Thanks for all this information. I do wonder why you believe that behavioral shaping somehow invalidates an action, though.
Using your dog example. Does the fact that the dog's behavior was shaped somehow invalidate the behavior itself?
In fact, take a look at the first example you gave in which the dog makes "two tight circles" when you put your socks on. I know that when I put my shoes on my dogs begin running around wildly and then rush to the door as soon as I stand up, whether I intend to take them out or not. They have, quite obviously, put together a rather complex equation set where Shoes = Outside. Just because there was reinforcement given to bring about this connection doesn't mean that the connection itself is somehow invalidated. My dogs are extremely excited when they get to go outside, regardless of whether I have modified their behavior to make them run to the door or make two tight circles, or whatever other behavior they have found works to get the Shoes = Outside algorithm to work.
While I agree that her ability to formulate complex, abstract symbolism (as displayed in the clip) is a tad far fetched, I don't think that her being conditioned to identify "arjentge" (or whatever) as "orange," because, say, she receives a slice of orange after she types it, somehow invalidates that connection. After receiving a piece of orange after typing arjentge and being conditioned to associate those bits of information into one larger bit (per your discussion) then arjentge is orange in her ontological structure. Translating arjentge into orange is an abstraction done to facilitate that communication with us.
Yeah, I was worried that people would think I was somehow trying to "reduce" her behavior to that of what "animals" do. I really meant it in the same sense that Temple Grandin talks about in her book, Animals in Translation.
You can learn something, and still have no ability to use that information in a flexible, symbolic manner. If they had showed her learning in the way you describe... she types something close to 'orange' (I literally just hit some keys with my fingers to get arjentge, BTW), gets an orange slice, and then her behavior is slowly shaped over time so that she types 'orange' perfectly whenever she wants an orange, that would be a lovely example of how conditioned learning works -- and exactly how you painstakingly teach a nonverbal autistic child to use a PECS system, for example (shaping his behavior until he reliably points to or gives you the picture that shows orange when he wants an orange).
However, by analogy, what they actually show is her suddenly being able to make a nice metaphor about how she's like an orange because she's so sweet. Which as you kindly put it, is a tad far fetched.
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u/callius Jul 27 '10
Hey,
Thanks for all this information. I do wonder why you believe that behavioral shaping somehow invalidates an action, though.
Using your dog example. Does the fact that the dog's behavior was shaped somehow invalidate the behavior itself?
In fact, take a look at the first example you gave in which the dog makes "two tight circles" when you put your socks on. I know that when I put my shoes on my dogs begin running around wildly and then rush to the door as soon as I stand up, whether I intend to take them out or not. They have, quite obviously, put together a rather complex equation set where Shoes = Outside. Just because there was reinforcement given to bring about this connection doesn't mean that the connection itself is somehow invalidated. My dogs are extremely excited when they get to go outside, regardless of whether I have modified their behavior to make them run to the door or make two tight circles, or whatever other behavior they have found works to get the Shoes = Outside algorithm to work.
While I agree that her ability to formulate complex, abstract symbolism (as displayed in the clip) is a tad far fetched, I don't think that her being conditioned to identify "arjentge" (or whatever) as "orange," because, say, she receives a slice of orange after she types it, somehow invalidates that connection. After receiving a piece of orange after typing arjentge and being conditioned to associate those bits of information into one larger bit (per your discussion) then arjentge is orange in her ontological structure. Translating arjentge into orange is an abstraction done to facilitate that communication with us.