ndvl7hi1782b@4ax.com...

I find that the words "real" and especially "exists" tend to lead to more
confusion than clarity in philosophical discussions. People want to
resolve the issue by narrowing down to a single something when sometimes
it
is better to step back and consider the entire person getting on with his
life in his environment.



I never take any other perspective. I am describing methodological
behaviorism, Daryl's position. It holds that the subjective world is real
(not just "pain" but "mental" imagery, etc., but it is not amenable to
scientific analysis. I myself do not have too much trouble with "real" and
"exists" - post-synaptic receptors (once hypothetical constructs) are real,
phlogiston is not.

I can see meaning to your statement about "real" and
"exists" - the "mental" exists in the sense that we label people with them
in the 3rd person all the time. So the "mental" is real in that the terms
are simply names for behavior (at least in much ordinary usage),

Yeah, language is quite adaptable and you can always get some use out of
the terms "real" and "exists".

In these types of discussions, people tell me that my problem is that I
deny the mental. On the contrary, I point out, I hold the mental is so
real that, in a sense, you can touch it if you want. Then they say that my
problem is that everything has to be physical.

I'm never sure, though, if "names" is the best concept to apply in saying
that "the terms are names for behavior". I suppose in typical usage,
"mental" is a description of behavior.

but the
academic usage ( a distortion of ordinary usage) where the "mental" is
described as a cause of the behavior and said to be "inferred" from
behavior, is not.

The language we use to talk about consciousness is often metaphorical. It
is like we are naming or referring to an inner something. But that is just
us leveraging common linguistic forms. We all know how to talk about
houses and cars, so why not talk about pains in the same fashion?

What is missed, of course, is the view that objective vs.
subjective is a matter of accessibility, not ontology. "Subjective
experience" can be dealt with in terms of the science of stimulus control;
we are trained to respond to parts of the world and to, thereby, "become
aware of them,"

So, I smell smoke, I go to investigate and I discover that a garbage can
has caught on fire. I get a fire extinguisher and put the fire out. The
burning garbage can and my interaction with it are what constitutes my
awareness.\


By some ordinary usages, yes. But the mainstream academic view is that such
behavior implies a private seeing of the fire and the extinguisher, and a
private smelling of the smoke.

I am not academic so it is not my place to criticize, but I am disappointed
that some academics still hold such a view. You would think that people
would outgrow folk psychology at some point.

Methodological behaviorism says that the
smoke evoked a subjective experience that you call "smelling smoke," and you
then act on that private experience. Since the link between smoke and the
private experience is lawful, and the link between the private experience of
smelling smoke and our action is lawful, we can simply treat the data
excluding the middle link.

Ahh, OK. I see what you are getting at now. I agree that if there was
such a middle link, it would factor out of the equation, so to speak. The
"private experience of the smell of smoke" is supposed to serve as an
explanation for why smoke smells so, well, smoky, I guess. But that, of
course, is not an explanation at all.

Radical behaviorism does not follow this pattern.
One may "smell smoke and investigate," etc. but this does not mean that one
must be aware of one's own behavior. Speaking colloquially, we are compelled
to say that the subject "was aware of the fire" but we do not have to say
that the person "was aware of their response to the fire."

[...]

Now in regards to pain, do I likewise investigate and discover this "some
other response" of mine? That is, do I find out that I am in pain?



I'm not sure I understand this.

I was trying to understand the difference between "awareness" and
"self-awareness." In the common view, awareness is looking outward and
self-awareness is looking inward. I was wondering if you took
self-awareness to be literally looking inward at a private response or
whatever. The "looking inward" metaphor fails in the end because it makes
no sense, to tell your dentist, say, "I did a private inventory over the
weekend, and you know what? I discovered that I had a toothache in me!"

You "find out that you are in pain" when the
verbal community establishes verbal behavior under stimulus control of your
response to painful stimuli. A person or non-human animal may behave in
simple (elicited behavior) or complex ways (escape, avoidance) in situations
involving painful stimuli, but not "know they are in pain." Just as the
world can consist of green things and red things, but you don't "see the
difference." Consider this paper:



Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1987 Jul;48(1):1-15



An animal model of the interpersonal communication of interoceptive
(private) states.



