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From: rbg@cbosgd.UUCP (Richard Goldschmidt)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: More mirrors, more dust
Message-ID: <120@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Jul-84 08:42:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.120
Posted: Wed Jul 11 08:42:47 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Jul-84 05:26:42 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
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>I have not been holding the mind to be any more "extraphysical" than a 
>computer program.  It is a notion of process rather than of substance.  It 
>is a word to describe the way my brain experiences its own function.  
>Kevin D. Kissell

I would agree completely.  The program analogy is a good one.  Imagine trying
to use some of the methods analagous to those of brain research to identify
computer programs.  You take a probe and watch single bits toggle, and try to
understand a program (or worse yet an operating system) in the cpu.  You might
find that certain bits near I/O portions of the hardware had activity that 
correlated in some relatively obvious way with external events, but to 
"point to" the program or really comprehend it near the source level
would be a gargantuan task.  Specifying the high level properties of the
mind by examining the activity of brain hardware is possible, but will take 
a very long time.  Then again, maybe programs aren't real and should be
relegated to the realm of metaphysics or imaginary constructs :-}

There was also a request for flaws in Skinner's perspective.  The biggest
problem is that he relies on contingencies of reinforcement as the only
explanation for environmental control of behavior.  Social psychologists
have shown that the principle of cognitive dissonance also has great
explanatory power.  It deals with the effects of social roles, prior 
expectations, a posteriori rationalizations on behavior and attitude change.
In many cases, its predictions contradict those based on reinforcement.
For example:  take a group of undergraduates, and have them publicly read
a speech defending Hitler.  Some of them get paid, say $50 or $5, and some
get nothing.  The amount of attitude change (the extent to which they begin
to believe what they said) is inversely proportional to the reward.  Those
who are paid nothing have the largest attitude change, which is hypothesized
to result from rationalization, in the absence of external justification.
Human behavior is not as simple as Skinner and his model developed from
pigeon and rat studies would have us believe.

Rich Goldschmidt      cbosgd!rbg