Re: Molecules and Neurons - and photons

JGCASEY wrote:
On Dec 15, 1:57 pm, "J.A. Legris" <jaleg...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:
"Alpha" <OmegaZero2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

BTW, Hawkins had an interesting take on behavior vs intellignece, arguing
that one can be intelligent without exhibiting any behavior. He says to
reflect on that and it is apparent that it is true. One can be thinking
of writing another book and what concepts one wants to include. And other
than that, the person is doing nothing else besides maintaining
(autonomically) a physiological milieu. Yet that person is clearly
intelligent - intelligencing - without behavior. Lots of examples of
that.

That's just a stupid use of the word "behavior". It's so stupid I had to
do a double take on that section of the book to understand what his point
was. It's as if brain behavior isn't behavior! How can that be? why is
"lip behavior" behavior but "brain behavior" is not part of our behavior?
It's as if the brain wasn't part of our body so anything it does can't be
counted as part of our human behavior. How stupid.

It's like trying to pretend a computer isn't behaving if you turn off the
monitor.

No on with any intelligence limits their use of the word "behavior" to only
the behavior we can externally observe. All the behavior of a body is part
of the behavior of a body.

You've been seduced by the merological fallacy. Remember, whole
organisms behave, not their constituent parts - brains only mediate
behaviour.

Your behaviourist cadet standing is hereby reduced to probational
status until further notice.

--
Joe Legris

How was what Curt was saying a mereological fallacy?

The mereological fallacy I would understand in this case
to be an attribution of the properties of the whole (person)
to a part (the brain). An analogy might be to suggest a
logic gate having by itself the ability to add numbers
whereas this is a property of a group of logic gates
that are wired up correctly. However each logic gate has
its own way of behaving independently of any group effect.

I never really understood "behaviorism" as such because
as far as I can see everything changes in time and thus
"behaves" and in that sense I am a behaviorist just as
I might say every piece of matter is made of atoms thus
making me an atomist. It doesn't in itself explain much
to me at all.

We have all sorts of behaviors just as we have all sorts
of tunes. We can talk about learning behaviors, adaptive
behaviors, intelligent behaviors, stupid behaviors which
refer to the whole person or move down through groups of
neural behaviors until we hit the behaviors of different
kinds of neurons. The word "behavior" seems to me to be
without any kind of explanatory power in itself. It is
simply a description of how some set of observations
change over time.


The prototypical example in the mereological fallacy fracas is that a
person thinks, not a brain. This is a valid criticism if it is not
understood that thinking has different meanings in the two contexts.
For example it might refer to a set of external behaviours in first
instance and a set of neurological behaviours in the second.
Analogously, using the word behaviour to cover both the activities of a
whole person and the events in a person's brain attracts the same
critcism unless it is understood that the meaning of the term shifts
with the context. This ambiguity in the unqualified use of the term
suggests, for example, that the brain exhibits self-similarity across
levels, that it is a fractal object, which is an empirical matter, not
a terminological one.

--
Joe Legris

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