HughMcB wrote:Well I have always maintained (rather than ""cuteness"), that humans just look for the most "human" characteristics in other animals and then grade them accordingly. Therefore we see intelligence ranked top amongst "most sentient", perhaps feelings/emotion come next, then on down the line. We see primates score highest, then
higher mammals, then all the other mammals, then reptiles, etc. etc. etc.
Of course I know dickall about this subject, certainly nothing compared to the like of Samosa, but I'm confident that most of this ranking process is just bullshit pandering to human ego. "They're most like us, therefore they must be most sentient i.e. more important not to harm".
Yeah this is basically what I mean by "cuteness", as essentially I think that's what it all boils down to. Maybe I am being a bit of an ass by phrasing it like that though..
ughaibu wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:As a rule of thumb, I say that if it can be conditioned, then it's a behavior.
There's a danger of triviality here as it seems that any behaviour might imply sentience.
I don't think so. I think it highlights the redundancy of using "sentience" as a discrimination tool, but the only 'triviality' is that it must be trivially true. Since sentience is the ability to experience, and experience is a key component of learning (and thus behavior), it must be the case that anything that behaves must be sentient.
rEvolutionist wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Out of interest, what kind of arguments do you have in mind for why it might be rational not to eat something with which we shared a common ancestor?
My approach has always been related to cognitive intelligence. Those more able to abstract their surroundings and contemplate them would seem to show a higher level of intelligence (and therefore have more to lose). Even if this was considered to be anthropomorphising, it is still relevant as it is humans who are doing the choosing whether to eat or not. I don't see any advantage in using any other reference system of beliefs/determinants to decide whether I should eat something or not.
You seem to be describing "sapience" here. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, but it does fall into the trap Hugh describes above of valuing things which are human-like.
rEvolutionist wrote:No misunderstanding at all. I wasn't trying to say that all animals are equally intelligent and talented, of course, but rather that the proposed differences between certain animals aren't as great as is usually suggested. I have no doubt that many, many fish could perform to the same, or even greater degree, as dolphins in similarly designed intelligence tests. Dolphins simply get more media time because they're cute and scientists love to study them (who wouldn't want to get paid to play with dolphins?). But consider that some of the most impressive feats in intelligence have come from pigeons - they can grasp the concept of grammar and differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, they can solve statistical problems that take professional mathematicians decade to reach a consensus on, they can distinguish between a Monet and a Manet, etc. This isn't because pigeons are particularly bright, it's just because they're a handy lab animal.
And this is why behaviourism sucks balls. It throws all our commonly held anthropomorphic beliefs on their heads. And as such, we are therefore required to relearn how the world works. And some of us are too old and busy to have time to do that. Therefore behaviourism sucks balls.
Your face sucks balls. OOooo burn!
rEvolutionist wrote:You'd probably be in a better position than me to say whether it's true or not, but I assume that anything that can respond to its environment must have some mechanism for interpreting external signals. Whether these are nerves, or vascular strands or roots etc, seems irrelevant to me.
Ok, I see what you are getting at. Up to this point in my life (although doubts have been forming since debating with you about cognition), I have been of the belief that there is such a thing as higher order processing (or what I call - and have read as - cognition). I.e. bundle a few bazillion synapses together and you wind up with this emergent thingy that no one other than behaviourists can seem to explain. Plants don't have that. Usually I would say that plants react to their environment in a
direct chemical/physiological way. Humans et al, obviously do this in both a reflexive sense and a higher order cognitive sense, but in the case of the latter, the chemical/physiological responses are so far removed/abstracted from the stimulus as to be nothing like the same process that goes on in plants. But I need you to answer those behavioural questions I posed, so that I can be sure of what I am agreeing with and what I am arguing about. (oops, i see they are down below. I'll get back to this point).
Indeed, there are higher order cognitive processes and we can be fairly sure that plants don't have these (and as for the cheap shot
, behaviorists have no problem explaining emergent cognitive processes). But of course higher order processes aren't necessary for the experience of pain (or aversive stimulation) since such an experience is fundamental to all living things. The question then simply becomes whether it is reasonable to cause something to suffer just because it has no understanding of astrophysics or algebra?
EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but plants don't just respond in a 'chemical/physiological' way (at least no more than animals). They actively employ methods to avoid pain, even without the painful stimulus present, etc. There is more complex learning and behavior involved in plants, and not just a simple cause-and-effect type response.
rEvolutionist wrote:ughaibu wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:As a rule of thumb, I say that if it can be conditioned, then it's a behavior.
There's a danger of triviality here as it seems that any behaviour might imply sentience.
This is in a sense my main beef with behaviourism (well, my limited understanding of it so far). It's a self-fulfilling theory. By it's very definition it can't be wrong.
Behaviorism isn't a theory, it's a methodology. It can't be right or wrong in the same way "biology" can't be right or wrong. The only way it can be ignored or rejected is if it can be shown to be useless or unable to predict the subject matter it seeks to explain.
In other words, attacking the definition of "behavior" for not being able to be 'wrong', is like attacking biology's definition of "animal" because it can't be wrong.
rEvolutionist wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:I don't know if it's absolutely true, it's possible that there are complicating details or even completely new fundamental laws of behavior that need to be considered, but I think that at least for the vast majority of behaviors that we ever talk about, that behavioral law can account for all of them (obviously excluding innate behaviors).
A quick follow up question to this:
Where does this behaviour come from? As I suspect you are going to essentially say 'evolution', I'll go further and ask - What supports or maintains this behaviour in an individual?
