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Just a developer, but is this author subtly arguing that in the end, behaviorism has some sort of validity?

ny2244111 8y ago
"Neuroscience shows that that in our brains the neural circuits neither have nor need content to do their jobs."
skywhopper 8y ago
That's the closest thing to a thesis I could get out of it. But the real question is, can you scale up the rat-in-a-maze monitoring of physical activity based on simple inputs involving binary choices in a solitary setting into anything meaningful about the much more intricate system of a human brain making complex decisions about abstract concepts in a complicated social mesh? I'm not sure the author's willingness to make the leap that human language is just meaningless noise is justified based on being able to interpret the physical meaning of a rat's brain activity.
Paul-ish 8y ago
I was lost as well. Was the author arguing that the actual encoding of information in the brain is incapable of producing a mind in accordance with our current model of mind? (Seemingly in favor of a more behaviorist model)
ex3xu 8y ago
The weird part is that he specifically mentions behaviorism: > Except for a brief period when psychologists embraced a wrongheaded behaviorism, the theory of mind everyone shares drove the 20th century research programs of child psychology and psychiatry, cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. But then by the end goes ahead and suggests the premises of behaviorism as a conclusion...? > By colonizing consciousness spoken language turned it into a monologue of silent speech, tricking us that the meaning of spoken words is given by thoughts’ content when its just silent sounds passing through consciousness. Neuroscience shows that that in our brains the neural circuits neither have nor need content to do their jobs. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something somewhere? Is this guy really the one in charge of the philosophy department at Duke?

"Neuroscience shows that that in our brains the neural circuits neither have nor need content to do their jobs."

That's the closest thing to a thesis I could get out of it. But the real question is, can you scale up the rat-in-a-maze monitoring of physical activity based on simple inputs involving binary choices in a solitary setting into anything meaningful about the much more intricate system of a human brain making complex decisions about abstract concepts in a complicated social mesh? I'm not sure the author's willingness to make the leap that human language is just meaningless noise is justified based on being able to interpret the physical meaning of a rat's brain activity.

Paul-ish 8y ago

I was lost as well. Was the author arguing that the actual encoding of information in the brain is incapable of producing a mind in accordance with our current model of mind? (Seemingly in favor of a more behaviorist model)

ex3xu 8y ago

The weird part is that he specifically mentions behaviorism: > Except for a brief period when psychologists embraced a wrongheaded behaviorism, the theory of mind everyone shares drove the 20th century research programs of child psychology and psychiatry, cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. But then by the end goes ahead and suggests the premises of behaviorism as a conclusion...? > By colonizing consciousness spoken language turned it into a monologue of silent speech, tricking us that the meaning of spoken words is given by thoughts’ content when its just silent sounds passing through consciousness. Neuroscience shows that that in our brains the neural circuits neither have nor need content to do their jobs. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something somewhere? Is this guy really the one in charge of the philosophy department at Duke?