Lubinski D, Thompson T

Pigeons were taught to interact communicatively (i.e., exchange
discriminative stimuli) based on 1 pigeon's internal state, which varied as
a function of cocaine, pentobarbital, and saline administration. These
performances generalized to untrained pharmacological agents (d-amphetamine
and chlordiazepoxide) and were observed in the absence of aversive
stimulation, deprivation, and unconditioned reinforcement. The training
procedure used in this study appears similar to that by which humans learn
to report on (tact) their internal environments and may be construed as a
rudimentary animal model of the interpersonal communication of private
events.





The same experiment could be done with "pain" being communicated. Unstated
by Lubinski and Thompson is the radical behaviorists take on it - to train
the "communicative response" is NOT to merely train the animal to respond to
"what it is already aware of," but is to "make the animal aware of private
events." It may be even clearer with drug-discrimination procedures (and
Lubinski and Thompson is largely a straight drug discrimination procedure -
except they try to free the response from a particular state of deprivation
as is thought to occur when humans "learn to describe the world" - that is
part of the definition of the "tact" in Skinner's "Verbal Behavior") because
we can imagine a drug producing a behavioral effect, but we are not aware of
the change in our behavior. Then we are "made aware" when verbal behavior is
brought under stimulus control of those drug-induced behavioral changes.

Thanks for the excerpt. I like this view because it incorporates the fact
that interaction ("interact communicatively") happens first, and only then
can we apply a term such as "aware."

I am a little unclear on how to take one aspect of this: What we see of
the pigeons is a new set of behavior in response to injected drugs. But
they suggest that these are reports on internal environments. Are they
speaking metaphorically here? Is a particular pattern of behavior in
response to stimuli evidence that there is an internal environment that
we--and our pigeon brethren--report on?

--
Joe Durnavich

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Daryl McCullough writes:

Allan C Cybulskie says...

I'm simply asking someone that I think HAS these experiences

You can't *talk* about "having these experiences" without
generalizing beyond your introspection. Your introspection
shows you what things are like for *you*. To talk about
someone *else* having "feelings and experiences" means
that you are generalizing from your own case.

He has a good point, Allan. The way you guys set this up, "these
experiences" are "your experiences". Some other person can't have your
experiences. That is like saying that he has your headache.

--
Joe Durnavich

 

[Pete D]

dave_mallon123@hotmail.co.uk wrote:

Thanks to everyone for your replies,

Today I found a hidden switch that lets the throttle take control,
and with very gentle cycling the range now is 35 miles at 9-10mph
(It's 9-10mph because the bike only has one gear)

A 2nd battery looks the way to go...especially a Li-on if they're
cheap enough.

Dave

Lithium ion batteries are expensive compared to lead acid, but they do

have a considerably higher charge for a given mass, but be very carefull
about charging, they tend to explode if mistreated, which includes
overheating as well as overcharging

see the wikipedia entry as a good reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery

 

[Charles Schuler]

Thank you.

You are welcome.

 

[Glen M. Sizemore]

"Joe Durnavich" <joejd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:hu5j13l4o95klucmd9t746hdnn9kb2el4f@4ax.com...

Glen M. Sizemore writes:

"Joe Durnavich" <joejd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news28g13tqisci55dsobd4l4ndvl7hi1782b@4ax.com...

I find that the words "real" and especially "exists" tend to lead to
more
confusion than clarity in philosophical discussions. People want to
resolve the issue by narrowing down to a single something when sometimes
it
is better to step back and consider the entire person getting on with
his
life in his environment.



I never take any other perspective. I am describing methodological
behaviorism, Daryl's position. It holds that the subjective world is real
(not just "pain" but "mental" imagery, etc., but it is not amenable to
scientific analysis. I myself do not have too much trouble with "real" and
"exists" - post-synaptic receptors (once hypothetical constructs) are
real,
phlogiston is not.

I can see meaning to your statement about "real" and
"exists" - the "mental" exists in the sense that we label people with
them
in the 3rd person all the time. So the "mental" is real in that the terms
are simply names for behavior (at least in much ordinary usage),

Yeah, language is quite adaptable and you can always get some use out of
the terms "real" and "exists".

In these types of discussions, people tell me that my problem is that I
deny the mental. On the contrary, I point out, I hold the mental is so
real that, in a sense, you can touch it if you want. Then they say that
my
problem is that everything has to be physical.

I'm never sure, though, if "names" is the best concept to apply in saying
that "the terms are names for behavior". I suppose in typical usage,
"mental" is a description of behavior.

