[Wittrs] Re: some helpful guidelines for reading Wittgenstein's philo...
- From: "gerardoprim" <gerardoprim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:47:16 -0000
(Stuart) I guess what I'm saying, Gerardo, is that if you change a concept by
expanding its scope of application, after a point you have something very
different.
(Gerardo) Yes, it´s something very different, we´ve agreed on that. Let´s move
on and analyse what this new usage implies for our goals.
(Stuart) If behaviorism originally referred to overt behaviors (meaning what we
can see) and then was expanded to include covert behaviors (what we can't see
as a matter of fact because its concealed but which could be seen if it wasn't)
and then its expanded still further to include things that only the individual
can see, after a while all we've done is redefine things like mental phenomena,
originally specifically excluded from behaviorism, as "behavior" too. And now
all we've done is expand the idea of behaviorism so far as to cover even what
was once not considered behavior.
(Gerardo) Don´t forget that the expansion doesn´t include all that was
considered as "mental", but only a subset of it (activity detectable at least
by one person). I see nothing wrong with proposing a new usage and see what
happens. The issue is how the new conceptual framework works with respect to
our goals.
(Stuart) I'm not disputing that we can change meanings of words, expand their
applications, etc. I'm just saying that, if behaviorism was originally
formulated to account for human behavior without invoking the idea of minds
(understood as a private realm), then you have substantially altered the
meaning of "behaviorism"
(Gerardo) You´re oversimplifying the motivations that elicited the behaviorist
proposals. There were several motivations, and therefore several proposals. You
should ask how each behaviorist answered some questions: "what´s mind?",
"what´s wrong with mind?" and "what should we do about it?". For Watson, what´s
wrong is that "introspection is unreliable for doing scientific research", and
what we should do is "rely on observable behavioral data". For Kantor, what´s
wrong is "the postulation of supernatural entities", and what we should do is
"remain within a naturalistic description of observable fields of events". For
Skinner, what´s wrong is that "postulation of mental stuff is a
pseudoexplanation" and what we should do is "rely on experimental analysis",
but "private activity" is not the "mental stuff" that should be avoided. The
"mental stuff" that should be avoided (in scientific research) is the concept
of "inner causal agency" and "inner world of ghostly copies".
(Stuart) if you now say but those elements that are private are really
behavior, too. And if you've done that, then it's not a defense against a
criticism of the original behaviorism nor does it establish that everything is
still about behaviors only, just because we are now calling a broader range of
things "behavior".
(Gerardo) You insist on saying that "it´s not really behavior", but you´re
begging the question, because your premise for saying so is precisely the
rejection of the conceptual change. If there´s a conceptual change, it´s
obvious that some features will remain and others will be modified, and the
assessment of what should or shouldn´t remain and what can or cannot be
modified depends on each conceptual usage´s purposes. So, instead of repeating
that "it´s not really behavior", let´s analyse what is similar and what is
different in each conceptual usage, and what are their effects on our purposes.
For example, would you consider that "seeing a dog" is behavior? I´d say that
we could apply the term and consider it a "perceptual behavior" under the
control of the actually observed stimulus and the previous learning
contingencies with similar stimuli. You may want to retain the word "behavior"
only for muscular responses that act on the world and are publicly observable
by other people, but even if you want to distinguish them from muscular
responses, you should acknowledge that there´re many features that are closer
to the concept of "behavior" than to the other (non- episodic and
non-interactional) mental concepts: "seeing a dog" is an event (it has a
beginning and an end), a kind of interactional activity between the organism
and its environment, a response modifiable by conditioning principles, and it
is composed by many physiological changes in the organism, most of them not
easily observable by other people. The same could be said about other sensory
dimensions such as hearing, feeling, and smelling. And all these examples
already have the issue of privacy: a person staring at a dog might not be
seeing a dog. How would you see these examples?
Regards,
Gerardo.
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