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

Sat May 9 21:17:12 EDT 2020

Ok, so it sounds like we agree there is a distinction can be made between
behavior and "mere movement". So what is that difference? I would argue,
following E. B. Holt, that it is the presence of intentionality. Note
crucially that the directedness of the behavior described below is
descriptive, *not *explanatory. The intention is not a force behind the
behavior, it is a property of the behavior-to-circumstance mapping that can
be demonstrated by varying conditions appropriately.

For simplicity I will take a hypothetical, but strictly possible, case. A
small water-animal has an eye-spot located on each side of its anterior
end; each spot is connected by a nerve with a vibratory silium or fin on
the *opposite* side of the posterior end; the thrust exerted by each fin is
toward the rear. If, now, light strikes one eye, say the right, the left
fin is set in motion and the animal's body is set rotating toward the right
like a rowboat with one oar. This is all that one such reflex arc could do
f or the animal. Since, however, there are now two, when the animal comes
to be turned far enough toward the right so that some of the light strikes
the second eye-spot (as will happen when the animal comes around facing the
light), the second fin, on the right side, is set in motion, and the two
together propel the animal forward in a straight line. The direction of
this line will be that in which the animal lies when its two eyes receive
equal amounts of light. In other words, by the combined operation of two
reflexes the animal swims *toward the light*, while either reflex alone
would only have set it spinning like a top. It now responds specifically in
the direction of the light, whereas before it merely spun when lashed.

As thus described, this first dawn of behavior seems to present nothing so
very novel... The animal, it is true, is still merely ' lashed' into
swimming toward the light. Suppose, now, that it possesses a *third* reflex
arc—a ' heat-spot' so connected with the same or other fins that when
stimulated by a certain intensity of heat it initiates a nervous impulse
which stops the forward propulsion. The animal is still * lashed,' but
nevertheless no light can force it to swim " blindly to its death " by
scalding. It has the rudiments of ' intelligence.' But so it had before.
For as soon as two reflex arcs capacitate it mechanically to swim *toward
light*, it was no longer exactly like a pinwheel: it could respond
specifically toward at least one thing in its environment.

It is this objective reference of a process of release that is significant.
The mere reflex does not refer to anything beyond itself: if it drives an
organism in a certain direction, it is only as a rocket ignited at random
shoots off in some direction, depending on how it happened to lie. But
specific response is not merely in some random direction, it is *toward an
object*, and if this object is moved, the responding organism changes its
direction and still moves after it. And the objective reference is that the
organism is *moving with reference to some object or fact of the
environment*. In the pistol or the skyrocket the process released depends
wholly on factors internal to the mechanism released; in the behaving
organism the process depends partly on factors external to the mechanism.
This is a difference of prime significance, for in the first case, if you
wish to understand all about what the rocket is doing, you have only to
look inside the rocket, at the powder exploding there, the size and shape
of the compartment in which it is exploding, etc.; whereas, in order to
understand what the organism is doing, you will just miss the essential
point if you look inside the organism. For the organism, while a very
interesting mechanism in itself, is one whose movements tum on objects
outside of itself... and these external, and sometimes very distant,
objects are as much *constituents* of the behavior process as is the
organism which does the turning. ....

This thing, in its essential definition, is *a course of action which the
living body executes or is prepared to execute with regard to some object
or some fact of its environment*. From this form of statement it becomes
clear, I think, that not only is this the very thing which we are generally
most interested to discover about the lower animals— what they are doing or
what they are going to do— but also that it is the most significant thing
about human beings, ourselves not excepted. " Ye shall know them by their
fruits," and not infrequently it is by one's own fruits that one comes to
know oneself. It is true that the term ' wish' is rather calculated to
emphasize the distinction between a course of action actually carried out
and one that is only entertained ' in thought.' But this distinction is
really secondary. The essential thing for both animal behavior and Freud's
psychology is the *course of action*, the purpose with regard to
environment, whether or not the action is overtly carried out. (Holt, 1915,
p. 52-57)

P.S. I'm going to try to ignore the celery challenge, because while we
recognize plants as living, we do not typically talk about them as
behaving. And I think the broad issue of living vs. not-living is a
different issue. We probably should talk about plants behaving a bit more
than we normally do, but I think it is worth getting a handle on what we
mean in the more normal seeming cases before we try to look for
implications like those.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 9:01 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> While lying in bed this morning, waiting patiently for the alarm to go
> off, moving nothing but whatever autonomous functions are required to keep
> me alive, I *struggled* to find a biological example of behavior that
> doesn't involve movement. The best I could come up with was the change in
> color you see if you water a (clipped) flower with colored water (or a
> fresh clipping of celery).
>
> This is also "movement", but of a clearly different scale, one we normally
> wouldn't call "movement". My analogous example was (as hinted by Marcus's
> suggestion that we put our cell phone next to some speakers or by my
> mention of TEMPEST) is an antenna. Antennas *behave* like inductors, an EM
> wave hits them and induces a current ... again, it's movement, but as Dave
> points out, not what we talk about in the context of dogs or ducks.
> Examples like EEGs don't inspire me because they imply a *purposeful*,
> intentional measurement device. The cell phone speaker and TEMPEST examples
> of movement are interesting because the former is annoying (unintentional
> consequences) and the latter is *adversarial*, with white, black, and red
> hats.
>
> So, what distinguishes the still *alive* piece of celery in the food
> colored water versus the antenna reactively responding to EM waves in the
> air? These are all "behavior". But as EricS points out, that word isn't
> explanatory absent the entire lexicon/ontology it *tugs* at ... like gently
> pulling on one strand of a spider web and seeing the whole mesh deform.
>
> On 5/5/20 8:20 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> > Perhaps even /just/ his gut fauna.
> > Is it that we define behavior so that we can distinguish it from
> > /just/ moving? I could be ok with that as a starting point.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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