[lit-ideas] Re: Grice on Implicature Reinforcement
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:08:14 +0100 (BST)
Leaving aside the fraught issue of categorising correctly as either analytic or
synthetic a priori...
________________________________
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
>Reinforcement occurs in operant or instrumental conditioning and is
defined as a strengthening of a specific behaviour due to its association with
a
stimulus. A reinforcer is the stimulus that strengthens the behaviour. This
is in contrast to punishment where a behaviour is weakened.>
This is simply a red herring in terms of the issue of categorising correctly,
and of the issue whether 'p' might simultaneously explicate and implicate the
same aspect of its meaning.
But, even if btw, this theory of "reinforcement" is also a myth of sorts - and
an all too prevalent one. Pavlov's dog is not doing what Pavlov suggests by way
of "conditioning" - the dog is doing what Darwin/Popper would suggest:
modifying its behaviour given its action programme to anticipate eating
opportunities in the light of changes it detects in its environment (so that
the dog 'learns from experience', by way of a kind of 'theory', that a bell
dwindles in significance as a sign of an impending eating opportunity and its
readiness to eat at such a sign [evidenced by its salivating] dwindles
accordingly). [The dog may subsequently 'learn from experience' to treat the
bell differently of course.] The Pavlovian interpretation is merely
associonationist pyschology drawn from the traditional empiricism of Locke and
Hume and converted into the then-fashionable language of "conditioning":- it
represents a mistaken 'theory of knowledge', in particular a
false theory of how we 'learn from experience', though one that has endured to
a surprising extent given the wealth of argument and evidence against it:
including the evidence Garcia gathered from rats which shows they will never
'associate' stomach sickness with a flashing light nor associate an electric
shock with anything they've eaten, no matter the closeness of the 'association'
in terms of frequency and intensity as set out in associationist pyschology -
this tells us they are not 'associating' as per associationism but are
following some 'theories' built into their action programme that tell them, for
example, that stomach sickness will be due to something they ate. In a striking
example, Garcia showed that rats nauseated when unconscious, using radiation,
will wake up and no longer consume the sucrose they previously lapped up -
their inbuilt programme has told them to be wary of what they were last eating
given the nausea that the programme has
detected and that the programme works with a 'theory' that such nausea will be
due to something they ate (their programme does not have a 'theory' that
anticipates the possibility of radiation). [In Kantian terms, this programme is
not analytic nor synthetic a posterori but is synthetic apriori - however,
Darwin/Popper explain why this synthetic a priori knowledge, in the form of an
action programme, is conjectural rather than necessarily true, and that the
programme will have evolved under the pressure of 'natural selection'.]
In terms of correct understanding of how we 'learn from experience', Garcia's
rats eat Pavlov's dogs for breakfast. That they are less well known would be
comparable to Darwin being less well known than Lamarck.
Donal
Stop me if..
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