Take "anger," for example. A child learns to say "he's angry" when he or she
observes certain kinds of behavior (i.e., shouting, throwing things, etc.)
just as he or she learns to say "chair" in the presence of chairs. There's
no difference. Later, of course, we learn to say that we are inferring
anger, but this is not the case anymore than it is the case that we are
inferring chair. Obviously, the fragment "angry" occurs in many different
utterances, under the control of different variables, but one "usage" is
simply as a name for behavior-in-context.

but the
academic usage ( a distortion of ordinary usage) where the "mental" is
described as a cause of the behavior and said to be "inferred" from
behavior, is not.

The language we use to talk about consciousness is often metaphorical. It
is like we are naming or referring to an inner something. But that is
just
us leveraging common linguistic forms. We all know how to talk about
houses and cars, so why not talk about pains in the same fashion?

I'm not sure exactly what you are driving at here, so I'll withhold comment.

What is missed, of course, is the view that objective vs.
subjective is a matter of accessibility, not ontology. "Subjective
experience" can be dealt with in terms of the science of stimulus
control;
we are trained to respond to parts of the world and to, thereby, "become
aware of them,"

So, I smell smoke, I go to investigate and I discover that a garbage can
has caught on fire. I get a fire extinguisher and put the fire out.
The
burning garbage can and my interaction with it are what constitutes my
awareness.\


By some ordinary usages, yes. But the mainstream academic view is that
such
behavior implies a private seeing of the fire and the extinguisher, and a
private smelling of the smoke.

I am not academic so it is not my place to criticize, but I am
disappointed
that some academics still hold such a view. You would think that people
would outgrow folk psychology at some point.

It is disappointing and ironic. The view that perception is a matter of
seeing a representation is widespread, despite the fact that the language
game is not played that way. We say we saw a car crash, not a representation
of a car crash. It is a curious thing that an academic position has filtered
down to the masses. Indeed, as Skinner has pointed out, most mental terms
were once frank references to behavior or its context. It has only been
slowly that the terms have come to mean something like inner possessions.

Methodological behaviorism says that the
smoke evoked a subjective experience that you call "smelling smoke," and
you
then act on that private experience. Since the link between smoke and the
private experience is lawful, and the link between the private experience
of
smelling smoke and our action is lawful, we can simply treat the data
excluding the middle link.

Ahh, OK. I see what you are getting at now. I agree that if there was
such a middle link, it would factor out of the equation, so to speak. The
"private experience of the smell of smoke" is supposed to serve as an
explanation for why smoke smells so, well, smoky, I guess. But that, of
course, is not an explanation at all.

Placing the thing seen inside the head does not explain seeing and hearing
and smelling etc. Theophrastus pointed this out thousands of years ago.

Radical behaviorism does not follow this pattern.
One may "smell smoke and investigate," etc. but this does not mean that
one
must be aware of one's own behavior. Speaking colloquially, we are
compelled
to say that the subject "was aware of the fire" but we do not have to say
that the person "was aware of their response to the fire."

[...]

Now in regards to pain, do I likewise investigate and discover this
"some
other response" of mine? That is, do I find out that I am in pain?



I'm not sure I understand this.

I was trying to understand the difference between "awareness" and
"self-awareness." In the common view, awareness is looking outward and
self-awareness is looking inward.

Well, yes and no. What you have written is consistent with usage, but most
educated people now argue that to be "aware of the car" is actually to be
aware of one's inner representation of a car. As sad as this is, that is the
state of things.

I was wondering if you took
self-awareness to be literally looking inward at a private response or
whatever. The "looking inward" metaphor fails in the end because it makes
no sense, to tell your dentist, say, "I did a private inventory over the
weekend, and you know what? I discovered that I had a toothache in me!"

A couple of comments: First, people continue to play the language game in
the fashion that you say, but their other verbal behavior is inconsistent
with it. Certainly the overwhelming majority of academics say that what is
felt is "inside" and usually it is said that it is "inside your brain." That
is what they say in response to questions about perception. Despite that
nonsense, however, such people continue to talk in the normal way about
perception. The cognitive "scientist" still says "My dog sees a cat," and
would look at you somewhat funny for an instant when you said "Really?" "Are
you sure?" "Did you see observe the representation of the cat on its
occipital cortex?" They would quickly catch themselves, though, and say, "I'm
inferring that it is seeing a cat." Guess what? I'm not being silly here. As
to the use of "inner" and outer," I have dropped "inner" a long time ago,
though Skinner continued to use it. I just say "private." Sometimes, though,
inner is tempting - where is a kidney stone? If I feel a kidney stone am I
not feeling something "internal?"

