Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cmu-cs-k.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!decvax!genrad!grkermi!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!rochester!cmu-cs-pt!cmu-cs-k!tim From: tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion Message-ID: <445@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> Date: Sat, 8-Jun-85 22:03:05 EDT Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-k.445 Posted: Sat Jun 8 22:03:05 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 11-Jun-85 03:12:09 EDT References: <340@scgvaxd.UUCP> Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking Lines: 46 Xref: watmath net.religion:7087 net.religion.christian:773 Dan Boskovich writes: > The lower view of man presents him as being nothing more than material > substance and chemical processes. This is demonstrated through modern > psychology's "behaviorism", which regards man as another animal. Dan, you have really got to stop talking about things you know nothing about. If you were studying behaviorism and stated anything of that sort on one of the exams, I could guarantee you a failing grade. A paper of that sort submitted to a journal of behaviorism would not get past initial review. The whole point of behaviorism is to avoid that kind of metaphysical speculation and concentrate only on what can be proved by the scientific method. It is not materialistic, it is not degrading to humanity: it is merely a laboratory discipline used to guarantee verifiability of results. It provides no "final answers". Any discussion of "material substance and chemical processes" is anathema to behaviorism. The subject matter is behavior. The question of what internal processes cause behavior is explicitly not addressed, because no scientific method of establishing them yet exists. All behaviorist rules are of the sort "the presentation/removal of stimulus A has been followed in lab trials by an increase/decrease in the frequency of emission of operant B". You will find nary a word about anything except stimuli and operants, and super-structures such as schedules of reinforcement that are built on these. Skinner did publish "Verbal Behavior", in which he claimed to reduce all human behavior to operant processes. But his conclusions were met with immediate skepticism even within the behaviorist community, since such claims are unprovable and have been made many times before. Before Skinner, the Watsonians claimed that all behavior could be reduced to their models, and before them it was the Pavlovians. You will not find many behaviorists these days who would come out in public as being absolute adherents of Skinner's models in "Verbal Behavior". Your easy willingness to speak from a position of ignorance provides yet more evidence (as if any were needed) that you are indulging in post facto reasoning, intended not to find the answer to questions but to establish fixed conclusions that have already been reached on non-rational grounds. You can no more reason correctly in this fashion than you can bicycle in reverse from Maine to Wisconsin, or run a C program from the "exit(0)" to the "main(argc,argv)". Unfortunately, it is rather easier to delude yourself in the intellectual arena than on the roads or peering at a CRT. -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"