🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 5, 8:46 am, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:1188993040.304358.76210@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
> > On Sep 4, 11:51 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:27:54 -0700, "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> >> <news:1188962874.711693.93360@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
> >> in sci.cognitive,sci.lang,bionet.neuroscience:
> >> > On Sep 4, 5:40 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >> >> The article is at
> >> >> <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&ar...>
> >> >> in the form of 17 scanned pages; there's also a link by
> >> >> which one can download it as a 2.9M .pdf.
> >> >> 'On Chomsky's review of Skinner's _Verbal Behavior_'
> >> >> Reviewed by Kenneth MacCorquodale
> >> >> J Exp Anal Behav. 1970 January; 13(1): 83-99.
> >> > Thank you. Did it look worth reading?
>
> >> I just skimmed the first few pages, so take anything I say
> >> with a grain of salt, but it seemed to me that one would
> >> have to be familiar with VB to get much out of the review: a
> >> good chunk of MacC's argument appears to be that Chomsky
> >> either didn't understand or misrepresented what Skinner was
> >> actually saying.  I've not read VB (and know damn-all about
> >> behaviorism anyway), so I'm not part of the intended
> >> audience.
>
> > A first glance yields the rather telling sentence "Although his thesis
> > is experimental, Skinner's book has no experimental data involving the
> > laboratory manipulation of verbal responses which definitively
> > demonstrate that the processes he invokes to explain verbal behavior
> > are in fact involved in its production" (p. 84a)
>
> Yet when I mentioned the establishment of a verbal repertoire in special
> populations your response was that this was something other than language or
> something like that. Right? Part of the problem with "proving Skinner's
> thesis" is that the critical experiments would all be unethical. The study
> of operant behavior has, of course, proceeded and in a fashion that we
> expect from science. There are, further, some data using non-humans that
> suggest the cogency of some of Skinner's interesting propositions as in:
>
> Lubinski, D., & Thompson, T. (1987). An animal model of the interpersonal
> communication of interoceptive (private) states. Journal of the Experimental
> Analysis of Behavior, 48, 1-15.
> Pigeons were taught to interact communicatively (i.e., exchange
> discriminative stimuli) based on 1 pigeon's internal state, which varied as
> a function of cocaine, pentobarbital, and saline administration. These
> performances generalized to untrained pharmacological agents (d-amphetamine
> and chlordiazepoxide) and were observed in the absence of aversive
> stimulation, deprivation, and unconditioned reinforcement. The training
> procedure used in this study appears similar to that by which humans learn
> to report on (tact) their internal environments and may be construed as a
> rudimentary animal model of the interpersonal communication of private
> events.
>
> Further, the sampling of papers I posted involving humans were just that, a
> sampling. I think there are two important things to consider in evaluating
> Skinner's book: first is it internally consistent and cogent - this is where
> it is usually attacked through misrepresentation (i.e., Chomsky's arguments
> that it can't account for this o that observation). The second is more
> difficult - can it be experimentally demonstrated? I already mentioned the
> ethical issues - one cannot eliminate critical aspects of the environment to
> see if they are really important in a child's acquisition of "language."
> But, then, one can establish "functional language" to a greater or lesser
> extent in special populations - Oh, I forgot, you already dismissed that.

What does any of that tell us of the nature of human language?

If "behaviorism" treats an organism (such as a human) as a black box,
with input and output but no interest in what's _inside_ the box, how
can it tell us anything about what's inside the box?

Are "behaviorists" interested in neurolinguistics? in society?