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

Mon May 11 09:09:04 EDT 2020

I unintentionally omitted the citation:

Citation
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous
retroactive influences on cognition and affect. *Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 100*(3), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021524
<https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0021524>

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, May 11, 2020, 5:51 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Psi is vastly more extensive (types) and complicated than Daryl seems to
> recognize. Based on the abstract, his experimental method precludes the
> possibility of obtaining any but negative results.  I would attempt to
> explain why, but I doubt anyone on the list is interested.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
> Here is an abstract by Daryl Bem (I thought there was only one 'r'):
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Abstract
>
> The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer
> that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological
> mechanisms. Two variants of psi are* precognition* (conscious cognitive
> awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that
> could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process.
> Precognition and *premonition* are themselves special cases of a more
> general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future
> event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are
> conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9
> experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for
> retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological
> effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the
> putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4
> time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and
> precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming;
> retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean
> effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and
> all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results.
> The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of
> extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the
> experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of
> stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about
> psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed.
> (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 3:50 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Eric Charles,
>
> As you read this recall that I have an MS in psychology so you can think
> of me as a disenchanted former psychologist.
>
> You hint at something I have wondered about.  Psychologists seem to have
> physics envy.  They want to make wonderful counter-intuitive discoveries
> like the photon slit experiment, etc that seem incredible.  But some (not
> I) claim that their findings are either obvious or incapable of
> replication.  I took classes from Darryl Bem who could fascinate
> undergraduates with his self-perception ideas.  He was also an amateur
> magician who was in his element when he was performing before an auditorium
> full of amazed people.  Admittedly he explained how he did his illusions.
> He must have been expelled from the magicians union.
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020, 2:35 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Frank,
> So far as I can tell, no one is denying thought. I'm certainly not. There
> are phenomenon at play, and one of the things that happens when you science
> a phenomenon is that you end up with descriptions of the phenomenon (and
> explanations for the phenomenon) that don't match mundane intuitions about
> things,. We should expect that the science of psychology defines its
> subject matter different from mundane intuitions in the same way that the
> science of physics and the science of biology did for their respective
> subject matters: Sometimes those definitions end up pretty close to the
> mundane intuitions of a given era, other times you end up with definitions
> that are radically different.
>
> In these contexts, I like to remind people how mindbogglingly unintuitive
> Newtonian momentum is. When was the last time you moved an object and it
> didn't come to rest? Aristotle's system is much more intuitive.
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
>
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 10:46 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> As I said to Nick approximately a dozen years ago, people who deny thought
> must not have it.  I don't mean that as an insult.  It's that for me
> thought is the one thing I can't deny because it's the first *experience*
> At that point Nick dismisses me as a Cartesian.
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020, 8:34 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ha! Well, by ignoring the poignant example, you've ignored my entire
> point. And it's that point by which I can't agree with the unmoored
> distinction you're making. The celery example isn't about being alive.
> Sorry for injecting that into it. The celery example is about *scale*.
> Celery's movement *is* movement. An antenna's behavior *is* its movement. I
> introduced antennas' behavior in order to help demonstrate that behavior is
> orthogonal to life.
>
> Now, the distinction you're making by saying that behavior is a proper
> subset of movement, would be fine *if* you identify some movement that is
> *not* behavior. I didn't see that in the Old Dead Guy text you quoted ...
> maybe I missed it?  Anyway, that's the important category and celery and
> antennas fit right in.
>
> But the behavior/movement discussion (including observer-ascribed
> intention) is a bit of a distraction. What we're actually talking about is
> *hidden* states (a.k.a. "thinking", maybe extrapolated to "consciousness").
> So, the examples of light-following or higher order objective targeting is
> like trying to run before you can walk. Why do that? Why not talk about,
> say, the hidden states of an antenna? If we could characterize purely
> *passive* behavior/movement, we might be able to characterize *reactive*
> movement. And if we do that, then we can talk about the complicatedness (or
> complexity) of more general *transformations* from input to output. And
> then we might be able to talk about I⇔O maps whose internal state can (or
> can't) be estimated solely from their I&O.
>
> We don't need all this philosophical rigmarole to talk about the
> complexity of I⇔O maps.
>
> On 5/9/20 6:17 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > 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.
> > [...]
> > 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.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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> --
> Frank Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 505 670-9918
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