🚀 go-pugleaf

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in message 
news:1188997353.596408.308130@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> 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?

Well, since Skinner's thesis is that it is exposure to contingencies of 
reinforcement that produce verbal behavior (i.e., "human language") then the 
ability to produce it via these means in populations of humans that don't 
acquire it in the "normal fashion" suggests that he might be correct. 
Similarly, when one establishes verbal reports of "private states" in 
non-humans via the arrangement of contingencies, it suggests that Skinner's 
analysis is also correct.

>
> 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?

The answer that Skinner used to give, and it seems obviously the correct 
one, it cannot. But what it can tell one is what must be explained. That is, 
the facts uncovered by behavior analysis (and are misrepresented by the 
phrase "input and output") ARE what must be explained in terms of 
physiology.

>
> Are "behaviorists" interested in neurolinguistics?

Some are, sort of. They are more interested in the functional relation 
between contingencies of reinforcement and verbal operants. Since this is 
what verbal behavior really is, perhaps "neurolinguistics" should take some 
interest in it, rather than the other way around. Many behaviorists (and 
others) think that much of neurobiology in general is a conceptual muddle. 
For a scathing rebuke of it by two nonbehaviorists see:

M.R. Bennett, P.M.S. Hacker
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
Bennett, M.R. and Hacker, P.M.S., Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 
2003, Blackwell Publishing, 480pp, $39.95 (pbk), ISBN 140510838X.

in society?

Skinner was. Though, obviously, not from within the usual framework of 
explanation via explanatory fiction.
>