Re: How much intelligence?

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 07:46:30 -0500, "Allan C Cybulskie"
<allan.c.cybulskie@xxxxxxxx> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:


"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44117778$0$13066$ed362ca5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


As to Curt, his strength is that he intuitively grasps the power of
conditioning and he sees through some of the nonsense puked out by its
critics.

And yet, you refuse to read the Stoics or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, who
also grasp the power of conditioning and yet have a completely
non-behaviouristic view of the world. Are you afraid you might learn
something?

But he is not an expert in the science, and much of what he says is
frankly mentalistic or just plain silly ("rocks are conscious," "the
animal
reinforces itself," "we respond to the contents of our STM" etc. etc. etc.
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.). I like Curt, but my opinion is that he needs to
take a step back, read some books and start again in a few years.

Hmmm. You LIKE Curt, because he agrees with you. You dislike me, because I
disagree with you. You certainly cannot say that his arguments are better
than mine except that they start from behaviourist assumptions. And you
claimed once that you were a lecturer, no?

However, I agree with you on Curt. He is trying to do philosophy without
knowing anything about it. However, I would also argue that YOU need to
read some philosophy as well, since you seem horribly ill-informed about
what philosophical problems behaviourism creates.

(As a hint, there have been many discussions on this newsgroup about
behaviourism over the years. If behaviourism is true, not only is it the
case that whether or not anyone is convinced is outside of their control,
but also whether or not you or anyone else ARGUES for a particular side is
outside of their control. Making everything pointless.)

Where I think you may have a problem with this line of reasoning,
Allan, is showing that philosophers have ever had anything worth
saying on scientific subjects. The problem is Glen and behaviorism
start of with philosophy - monism, naturalized epistemology,
materialism, and behaviorism - so they can't wind up with anything
better than philosophy. As far as I can tell philosophy is just so
much special pleading and circular reasoning. The best philosophers
give clear definition to their reasoning and admit when those limits
are exceeded. But they almost never come to any demonstrably true
conclusions. An exception here would be Aristotle and syllogistic
inference. But even here he got the definition of truth upside down
and backward. So my own interpretation of the situation is that
monism, naturalized epistemology, materialism, and behaviorism
relied too much on philosophy. Of course you could argue that they
relied too much on bad philosophy. However as far as I can tell there
really is pretty much only bad philosophy. At least I see no way to
distinguish bad philosophy from good philosophy absent any clearly
demonstrable definition of truth. And that's exactly what philosophers
argue by assumption without being able to demonstrate.

I suppose one could say that occasional philosophers have actually
had significant things to say on science and other subjects over the
course of history. Descartes comes to mind in this respect. But I'm
still reluctant to concede the general idea of philosophy as a
substitute for truth in universal terms. I think that recommending
philosophy is what gets people into trouble to begin with because even
if one knows the truth choice in philosophy is not a matter of truth.

~v~~

.

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