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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Richard Roose (was PUCKER...)
Message-ID: <1994Dec31.185349.29696@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
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Date: Sat, 31 Dec 94 18:53:49 GMT
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<3e449h$gnu@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> roose@ix.netcom.com (Richard Roose) writes:

>When I got up last evening (I work nights) and looked at my e-mail, I 
>saw immediately that Greg had accepted my bet......

If you had read my message more carefully, you would have seen that what
in fact did was ask you to address the following:

[I said,]
 .... What would be more interesting to me is if you explained to
me, calmly and rationally, your response to my refutations of your
following claims:

1) You claimed that only humans can deviate from their genetic pre-
   determination.  I refuted this by claiming that any organisms with
   nervous systems have been shown to learn through the course of 
   their lifetimes, thus indicating that their behavior is dictated
   by personal histories as well as genetics.  You have not supported
   you claim that humans are somehow "special" in this regard.
2) You claimed that because of your explanation of child neurological
   development, it logically follows that children have a birthright
   to be nurtured to their fullest potential.  I claimed that arguments
   about developmental facts could not lead to conclusions about teleology
   and what "should" happen.  You have not supported the logical framework
   in which you make this jump.
3) You claimed that connectionism is "accepted" as a model which can lead
   to a complete understanding of intelligence.  I have claimed that this is
   not "accepted," and that in fact many people see connectist machines as
   statistical tools, primarily, and many people question their validity as
   cognitive models (I referenced Seidenberg, 1993, as a good source of
   references for this debate.  I would also refer you to Judd, 1991,
   "Neural Network Design and the Complexity of Learning" for an analysis
   of the limitations of neural networks.   My information also comes from
   conversations I've had with PDP researcher Robert Jacobs.  I can probably
   pull up further references if you would like concerning the limits of
   connectionism in its description of intelligence and cognition).  You have
   not yet responded to my claim.
4) You claimed that you are the first person in modern times to try to devise
   an all-encompassing world-view, a theory encompassing ontology, epistemology
   and teleology, based on logic and scientific fact.  I claimed that in fact
   this is very common, citing Maturana and Varela, Churchland and Fodor as
   a very small set of examples.  I think one could consider Ayn Rand another.
   My lover, standing over my shoulder reading this, says, "Doesn't everyone
   and his brother in science try to come up with all-encompassing theories?
   It seems like megalomania is to science as codependence is to social work."
5) You claimed that humans have a small finite set of motives, and although I
   can not off the top of my head cite what these were, I remember thinking
   that not only are there a wide abundance of DIFFERENT theories for what
   the basic human motives are, but that all of the ones I'm familiar with
   differ from your list.  In Reite and Field's _The Psychobiology of 
   Attachment and Separation_ an articles describes the basic motives as
   "The four F's -- feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproduction" (1985).
   Certain rational choice theorists (for example, Johann DeVree) claim that
   all human motivation can be summed up as maximuzing expected utility --
   DeVree goes on to conclude that this "logically" results in the conclusion
   that all humans see "power" as their one and only motive.  You have not
   yet defended *your* claim against my comment.
6) You claimed that the purpose of life can be defined in terms of prediction,
   when this seems, as I claimed, inconsistent with your notion that 
   intelligence can be described by connectionist models, which do very well
   at associative learning, dimensionality reduction, multidimensional scaling,
   and so on, but do not do time-series prediction very well.  You have not
   addressed this point of mine.

[unquote]

After quoting a message that states that I am not peddling fantasy, you
go on to extract two quotes:

You say,
>So now we have the picture.  Greg's theories on cognitive powers are 
>indeed as I suspected... 

>"A minority position, unlikely to dominate the western world any time 
>soon."

>Gee! I wonder how I knew that?  Do you think maybe it is remotely 
>possible that I did my homework first?

>Where as my essay concerning the brain reflects...

>"A more popular view, with many backers."

So now are you saying that Reality is Reality by consensus?  I thought that
was just what you were trying to avoid -- I thought *your* position was that
reality is Objectively True and something we can measure, and that my
"fantasy" was that reality is a construction of individual subjectivities,
with collective-reality being a consensual one.

I also claimed that your position was not *proven* or completely accepted as
truth, or "verified" in many cases.  Saying that yours is the popular view with
many backers is hardly stating verification, proof or complete acceptence.

In fact, that *was* said was that your view is very popular, and my 
interpretation of that claim was that it is extremely popular at large
in our culture, among the "common person" as you have referred to them.
Your interpretation was that it is very popular, with many backer, among
cognitive researchers.  Whether or not your interpretation is true, I would
argue that my interpretation is -- many non-philosophers are like you,
simply assuming all of their cultural and personal contructs and getting
along functionally in their lives.

In conclusion, the original assertion of mine had to do, as you can see
by my outline above, with your claims being "verified" and "scientifically
accepted," etc.  Not "popular."

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