You "find out that you are in pain" when the
verbal community establishes verbal behavior under stimulus control of
your
response to painful stimuli. A person or non-human animal may behave in
simple (elicited behavior) or complex ways (escape, avoidance) in
situations
involving painful stimuli, but not "know they are in pain." Just as the
world can consist of green things and red things, but you don't "see the
difference." Consider this paper:



Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1987 Jul;48(1):1-15



An animal model of the interpersonal communication of interoceptive
(private) states.



Lubinski D, Thompson T

Pigeons were taught to interact communicatively (i.e., exchange
discriminative stimuli) based on 1 pigeon's internal state, which varied
as
a function of cocaine, pentobarbital, and saline administration. These
performances generalized to untrained pharmacological agents
(d-amphetamine
and chlordiazepoxide) and were observed in the absence of aversive
stimulation, deprivation, and unconditioned reinforcement. The training
procedure used in this study appears similar to that by which humans learn
to report on (tact) their internal environments and may be construed as a
rudimentary animal model of the interpersonal communication of private
events.





The same experiment could be done with "pain" being communicated. Unstated
by Lubinski and Thompson is the radical behaviorists take on it - to train
the "communicative response" is NOT to merely train the animal to respond
to
"what it is already aware of," but is to "make the animal aware of private
events." It may be even clearer with drug-discrimination procedures (and
Lubinski and Thompson is largely a straight drug discrimination
procedure -
except they try to free the response from a particular state of
deprivation
as is thought to occur when humans "learn to describe the world" - that is
part of the definition of the "tact" in Skinner's "Verbal Behavior")
because
we can imagine a drug producing a behavioral effect, but we are not aware
of
the change in our behavior. Then we are "made aware" when verbal behavior
is
brought under stimulus control of those drug-induced behavioral changes.

Thanks for the excerpt. I like this view because it incorporates the fact
that interaction ("interact communicatively") happens first, and only then
can we apply a term such as "aware."

I am a little unclear on how to take one aspect of this: What we see of
the pigeons is a new set of behavior in response to injected drugs. But
they suggest that these are reports on internal environments. Are they
speaking metaphorically here? Is a particular pattern of behavior in
response to stimuli evidence that there is an internal environment that
we--and our pigeon brethren--report on?

It would be misleading to refer to "a new set of behaviors in response to
injected drugs." Drug-discrimination (DD) procedures work like this: an
animal is injected on some days with, say, cocaine, and on other days it is
injected with vehicle. On days that it was injected with drug, pressing the
left lever produces food, and pressing the right does not. On days that
vehicle was injected, the opposite is true. Animals, of course, after a fair
amount of exposure to these contingencies, come to accurately identify drug
vs. no drug. Here the lever-press is an operant response under stimulus
control of the drug effect. Some aspect of the drug effect is the only thing
that can discriminatively control behavior. This gives rise to the notion
that the animal is feeling some sort of "inner state." I have long ago
dropped the language of states. The cocaine alters the animals behavior and
the lever-press response is under stimulus control of the drug-altered
behavior, either overt or covert (I designed an experiment to ascertain
whether animals are responding to publicly-observable behavior or private
behavior, but it will probably never get done).



Glen

--
Joe Durnavich

 

[Joe Durnavich]

Glen M. Sizemore writes:

"Joe Durnavich" <j...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:hu5j13l4o95klucmd9t746hdnn9kb2el4f@4ax.com...

I'm never sure, though, if "names" is the best concept to apply in saying
that "the terms are names for behavior". I suppose in typical usage,
"mental" is a description of behavior.


Take "anger," for example. A child learns to say "he's angry" when he or she
observes certain kinds of behavior (i.e., shouting, throwing things, etc.)
just as he or she learns to say "chair" in the presence of chairs. There's
no difference. Later, of course, we learn to say that we are inferring
anger, but this is not the case anymore than it is the case that we are
inferring chair. Obviously, the fragment "angry" occurs in many different
utterances, under the control of different variables, but one "usage" is
simply as a name for behavior-in-context.

OK. That is a good case for the word "anger" functioning as a name for
behavior-in-context.

As an aside, you talk about the possibility of science studying such a
subject as anger. When you take the view that you do here in which anger
is something observable, you finally get a foothold on the subject. It
becomes less mysterious how an ecosystem evolved in which a dog growls and
bares his teeth at a cat that approaches his food and in which the cat
stops approaching in response.

