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

[Eric Charles]

David,
I'm pretty sure that - in a world where we distinguish some movements as
behavior and others as not behavior - Nick's falling at an accelerating
speed until reaching terminal velocity is not behavior, and neither is
Brownian motion. His wild flapping, however, counts. Though note the
Weekend at Bernie comparison: If Nick was dead, and his falling body was
strapped to someone else who was flapping, such that Nick's flapping
resulted purely from the other faller's flapping... Nick's flapping would
then be back in the "mere movement" bucket, while the other
faller's flapping would be behavior.

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


On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 7:40 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> Suppose Nick falls out of an airplane. He moves toward the ground at an
> increasing, until terminal velocity, rate. This is movement.  Wildly
> flapping  his arms in hopes of evolving avian capabilities is also
> movement. Would both be considered behavior?
>
> As to scale: is Brownian movement molecular behavior?
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2020, at 8:34 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ 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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