Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Animal Thought (was Re: language, thought, and culture)
Message-ID: <935@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 88 18:10:25 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <929@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <45257@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 43
Keywords: thought modalities

In article <45257@sun.uucp> randolph%cognito@Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) writes:
>I've the strong impression that "thought" for you has at least the following
>two properties:
>
>  1. Conscious control
>  2. Uniquely human behavior

Well, maybe, especially point 2 (I said we might be able to train
animals to think).

>You seem to presuppose that I use the same two criteria; my arguments must
>sound like so much noise to you.  If you choose to use these criteria, fine.
>I wouldn't want to control :-) your thinking.

No, of course not noise!  I thought we were engaged in a debate about
the definition of thought? How can we engage in debate if I think you
have the same assumptions I do? If argument is thought control, so be
it, all the better.  It's a good think that if I lose an argument my
thought is changed to reflect those of the one who won the argument. 
This is the way we learn things. 

>Yet these two criteria leave out so much behavior that they seem to me
>limiting.  Nor is it well understood behavior.  Clinical psychology is
>largely the long slow study of methods of changing unconscious behavior; an
>artificial intelligence researcher would be delighted to be able to produce
>the behaviors you disparage as "unconscious".

Hey, you're getting me upset! I don't understand the above, perhaps you
could give some examples? Behavior is not thought.  I disparage nothing. 
I seek truth. 

Please answer my question: what is the difference between thought and
complex reflex?

>H_Randolph Fritz
>randolph@sun.com
>sun!randolph

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, New York, but my opinions
| vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .