🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 4, 1:48 pm, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:1188908467.409393.89540@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...
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> > On Sep 4, 7:38 am, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> >> messagenews:1188872493.332157.31480@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
> >> > On Sep 3, 9:17 pm, Doug Morse <mo...@edoug.org> wrote:
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> >> >> >  The notion of "concept" is generally invoked when the stimuli
> >> >> > controlling
> >> >> >  behavior
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> >> > Maybe the single most important contribution of Noam Chomsky to
> >> > linguistics happened in 1959 and had little or nothing to do with the
> >> > "transformational-generative grammar" he was just beginning to
> >> > develop. He showed that behaviorism -- specifically, Skinner's *Verbal
> >> > Behavior* -- was unable to explain anything about human language.
> >> > Language is _not_ an example of stimulus and response.
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> >> Chomsky showed nothing of the sort, and Skinner's is not a
> >> "stimulus-response" position. Skinner's book remains cogent but only
> >> behaviorists read it since Chomsky's "review." BTW, Chomsky never read
> >> the
> >> book - ask Searle.
>
> > Yeah, Searle is a reliable witness to _anything_ regarding Chomsky.
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> Even if you think that Searle was lying, it is painfully obvious to anyone
> that has read both VB and Chomsky's "review" that Chomsky was criticizing
> his vision of what some kinds of behaviorism suggested, not what Skinner
> wrote. Perhaps you would be interested in: MacQuorcodale, Kenneth. A reply
> to Chomsky's Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior, but my guess is that you
> aren't interested in what behaviorists actually say. It is too easy and
> popular to simply misrepresent it. In any event, the paper can be accessed
> through the JEAB website. Just google "jeab."

What's JEAB? What's the actual reference? When was it written?

Some years ago, I copyedited a number of volumes for Academic Press in
the series Psychology of Learning and Motivation (I think it was --
they're the only publisher that ever didn't give me a copy of the
books I edited for them), which included several behaviorist
treatises, and in every case what little they had to say about
language was quite absurd.

> > Name some contributions of behaviorist psychology to the study and
> > understanding of language?
>
> Well, you can do your own leg work, but like I said, I'm guessing that you
> are more interested in the simplistic misrepresentations that abound. One
> thing is clear, though, when there are special populations that do not
> "automatically acquire language," it is applied behavior analysts that are
> called in to establish whatever functional repertoire is possible.

Something other than language, evidently.

> Further,
> I know of no finding that contradicts Skinner's analysis -certainly nothing
> you could come up with. Some would be orthogonal to it (behavior analysis is
> not about "brain stuff").

Well, language _is_ "brain stuff," so "behavior analysis" shouldn't
have anything to say about it at all.

> Finally, one might ask what proportion of the stuff said to contribute to
> the "understanding of language" is actually junk? I'm sure we would differ
> in our ideas in this regard. There is no question that what is perceived to
> be behavioristic is unpopular but this is largely due, it seems to me, to
> its widespread misrepresentation, and the fact that animism has never truly
> died out.

I don't know what you might mean by "stuff said to contribute to the
'understanding of language'."