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

[Nicholas Thompson]

Eric,

It's a dead pigeon that we throw out the window.  I wouldnt waste a
perfectly good dead duck on such an experiment.

I cant decide if the dead pigeon is the limit of behavior or if is
behavior.  I think it is behavior.  I think that behaviorism is a way
carving the world into objects and environments (ahem) and that rocks
behave.  Then the distinction beween rocks and organisms would emerge as a
distinction between objeccts that manage their environments and objects
that dont.

n

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 7:07 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Jon,
> This is a great expansion of the issue, and it might take me a bit to
> build up to an adequate response.
>
> You are definitely right that "scale" is one of many dimensions we might
> look at when evaluating whether or not something is a behavior. The
> evaluation of whether or not something is behaving involves comparisons,
> and those comparisons have to be "fair" in some sense that suggests a
> "domain". For example, if we drop a dead duck out a window, and then agree
> that falling in that fashion does not evidence behavior, we wouldn't want
> to then move to a coin-drop in water (where the coin spins and slides
> erratically, moving down at various speeds) and assert the coin was alive
> because it's movement didn't look like the dead-duck's movement.
>
> Does that get us anywhere?
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 12:58 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Glen, Eric,
>>
>> I am enjoying how the conversation is developing. The celery
>> example strikes me as being important, but where Glen refers
>> to *scale* I would speak of *domain of definition*. That a shift in
>> domain happens to be size, rather than some other contextual
>> specification, may not be what we want. If this isn't the case
>> Glen, please let me know. With respect to Eric's points it seems
>> fair to me to say that a paddle wheel is behaving, but perhaps not
>> in the *larger* context of the river. The celery is behaving, but not
>> not in the *smaller* context of capillary action. Here I am using
>> the language of *large* and *small*, but perhaps other modalities
>> have a place as well. One can say Nick's behavior appears
>> spontaneously, but in fact was necessitated by something *prior*.
>> Here an *earlier* Nick could play the role of the river.
>>
>> Frank,
>> Would you say that the mind is as public as RSA encryption?
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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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