On the "anger is an inner state and behavior is just an outer display"
model, however, explanation for anger seems always out of reach. In such a
scenario, one wonders if there was a time long ago when dogs and cats
walked around pissed off at each other, with their emotions bottled up
inside, but stuck with expressions of stoic indifference that provided them
no means to telegraph such feelings of animosity.

I'm not sure exactly what you are driving at here, so I'll withhold comment.

Nothing much.

You learn to say sentences like these:

A bike is in the garage.
A penny is in my pocket.

You then take advantage of this form you have learned and apply it with
sentences like these:

A pain is in my arm.
Thoughts and ideas are in my mind.

People tend to assume that language always functions the same way,
especially when it has the same form. Hence, you have people trying to
find pains, thoughts, and ideas, but always finding them seemingly just out
of reach.

It is disappointing and ironic. The view that perception is a matter of
seeing a representation is widespread, despite the fact that the language
game is not played the fashion that you say, but their other verbal
behavior is inconsistent with it. Certainly the overwhelming majority
of academics say that what is felt is "inside" and usually it is said
that it is "inside your brain."

I think people latch on to this viewpoint because it appears to them to
offer a ready explanation for why we are sometimes mistaken about what we
see: The brain has simply presented us with the wrong picture. When we
misread a word, the reason is said to be because the brain rendered the
wrong word in place of the right one (presumably in the same font and text
color). They explain optical illusions as cases where the brain has fooled
us into seeing something that isn't there. Hallucinations--these folks are
big on hallucinations--by a drug user are a result of the psychedelic drug
causing the representing part of the brain to take on an ability to paint
fantastic pictures. Apparently the drug has no effect on the "mind's eye"
portion of the brain, which sees the fantastic imagery with no problem.

Of course, when you consider perception as a skill, as a form of
achievement in the environment, you can find plenty of reasons why we are
sometimes mistaken.

The cognitive "scientist" still says "My dog sees a cat," and
would look at you somewhat funny for an instant when you said "Really?" "Are
you sure?" "Did you see observe the representation of the cat on its
occipital cortex?" They would quickly catch themselves, though, and say, "I'm
inferring that it is seeing a cat." Guess what? I'm not being silly here.

Heh. Perhaps they might say, "of course the dog might just be pretending
to see a cat..."

As to the use of "inner" and outer," I have dropped "inner" a long time ago,

A wise policy.

The "inner/outer" metaphor has its uses in daily conversation, but it
quickly becomes limiting and misleading when applied to philosophy and
science.

though Skinner continued to use it. I just say "private."

"Private" has the advantage of being symmetrical with "public."
Another word I have seen suggested is "personal".

Sometimes, though, inner is tempting - where is a kidney stone?
If I feel a kidney stone am I not feeling something "internal?"

It's a shame that this term has become spoiled.

It would be misleading to refer to "a new set of behaviors in response to
injected drugs." Drug-discrimination (DD) procedures work like this: an
animal is injected on some days with, say, cocaine, and on other days it is
injected with vehicle. On days that it was injected with drug, pressing the
left lever produces food, and pressing the right does not. On days that
vehicle was injected, the opposite is true. Animals, of course, after a fair
amount of exposure to these contingencies, come to accurately identify drug
vs. no drug. Here the lever-press is an operant response under stimulus
control of the drug effect. Some aspect of the drug effect is the only thing
that can discriminatively control behavior. This gives rise to the notion
that the animal is feeling some sort of "inner state."

OK. I think this experiment is a handy framework for a general illustration
of awareness and self-awareness. It shows awareness and self-awareness as
skills you have to learn.

I have long ago dropped the language of states.

States are so, well, static. Perception and awareness is dynamic and more
of a closed feedback loop between the organism and its environment. People
want to point to one thing and say "that state right there is the
perception." But there is not always a good reason to single out one state
over any other in a active loop.

The cocaine alters the animals behavior and
the lever-press response is under stimulus control of the drug-altered
behavior, either overt or covert (I designed an experiment to ascertain
whether animals are responding to publicly-observable behavior or private
behavior, but it will probably never get done).

I consider perception as an ability to tell things apart. Here we have the
pigeon able to tell drug and non-drug apart. Has this discrimination been
compared to, say, tasting the chemicals?

--
Joe Durnavich