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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: On Going Beyond The Information Given & 'Cognition'
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References: <807627449snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <400mb0$l5b@mp.cs.niu.edu> <807660805snz@longley.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 6 Aug 1995 19:22:03 GMT
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In article <807660805snz@longley.demon.co.uk>,
David Longley  <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <400mb0$l5b@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu "Neil Rickert" writes:
>> 
>> Are those two sentences supposed to be related?  As for your "I see
>> no way that ...", I shall take it as an admission by you of an
>> unusual form of disability.  I presume that your disability is a
>> result of your ideological committments.
>
>There you go again, playing depth-psychologist (which has  little 
>substance  either).... To repeat my point again....if we  do  not 
>report  what  someone has *said* or *written* we  do  not  report 
>their behaviour, if we do not report their behaviour, what are we 
>reporting?  What we imagine? What we believe, certainly not  what 
>they have physically done? If not what they have done - where  do 
>we  pick up this extra-sensory data from, how do we do it? -  you 
>and  some  others  seem to know......but there  is  no  evidence, 
>ANYWHERE  IN THE LITERATURE to substantiate such knowledge.  It's 
>just  very powerful folk-psychology - and like it or  not,  Quine 
>and others have blown a very big hole in it as a credible theory. 
>Only  when  one  accepts this is one likely to begin  to  do  any 
>useful  work on the problem. Not recognising it as a  problem  is 
>probably  just  a matter of inexperience. Those  have  been  most 
>vociferous in their objections so far are clearly working in what 
>are classical intensional paradigms.

Tycho Brahe reported the behavior of the stars.  What, then did Johannes
Kepler do?  Was Brahe doing science but not Kepler?  Do you suppose that, just
because there is nothing in the literature to substantiate the knowledge
claimed by astrologers, the same applies to Kepler, Newton, Einstein,
et. al.?

BTW *what* someone has said or written is not *behavior*, it is the *saying*
and the *writing* that is behavior.  If you want to report their behavior,
get a video camera.  And then start teaching mathematics, history, etc. by
playing video tapes of mathematicians, historians, etc. at work.

>No,  I am arguing that what we know comes through our senses  and 
>that  all of this talk of meaning is just a poor  substitute  for 
>the necessary fine grained behaviour analysis.

I'm sure my cat, with her fine senses, would make a great behavior scientist.

What really worries me is that "behavior scientists" want to be, not merely
scientists, but also engineers, politicians, and administrators.  Perhaps a
keener understanding of what science *is* would help.  And perhaps what is
missing here is a fine-grain analysis of the behavior of "behavior
scientists", along with some coarse correction to stem their anti-societal
tendencies.


-- 
<J Q B>

