lukeprog comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong

106 Post author: lukeprog 20 March 2011 08:28PM

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Comment author: Apprentice 21 March 2011 10:45:39AM 4 points [-]

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 I was under the impression that behaviorism was outdated but when my daughter was diagnosed as speech-delayed and borderline autistic we started researching therapy options.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.

Comment author: lukeprog 21 March 2011 04:57:44PM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Apprentice 21 March 2011 05:26:40PM *  3 points [-]

Okay, but now I'm getting a bit confused. You seem to me to have come out with all the following positions:

  • The worthwhile branch of philosophy is Quinean. (this post)
  • Quine was a behaviorist. (a comment on this post)
  • Behaviorism denies the possibility of cognitive science. (a comment on this post)
  • The worthwhile part of philosophy is cognitive science. ("for me, philosophy basically just is cognitive science" - Lukeprog)

Those things don't seem to go well together. What am I misunderstanding?

Comment author: lukeprog 21 March 2011 05:35:31PM 0 points [-]

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."

Comment author: Apprentice 21 March 2011 05:26:52PM 1 point [-]

Quine apparently said, "I consider myself as behavioristic as anyone in his right mind could be". That sounds good, can I subscribe to that?

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