From: murphyg@Software.Mitel.COM (Gary Murphy)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Partial Legalization
Date: 13 Aug 92 14:11:08 GMT
	<Aug.4.13.01.01.1992.7381@turbo.bio.net>
	<1992Aug06.225844.26790@highlite.uucp>
	<1992Aug7.084715.42172@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <00713509737@elgamy.sccsi.com>
Organization: Applications Software II, MITEL Corporation, Kanata, Ontario,
	Canada
In-reply-to: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com's message of 11 Aug 92 04:08:57 GMT

First, Eric, that article from the Chronicle was most disturbing and a
good reminder to all of us that the title "Psychologist" in no way
confers any measure of humanity --- caveat emptor!

In article <00713509737@elgamy.sccsi.com> elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:

   >>In article <1992Aug06.225844.26790@highlite.uucp>,
   >>yarvin@highlite.uucp (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
   >>> running rats through mazes is about as useful as
   >>> casting tea leaves, if possibly preferable for its
   >>> agitatory effect on animal rights groups.

I have this recurring nightmare where the room is filled with dull
technicians in white lab coats, all holding clip-boards and carefully
watching the feeble attempts of a small robot trapped in a winding maze
any one of the technicians could easily solve themselves ;-)

   Actually, most psychologists today feel the same way about running rats
   through mazes. It's not particularly useful -- at the moment.

Bandler tells this story: there was this experiment to see whether, at
the maze test, humans would outperform rats.  They build the identical
maze, proportionally scaled up for the humans, except where the rats
would run for food pellets, the humans were asked to find $5 bills.
After hundreds of trials, the humans only outperformed the rats at the
edge fo experimental error.  Then, as these experiments go, the food and
the bills were removed.  Within a few dozen trials, not a rat was
interested in running another round.  The humans are still there.  They
break into the lab at night.

   > It's easy to prove that dogs start salivating after food-associated
   > stimuli; it's a lot harder to prove anything much about a dog's mind
   > from that; and it takes an extremely flexible attitude toward the
   > truth to reach any conclusions about the _human_ mind after a
   > simplistic experiment like that.

   You are assuming that there exists such a thing as a "mind". I prefer to
   think of what we call "mind" to be a series of internal covert behaviors
   related to verbalization, perception, and reperception. "Cognitive
   behaviors" if you will. Or as Mr. Skinner said in _Beyond Freedom and
   Dignity_, "Intelligence appears to be a product of a verbal society."

"Who is 'I'? Where is this 'I'" --- Tenzin Gyatso, (Dalai Lama)

In the Eastern view, the "mind" is an artifact of context; this is why
the representatives from the orient took such exception to the refined
"diagnoses" presented in Copenhagen (c.1980?) --- they ask: how can you
have multiple personalities when you can't find a singular one?  In
their psychologies, you cannot have a 'disease' that exists as a
Thing-In-Itself, and this thinking led Morita to his 'isolation
therapy', i.e. remove the client from all aspects of the context that
triggers the unwanted behaviour, much as a allergist will recommend
avoiding a long list of items and then introduce each to see went the
reaction occurs.

   > flexible attitudes toward the truth.

   Define "truth".

   Personally, I define "truth" to be "that which can be confirmed via the
   scientific method".

"the Truth depends not only on WHO you are, but WHEN you are" - Sun Ra

   I have been unable to confirm the existence of something called "mind" by
   any scientific method, but I have been able to confirm the existence of
   behaviors by the scientific method. This is where empirical behavioral
   psychology stops -- at behavioral observations verifiable via the
   scientific method. Since I'm not a "pure" behaviorist (someone once called
   me a "cognitive gestalt behaviorist", which is as good a description as
   anything), I go further, but I do try to base my theorizing on what can be
   easily observed and verified.

"Let us work without theorizing; it is the only way to make life endurable."
            -Voltaire

I like your thinking on this Eric, it reminds me of Einstein's reasoning
behind dropping the question of the Aether: we know light is emitted, we
know it is absorbed, but the ONLY way to know if it 'propagates through
a medium' is to put our detector in the way at different points, and all
that tells us is that light is absorbed.  A question which cannot be
asked should be dropped from the consideration set.  Unfortunately, the
bulk of 'Insight Therapies" would be slashed by this occam's razor ;-)

				   "Kids are kids, no matter what"

Hear! Hear! (There! There! (where? where?)) - Firesign Theatre ;-)

--
Gary Lawrence Murphy - Gary.Murphy@software.mitel.COM - (613) 592-2122 x3709
 Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.