[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?
Prof David West
profwest at fastmail.fm
Mon Sep 17 15:10:26 EDT 2018
Nick, what was the cat dosing with, LSD? (just being a smart-a__)
Perhaps people provide a psychological question with a physiological answer for the same reason you reply to a consciousness question with a behavioral answer? Unshared ontologies?
davew
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018, at 1:08 PM, David West wrote:
> Nick, what was the cat dosing with, LSD? (just being a smart-a__)
>
> Perhaps people provide a psychological question with a physiological
> answer for the same reason you replay to a consciousness question with a
> behavioral answer?
>
> davew
>
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2018, at 12:59 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Marcus,
> >
> > I have never understood how it comes to be that people answer a
> > psychological question with a physiological answer. I, of course, share
> > your belief that all psychological functions are physiologically (or
> > electronically) mediated. Still, for instance, it would seem odd to
> > me, if I asked a person if an animal can calculate the square root of
> > three, for that person to answer, "That animal does not have the sort of
> > brain that can calculate the square root of three". The natural course
> > of argument would seem for me for the person to answer the question
> > about the calculation activities of the animal and THEN go on, perhaps,
> > to explain that answer in terms of the physiological limitations of the
> > animal's brain.
> >
> > We once had a famously smart cat. One day we were watching TV and a cat
> > came on. Our cat roused itself from dosing on the rug, went over and
> > looked behind the tv, came back to the rug, looked at the TV, looked at
> > us disgustedly, and lay down on the rug with its back to the TV. It
> > never roused to a cat on the TV again. No cat would be dumb enough to
> > be fooled by pornography. I don't know what that proves about the
> > question at hand, but I love cat stories.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> > Clark University
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 1:53 PM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?
> >
> > I would say this relates to the reality (or not) of first-world
> > problems. Humans that thrive in the first world must form (or be
> > educated to acquire) higher-order representations. Psychologizing is
> > one process that leads to higher-order representations. In an
> > artificial deep neural network, the neurons in the higher layers
> > represent more and more abstract interpretations of inputs that have be
> > presented, but it can take hundreds of thousands of neurons and dozens
> > of layers.
> >
> > One might imagine pets that have fewer neurons and less connectivity
> > amongst neurons could still develop higher-level representations
> > provided that these adaptations did not interfere with other essential
> > information processing functions -- keeping in mind the most important
> > function for a pet is probably anticipating the meaning of human
> > signals.
> >
> > Anyway, we'll make great pets.
> >
> > Marcus
> >
> > On 9/17/18, 11:30 AM, "Friam on behalf of Nick Thompson" <friam-
> > bounces at redfish.com on behalf of nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, Glen and Marcus. Very interesting.
> >
> > But, "Do animals psychologize?"
> >
> > N
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> > Clark University
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
> > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 10:57 AM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] do animals psychologize?
> >
> > Glen writes:
> >
> > "Even in your example, we might notice that even though there are N licenses
> > doled out, the deer population continues to rise. It would be
> > over-intervention to simply issue more licenses. Perhaps the people getting
> > the licenses are mostly an aging population who don't hunt much anymore but
> > have some semi-automated approach to getting a license?"
> >
> > A population estimation input comes from tagging stations relative to issued
> > licenses by category of deer, so they can & do close-the-loop by way of
> > enforcement.
> > The population estimation techniques require some assumptions, of course.
> >
> > Marcus
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
More information about the Friam
mailing list