[FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Tue May 5 23:24:39 EDT 2020

I like this Eric.  Thank you. 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 7:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Glen said:  

In principle, if EricC's principle is taken seriously, the inner world of a black box device will be *completely* represented on its surface. Any information not exhibited by a black box's *behavior* will be lost/random. 

David said: 

Machine "behavior" is either a metaphor or an error of anthropomorphism.  This is true, I believe, whether one speaks of a computer's UI (the computer is but a lump and sans any behavior) or a robot.

Both questions point out that as a field, psychology has never properly settled upon a definition of "behavior". 

We can all agree that behavior refers to something more than mere movement, right? The dead body in Weekend at Bernie's is not behaving, despite tons of movement. A dead duck thrown out of a window isn't behaving as it falls to the ground, a live duck thrown out a window and flying away is behaving. A marionette under the control of a skillful artist might look like it is behaving, but as we widen the lens we see that the marionette is just moving, while the artist is behaving. Etc. 

We can also agree that the difference between behavior and mere movement not a mere matter of constituent parts, right? The dead duck and the live duck are basically the same physically (so sayeth Dr. Manhattan). We can also all imagine that there might be other planets in which life looks very different, perhaps having silicon as its core atomic characteristic instead of carbon, for example, or using a physiological system without neurons. 

So, we have a box. For some questions we might care what is inside the box. For other questions we don't. For the questions where we don't, we can treat it as a philosophical "black box" if we want. For those questions, we aren't asserting that the surface of the black box tells us what's inside it, we are merely asserting that for the purposes of those questions everything we want to know can be known from the surface. 

Opening such a box can help you get a certain type of explanation for what was on the surface, but that is a different matter altogether. Any "inner-world of the black box" that creates the same surface has created the same surface. Dynamic systems are messy things, even when producing stable outcomes. 

The characteristics that distinguish movement from behavior are visible without opening the box. We readily distinguish the dead duck from the live one without looking inside them; we distinguish the marionette from the artist by looking at more of the situation, not by cutting the marionette open. We certainly could come up with questions that lead us to look inside the marionette, but they wouldn't be questions about its behavior.  

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Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

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