In article <46dda088$0$17755$ed362ca5 from nr2.newsreader.com>,
"Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemore2 from yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well, I'm sure you know your view, but I'm not sure you know mine. Indeed, I
> still see points of contact, whether you do or not.
I think I misinterpreted your post as a characterisation of the paper,
but I realise now that you were making a response to it. Sorry.
> >Instead we argue that
> > *qualitative* changes, "higher order" complexity in behaviour if you
> > like, could come from quantitatively expanding the size of the cortex.
> > I'd agree that there are specialised regions of the brain, I just don't
> > think they need to be explicitly genetically specified to arise from an
> > enlarged cortex.
>> This does not seem to me to be inconsistent with behaviorism. Perhaps you
> don't understand behaviorism?
The "opposite" thing was in response to your characterisation of
behavioural changes as quantitative - I believe they would change
qualitatively as I mentioned. I would agree that I have an essentially
behaviourist perspective; I suppose I just don't see that as
particularly relevant to the paper. In fact we explicitly begged off
the question of "mind" and "consciousness" in order to ask how you could
generate a richer set of cortical abilities without needing to design
them.
But now that I think about it, the sort of "passivity" of a behaviourist
perspective is an underpinning of where we were coming from. I tend to
believe that the systems governing the brain and behaviour are much
simpler than many people make out. In that spirit, if I had to pick an
"ism", I'd pick behaviourism. To be perfectly honest it isn't really a
choice - I love to grapple with the abstract at times, but I don't think
there is a lot of point in a non-philosopher like myself, trying to
reason about anything beyond the empirical.
> >Behaviourism and conditioning aren't really related to
> > the arguments of the paper.
>> Needless to say, I disagree.
I think possibly I do as well, on reflection. I think Oscar Wilde said
something about contradicting yourself being an indication of a broad
mind ... or perhaps I posted without thinking it through. Behaving it
through?
Cheers, MK.
--
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