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Apprentice comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong
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Comments (328)
It's true that Quine lacked the insights of contemporary probability theory and AI, but remember that Quine's most significant work was done before 1970. Quine was also a behaviorist. He was wrong about many things.
My point was that both Quine and Yudkowsky think that recursive justification bottoms out in using the lens that sees its own flaws to figure out how humans gain knowledge, and correcting mistakes that come in. That's naturalized epistemology right there. Epistemology as cognitive science. Of course, naturalized epistemology has made a lot of progress since then thanks to the work of Kahneman and Tversky and Pearl and so on - the people that Yudkowsky learned from.
What's wrong with behaviorism? I was under the impression that behaviorism was outdated but when my daughter was diagnosed as speech-delayed and borderline autistic we started researching therapy options. The people with the best results and the best studies (those doing 'applied behavior analysis') seem to be pretty much unreconstructed Skinnerists. And my daughter is making good progress now.
I'll take flawed philosophy with good results over the opposite any day of the week. But I'm still curious about flaws in the philosophy.
May I recommend Dennett's "Skinner Skinned", in Brainstorms?
Okay, I read it. It's funny how Dennett's criticism of Skinner partially mirrors Luke's criticism of Eliezer. Because Skinner uses terminology that's not standard in philosophy, Dennett feels he needs to be "spruced up".
"Thus, spruced up, Skinner's position becomes the following: don't use intentional idioms in psychology" (p. 60). It turns out that this is Quine's position and Dennett sort of suggests that Skinner should just shut up and read Quine already.
Ultimately, I can understand and at least partially agree with Dennett that Skinner goes too far in denying the value of mental vocabulary. But, happily, this doesn't significantly alter my belief in the value of Skinner type therapy. People naturally tend to err in the other direction and ascribe a more complex mental life to my daughter than is useful in optimizing her therapy. And I still think Skinner is right that objections to behaviorist training of my daughter in the name of 'freedom' or 'dignity' are misplaced.
Anyway, this was a useful thing to read - thank you, ciphergoth!
Thank you, holding the book in my hand and reading it now.
No, I'm talking about behaviorist psychology. Behaviorist psychology denied the significance (and sometimes the existence) of cognitive states. Showing that cognitive states exist and matter was what paved the way to cognitive science. Many insights from behaviorist psychology (operant conditioning) remain useful, but it's central assumption is false, and it must be false for anyone to be doing cognitive science.
Okay, but now I'm getting a bit confused. You seem to me to have come out with all the following positions:
Those things don't seem to go well together. What am I misunderstanding?
Quinean naturalism does not have an exclusive lock on useful philosophy, but it's the most productive because it starts from a bunch of the right assumptions (reductionism, naturalized epistemology, etc.)
Like I said, Quine was wrong about lots of things. Behaviorism was one of them. But Quine still saw epistemology as a chapter of the natural sciences on how human brains came to knowledge - the field we now know as "cognitive science."
Quine apparently said, "I consider myself as behavioristic as anyone in his right mind could be". That sounds good, can I subscribe to that?
Personally, I'm finding that avoiding anthropomorphising humans, i.e. ignoring the noises coming out of their mouths in favour of watching their actions, pays off quite well, particularly when applied to myself ;-) I call this the "lump of lard with buttons to push" theory of human motivation. Certainly if my mind had much effect on my behaviour, I'd expect to see more evidence than I do ...
I take exception to that: I have a skeletal structure, dammit!
I think the reference is to the brain rather than to the whole body.
(blink)
(nods) Yes, indeed.
Exception withdrawn.
Well played!
It sounds like what you are describing is rationalization, either doing it yourself or accepting people's rationalization about themselves.
Pretty much. I'm saying "mind" for effect, and because people think the bit that says "I" has much more effect than it appears to from observed behaviour.
Yep. Anthropomorphizing humans is a disasterously wrong thing to do. Too bad everyone does it.
No, they just look like they're doing it; saying humans are athropomorphizing would attribute more intentionality to humans than is justified by the data.
Well, the mind seems to. I'm using "mind" here to mean the bit that says "I" and could reflect on itself it if it bothered to and thinks it runs the show and comes up with rationalisations for whatever it does. Listening to these rationalisations, promises, etc. as anything other than vague pointers to behaviour is exceedingly foolish. Occasionally you can encourage the person to use their "mind" less annoyingly.
I think they anthropomorphise as some sort of default reflex. Possibly somewhere halfway down the spinal cord, certainly not around the cerebrum.
I may be wrong, but I think that SilasBarta is pointing out, maybe with some tongue-in-cheek, that you can't accuse humans of anthropomorphizing other humans without yourself being guilty of anthropomorphizing those humans whom you accuse.
Edit: Looks like this was the intended reading.
I am finding benefits from trying not to anthropomorphise myself. That is, rather than thinking of my mind as being in control of my actions, I think of myself as a blob of lard which behaves in certain ways. This has actually been a more useful model, so that my mind (which appears to be involved in typing this, though I am quite ready to be persuaded otherwise) can get the things it thinks it wants to happen happening.
I was joking. :-P
Ha ha only serious ;-p
Is this an example? I've been working on paying attention to intention. If I know someone cares about me, but is expressing it poorly, I try to focus on their intent rather than their expression of that intent.
I'd watch their behaviour, which I would also have classed as expression of the intent. Do they show they care? That being the thing you actually want.