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From: karl@dartvax.UUCP (S. Delage.)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: More mirrors, more dust
Message-ID: <2057@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jul-84 14:40:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2057
Posted: Wed Jul  4 14:40:33 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jul-84 07:26:06 EDT
References: <620@flairvax.UUCP>
Organization: Dartmouth College
Lines: 39


   Behaviorists do not deny the existence of thoughts. As Mr. Kissell
correctly points out, that would be very counterintuitive, since I
know I have thoughts, and since you tell me that you do too, and I
can relate what you tell me you're doing when you're thinking to
what I do when I'm thinking.
   At this point, the word "thoughts" becomes fuzzy. Let's take
the easier ( Read:  more comprehensible. ) case first. When
"thoughts" is taken to mean things like "I should go to the
supermarket now, I'm out of food and I'm hungry.", thinking can be
considered to be another form of behavior. ( Skinner's somewhat
more succinct way of putting that is:  "Thinking is behavior." )
That is, certain stimuli [e.g., empty cupboards] have conditioned
certain responses [e.g., going to the supermarket], which will
bring about changes in the environment. [e.g., I can eat now.]
Yes, I'm oversimplifying the case, ( For example, if I don't have
any money, then I know going to the supermarket won't do any good,
and so on. ) but nothing intrinsically different is going on than
external behavior. [e.g., I'm hungry and I have food, so I eat.]
   Unfortunately, "thoughts" also seems to mean, sometimes, the
mental processes that go on in our head that make us conscious,
have free will, and all the rest of what the dictionary entry Mr. 
Kissell quoted tells us.
( I hope that because the dictionary tells us what a mind is,
that's not the end of the discussion! )
   Behaviorists are not particularly interested in this second part, 
this "mind". ( Not that it's not a fascinating topic, as The
Mind's I, Godel, Escher, Bach, etc, etc, will attest to. ) This is
because, I think, that this "mind" doesn't explain anything that
we couldn't explain before. We don't need free will to explain why
we eat when we're hungry, or why we don't eat when we're hungry,
for that matter. Only genetic endowment, current environment, and
past conditioning history. I tried to go into some of the limits
of current behaviorism in my previous article, and won't do it
again.
   I'll be interested to see the examples of things that Skinner
can't explain that I presume will be floating in!

{decvax,cornell,colby,linus,uvm-gen,astrovax}!dartvax!karl;karl@dartmouth