Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (vu0112)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Animal Thought (was Re: language, thought, and culture)
Summary: News flash: spell checkers think!  :->
Keywords: thought modalities
Message-ID: <1001@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 27 Mar 88 07:19:04 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <935@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <47166@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 95

In article <47166@sun.uucp> randolph%cognito@Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) writes:
>Cliff Joslyn (vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu) writes -
>
>  Please answer my question:  what is the difference between thought and
>  complex reflex?
>
>I would say that complex reflex is a kind of thought.

I must admit that after reading your posting I have become more
sympathetic to your position.  In particular, the idea that
*uncontrolled*, but still spontaneously generated (as opposed to
perceived) mental representations are thoughts seems unaviodable.  So
that when I close my ears and hear voices, or close my eyes and see
pictures, it must be said that I am thinking.  Yet *when* I control
those voices and pictures, that is a different kind of thought.  Any
suggestions as to a name?

So while I'll admit that thoughts need not be controlled generation of
mental representations (although this is typical), on the other hand I
must insist that complex reflexes are not thoughts.  Do you want to
argue that *all* mental activity is a kind of thought, including
perception? If so, then you must say that *all* neural creaturres are
also *thinking* creatures, something which is not really common
sensical.  Indeed, if you allow complex reflexes to be thoughts, then to
the extent that algorithms are complex reflexes (this seems
unproblematic to me now), existing machines think!

Perhaps we can draw the line between thoughts and non-thought mental
phenomena based on thoughts being internally generated, as opposed to
received from the environment.  However, on this view we quickly run
into problems w/hallucinations and other forms of "induced" mental
presentation.  In particular, when the neurosurgeon's probe or a stray
neurotransmitter causes a mental presentation, is that a thought? The
problem here is a viable definition of "environment:" is my endocrine
system outside or inside?

>"Clinical psychology is largely the long slow study of methods of changing
>unconscious behavior."  

Thank you, I think I understand now.  On the above reading,
schizophrenic hallucinations and such may or may not count as thoughts,
depending on the brain science involved. 

I have little idea what an unconscious thought might be.  I'm inclined
not to believe in them.  What I will grant is that some (most? all?)
thoughts are caused by unconscious processes (viz.  my voices and
images), but I couldn't possibly say that the thoughts themselves were
unconscious. 

>If I could build a
>machine that could, from the sensation of reflected light from a page,
>construct a representation of the words on the page (the "meaning" of the text
>on the page), I'd have achieved something that would awe an AI researcher.  It
>would turn the world upside down!  And yet, in a skilled human reader, reading
>is unconscious mental behavior ("thought").

I think you'd agree with me that the problem above is *very* difficult
to define.  OCRs construct representations of words on pages, but that's
not what you mean, is it? What you mean is that the OCR must
*understand* what the words mean.  We all know the difficulties involved
in finding criteria for "understanding."

On the other hand, I suspect that if I was a highly skilled accountant
or editor, that there could be many tasks working with numbers and words
which I could accomplish with very sophisticated complex reflexes
(algorithms), and thus without thought.  Such activities may be normally
and commonly accomplished *with* thought, but perhaps not necessarily
so. And of course, automated accounting and editting is proceeding
apace, yet no one would call a spell-checker a thinking machine, or
understands anything about what it is doing.

>The transformation of sensation to representation, the operation on
>representation, the transformation of representation to action (I'm tempted to
>write sensation, but that would cause more confusion), all of these are
>unconscious.  And, so far as I know, humans are better at them than any other
>creature; we have more options in our behavior, we can create a broader range
>of representations, we do more things with them.  Not thought?  This is most
>of what minds do!

I have no idea what an unconscious thought could be.  

Perhaps minds do more than think? Perhaps they do all kinds of other
things, things like the kinds of things that computers do, like complex
algorithms? People *do* think, in fact we're so good at it, and it
demmands so much of us that sometimes we forget that brains and minds do
other things, like keep us alive, as they have kept countless
non-thinking creatures alive for billions of years. 

>__Randolph Fritz (sun!randolph; randolph@sun.com)

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