Re: Representationalism rescues reinforcement learning
- From: "Alpha" <OmegaZero2003@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 09:48:45 -0700
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46555c52$0$31960$ed362ca5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"J.A. Legris" <jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1179971232.741884.221330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So here's the thing: in the real world, an organism that learns by
trial, error and (yawn) reinforcement, is likely to get eaten before
it is lucky enough to stumble on the appropriate response.
No, if a feature of the world is stable enough, the animal has behavior
that is elicited. Just because some responses are acquired through
conditioning (you imply operant conditioning, but the issue is largely the
same for Pavlovian conditioning) does not mean, say, escaping predators
is. Further, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you, operant conditioning
can be virtually instantaneous, as Skinner demonstrated in 1938. We see
this in operation (as I have explained to you before) in so-called
imprinting. Little could be as important (life and death) for a duckling
or gosling than following mom, yet it has been DEMONSTRATED that the
behavior is due to operant conditioning. What the birds inherit is the
capacity for
reducing-the-distance-between-itself-and-the-first-moving-object-seen-of-appropriate-size
to be a reinforcer. If a device is constructed such that the object moves
away more rapidly when approached, but moves closer when the bird moves
the other way, it learns to move the other way instead of approaching. If
pecking a key causes the object to move towards the bird, it learns to
peck the key. In the natural world, the usual consequence of moving
towards an object is that the distance between you and it is reduced and
the behavior of approaching is learned extremely rapidly. It is operant
conditioning and the birds don't die before they learn it.
But, it if
has a virtual environment in its head where it can test various
responses before committing to any, it has a leg up on the challenges
of existence, which appears to be just what we mammals have managed to
evolve - internal representations of the real world with little
homunculi going at it, and just possibly, another level or two of
homunculi contained therein (not so much for the good of the theory,
but just to irritate antirepresentationalists a little bit more). And
get this - it's TESTABLE!
Modern humans do, in fact, engage in behavior that could be called
"testing out the behavior" and it is part of the complicated behavior we
call "thinking."
There is little reason to believe, it seems to me, that this is a basic
process in itself.
You are correct as far as that applies to yourself! I.e., you do not engage
in a basic process called "thinking".
We have to learn to observe our own behavior and its effects on ourselves.
I think,
A process - also here - a contradiction by the writer.
also, that there are serious limitations to the circumstances in which
this applies. Verbal behavior is probably one area where it applies. We
learn to say silently many things before we say them publicly and we are
well set up for this to be effective since our "listener's repertoire" is
the product of histories somewhat similar to those we are talking to. What
else it applies to is not clear to me. Say, for example, that you must
jump a chasm. You either jump or not, but upon what does that depend? Even
if one does imagine a leap and imagine a distance covered and compare the
imagined distance to the actual distance etc., what is imagined cannot be
independent from our observations of our own leaps and the leaps of
others'. But is that what actually goes on? And even if it is, this does
not mean that what happens in imagination is taking place in a virtual
world. In the case of testing out verbal responses before they are emitted
publicly, there is absolutely no reason to think that the silent response
is anything more than a less intense version of the public response. It
takes place in the world (and the organism/environment interaction is part
of the world - I say this for the benefit of Smart Joe), and the effect of
that verbal behavior on ourselves is the same as public behavior (or very
similar - since the response is a less-intense its effects may be slightly
different). I think that most of what we call "imagination" is simply
automatically reinforcing. We imagine others showing us admiration, or we
imagine the face of a lover, or the face of a dead friend. I can sometimes
figure out songs simply by "listening to them in my head" as I sit at the
piano - at least it plays a role. If the song is too difficult, I engage
in other behavior. I go fetch a CD player with a "rewind" function. But
either way, there is no reason to think
And that is your calling card; you have no reason to think.
that any of this takes place in a virtual world; listening to a song is
behavior, and that behavior can occur even when there is no media. It
can't occur, however, if our music-listening behavior is currently being
strongly controlled. Try listening privately to a song while some other
song is playing publicly.
--
Joe
Now that Smart Joe is here, you should probably either go by "Legris" or
"Dumb Joe."
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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- From: J.A. Legris
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- From: Glen M. Sizemore
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