[FRIAM] Behavior??

Sat May 23 12:10:47 EDT 2020

I remember distinctly a meeting in which I mistook a Marine Corps
Lieutenant Colonel's facial tick for a communicative wink.... I didn't
realize the mistake until over a week later, when I saw the tick happening
in a context where it was clearly non-communicative ;- )

Dave asked: "But the interesting problem is with winks that are winks. How
can you tell, absent context and cultural experience, if the wink were
'sincere', 'conspiritorial', 'seductive', 'parody', 'meta-parody',
'meta-anti-wink', etc."

I don't think there is any implication that you can. Outside of a context,
there isn't any meaning to be spoken of, is there? For behaviors that are
more tightly bound to by genetic constraints to reliably be deployed under
certain circumstances, it seems fair to talk about such issues as if
members of a species were mostly interchangeable. But for behaviors that
are not so constrained (any behaviors highly mold-able by operant
conditioning, for example) we their "meaning" would be determined by
development, and being able to "tell" what was meant would also be
determined by development.

That much of that individual development converges on similar outcomes for
people who live near each other is most of what we mean by "culture",
right?

Also, given that it is a developmental issue, it is unsurprising that some
people are generally better at it than others, and that people are
generally better at it in regards to people they know and situations they
are familiar with.

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

On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 12:21 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> and....
>
> "Sometimes a w/blink is just a w/blink?"
>
> Nick,
>
> You said — "I don't think anybody who was familiar with eye movements
> would ever take a wink for a blink."
>
> I can quickly think of hundreds of examples of this not being true. One, I
> watched a man lose a lot of money in a poker game because he misinterpreted
> a blink (sans signal content) as if it were a wink (with signal content),
> thinking that the spasm of the eyelid was a "tell" a kind of "winking to
> one's inner self."
>
> But the interesting problem is with winks that are winks. How can you
> tell, absent context and cultural experience, if the wink were 'sincere',
> 'conspiritorial', 'seductive', 'parody', 'meta-parody', 'meta-anti-wink',
> etc.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sat, May 16, 2020, at 11:29 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi, David,
>
>
>
> While I have great admiration for Ryle, and use his notion of levels of
> action gratefully, I think he and Geertz are just dead wrong here in their
> premise.  I don't think anybody who was familiar with eye movements would
> ever take a wink for a blink.  But the basic point is still right:  a wink
> implies higher level of organization that a wink and a fake wink implies a
> higher level of organization still.  Or, I think, Geertz would call it
> "deeper".  "A deeper description".
>
>
>
> Now on to ethology.  As usual, I am going to punish your interest with an
> article.  Here you get the entire history of ethology
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281346463_Ethology_and_the_birth_of_comparative_teleonomy>,
> is capsulated in three laws -- about 10 pages or so.  Not a bad a bargain,
> eh?  In fact, if you just read from section 4.0 on, you will get the
> examples, which contain most of the impact.  They are very like the
> turkey/polcat example that you provide, one I had never heard before!
> Perfect!
>
>
>
> Please see larding below.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On
> Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 10:38 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Behavior??
>
>
>
> Glen made a comment,  "humans don't have intention when they wink
> sarcastically." This triggered a memory of Clifford Geertz channeling
> Gilbert Ryle. Just before seeing Glen's comment I was reading a book on
> Influence and encountered some ethology and together they prompted a whole
> series of questions about behavior.
>
>
>
> First a quote from Geertz/Ryle
>
>
>
> "Consider two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In
> one, this is an involuntary twitch; in the other, a conspiritorial signal
> to a friend. The two movements are, as movements, identical; from an
> I-am-a-camera, "phenomenalistic" observation of them alone, one could not
> tell which was twitch and which was wink ... Yet the difference, however
> unphotographical, is vast. ... the winker is communicating ... 1)
> deliberately, 2) to someone in particular, 3) to impart a particular
> message, 4) according to a socially established code, and 5) without the
> cognizance of the rest of the company. That however is just the beginning.
> Suppose a third boy winks in an amateurish, clumsy, and obvious manner — he
> is parodying the wink ... not conspiracy, but ridicule is in the air.
> Complexities are possible, if not practically without end, at least
> logically so."
>
>
>
> Then the ethology material
>
>
>
> "Turkey mothers are good mothers—loving, watchful and protective.
> Virtually all of this mothering is triggered by one thing: the
> "cheep-cheep" sound of young turkey chicks.  For a mother turkey the
> polecat is a natural enemy whose approach is to be greeted with squawking,
> pecking, clawing rage. If a stuffed model of a polecat  is drawn by string
> to a mother turkey it evokes the appropriate offensive behavior, but if the
> same model has a hidden tape recorder that emits the "cheep-cheep" sound
> the mother not only accepts the oncoming polecat, but gathers it beneath
> her.
>
>
>
> This kind of "fixed action pattern" can involve intricate sequences of
> behavior, such as entire courtship or mating rituals. (see attachement).
> The interesting aspect of this is how the sequences are activated — with a
> "trigger feature;" e.g. a particular shade of red or blue chest feathers,
> but not a perfect replica of a rival bird absent colored chest feathers.
>
>
>
> Then my questions.
>
>
>
> 1- Is a "behavior" always a movement plus an X-factor?
>
>    1A. is the X-factor other nuances of movement, e.g. rippling eyelashes
> on the contracted eyelid?
>
>    1B. is the X-factor an intentional signal? or is it "meaning." is
> intention required?
>
>
>
> 2- Is behavior compositional? e.g. squawking, pecking, clawing behavioral
> "atoms" compose to an anti-polecat behavioral composition? (thinking of
> some kind of analog with atom --> molecule --> cell -- organism)
>
>
>
> 3- If meaning | signalling | intention is a required aspect of behavior,
> from whence it cometh?
>
>
>
> 4- is "behaviorism" necessarily a subset of semiology?
>
>
>
> 5- If behavior is compositional, are there rules or regularities of
> composition?
>
>
>
> 6- Can culture be seen as a collection of allowable patterns of composed
> behaviors?
>
>
>
> 7- Is it necessary to have a well developed discipline of what is observed
> outside the black box before attempting to infer what is within and
> whatever that might be, its relation to what is observed outside?
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
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