It's arguable whether it specifically comes from evolution. The behavioral law could be a natural consequence of having an organism that avoids bad things and approaches good things.
rEvolutionist wrote:Essentially, How is this behavioural law translated into action (by what mechanism)?
You mean on a neurological level? Long-term potentiation and in-vitro reinforcement appear to the mechanisms which control classical and operant conditioning.
rEvolutionist wrote:There you go: Where, What, How! You have 2 minutes and no more than 3 paragraphs to describe the history and dynamics of behaviourism!
How'd I do?
rEvolutionist wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Oh okay.. well the Mazur definition I posted also includes the criterion of experience (as does every other definition of learning I've ever seen). How would you define learning?
I think the use of "experience" is correct. "Experience" to me directly implies consciousness. But Sternhouse's "
adaptively variable behaviour" doesn't necessarily imply "experience" to me. Firstly, 'adaptive' could be (to use extremes, to simplify my point) cognitive, or it could be directly physiological (Edit: essentially
physical/chemical). That alone removes certainty of conscious experience, in my book.
Is it possible that you're interpreting "consciousness" as "awareness"?
rEvolutionist wrote:But further to this, the statement "variable behaviour" potentially breaks down when one considers that behaviourism essentially reduces to the fundamental like/dislike paradigm. There can never be 'variability' under such a unifying paradigm. Every particular action in a particular organism at a particular moment in it's life can only ever be one of either a
'like' or a 'dislike' driven event. i.e. no room for variability. Your thoughts?
Firstly, I think I might have been unclear when I described the basic behavioral law that controls behavior. This is not a claim or belief of behaviorism, it is a conclusion from behavioral research. That is, Skinner didn't say "All behavior must or should be controlled by basic pain and pleasure principles". Instead, it just turns out that all behaviors that have been studied and understood have all been reducible to things like the matching law, or the contingency discriminability model. Essentially, all behaviors are reduced to choice theories because all behavior is choice behavior; so whenever you choose to do something (e.g. wave your arm around), you necessarily choose to refrain from doing something else. And all the currently available choice theories rely on "pain" and "pleasure" parameters.
Secondly, you're defining "variability" too narrowly. The "variable" in "adaptively variable behavior" simply means that the topography of a behavior can change in response to the same task or challenge. So if we put a rock in a maze, it's unlikely that it will find the cheese at the end. If we put a wind-up car in a maze, it's unlikely it will find the cheese at the end, etc, but if we put a rat in a maze, it will display a number of behaviors (e.g. 'go straight', 'turn left', 'turn right' etc) and this variability in behavior is adaptive (i.e. incorrect responses are extinguished, and correct ones are strengthened). This means that after a few attempts, the rat no longer turns left down the dead end, and always turns right down the correct corridor. In other words, it is the
behavior which needs to be variable, not the process that underlies the behavior.
Blip wrote:On the cuteness question, I'd caution that I have never heard an ethical vegetarian give this - or anything that could be so interpreted - as his or her reason for abjuring meat. I have however heard (two) meat-eaters say that they felt guilty whenever they saw lambs in a field. This is anecdotal, of course, but in any case I'd be extremely wary of attributing this motivation to others.
No doubt that both vegetarians and meat-eaters both do this, as well as scientists and practically everybody. But as a counterpoint, ever seen animal rights activists protest against fishing nets because they kill dolphins? This is evidence of the cuteness factor, considering that they don't care about the death of millions upon millions of tuna.
Blip wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Out of interest, what kind of arguments do you have in mind for why it might be rational not to eat something with which we shared a common ancestor?
Not quite what I said: I referred to more or less
recent common ancestors. Hugh refers to this in speaking of greater or lesser relatedness to homo sapiens. It's not my criterion, but preferring not to eat one's closer relatives does not seem unreasonable: I believe it was Gene Roddenberry who said that if we should ever meet ET, we'll be amazed that we were ever able to eat a cow.
It might not be unreasonable, but I'm still not sure where the reason is in such a position. It seems to be based more on an emotional response; a disgust over eating something similar to us.
Blip wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:But consider that some of the most impressive feats in intelligence have come from pigeons - they can grasp the concept of grammar and differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, they can solve statistical problems that take professional mathematicians decade to reach a consensus on, they can distinguish between a Monet and a Manet, etc. This isn't because pigeons are particularly bright, it's just because they're a handy lab animal.
Can they grasp these things or is something else going on? I suspect the latter, but would need to see the details of the experiments. For example, on the Monet and Manet differentiation, are pigeons able to distinguish Monet 'x' from Manet 'y' on the basis of having learned to distinguish Monet 'a' and 'b' from Manet 'c' and 'd'? How about music? Are pigeons able to distinguish Beethoven from Mozart? Or Schoenberg from the orchestra tuning up*?
*Cheap jibe at lovers of the Second Viennese School. I couldn't help myself.
Indeed - they are obviously tested with novel stimuli. The only way for them to solve the tests is for them to understand the abstract concepts behind the sample stimuli - the nature of grammar, or the style of a painter, etc. There have been numerous tests on musical discrimination, I'm not sure if any have compared Beethoven and Mozart, but here's a test of
Bach and Stravinsky.
They can also judge how 'good' or 'beautiful' a painting is. (And, if you're interested, here's a
study on carp distinguishing between blues and classical music).
The grammar study is
here, and followed up here
Artificial Grammar Learning in Pigeons, and the statistics study:
Are birds smarter than mathematicians? Pigeons (Columba livia) perform optimally on a version of the Monty Hall Dilemma.