Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!greenba From: greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Modelling reinforcement Message-ID: Date: 11 Dec 90 16:13:33 GMT References: <25667@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <16562@cgl.ucsf.EDU> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Organization: GE Corporate Research & Development Lines: 36 In-reply-to: valis@athena.mit.edu's message of 10 Dec 90 23:30:17 GMT In article valis@athena.mit.edu (John O'Neil) argues: Even if physics were as advanced as physics, we couldn't predict next week's weather with any accuracy. With *all the details* of Tolstoy's environment, you seem to believe in principle that a deterministic behaviorism could predict the verbal behaviorism evinced in _War and Peace_. This seems to me akin to showing which butterfly in China caused Hurricane Bruno -- not just difficult, but even in principle quite impossible. The butterfly example is good; I won't quibble over the difference between difficult and impossible in that context. That is a basic problem with "verbal behavior": when one allows the stimulus to be an event 50 years in the past, the notion of "stimulus", which is at the heart of behaviorism, becomes completely ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ muddled. Many think of behaviorism as a matter of stimulus and response, and it may have been for some in the early days. But it's not for the radical behaviorists of Skinner's school. For them, most "responses" of any interest have no immediately associated stimulus. They have conditional probabilities of emission. Events in our lives change us by affecting these probabilities ever after. Some day neurologists will discover the process. I could attempt a precis of modern behaviorism, but it wouldn't be as good as Skinner's book, _About Behaviorism_, already available in paperback in your neighborhood. See especially the early chapter listing myths about behaviorism. I'd enjoy further discussion with anyone who takes the trouble to avoid these elementary errors. -- Ben A. Green, Jr. greenba@crd.ge.com Speaking only for myself, of course.