The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, July 13, 2009, 06:33 (5404 days ago) @ xeno6696

Dr. Turell, - After having completed the sixth chapter do finally start getting into some territory that needs to be grappled with. - First and foremost, he quotes a psychologist (name unimportant) that says that there are two hypotheses for mind, one animist (mind exists apart from body) and the mechanistic view, and the mechanistic view is the only one that psychology uses. Another psychologist adds here that neither one is testable... - (!) - To me, its pretty clear that the case of Phineas Gage answered THAT question to the point where we can consider it closed. If the mind exists apart from the body, than Phineas's personality would never have changed--and the same argument would stand for any person who had ever suffered head trauma. There is no valid argument to suggest the mind exists apart from the body. None that I've come across, at least. (And no... I'm not letting my Buddhist training cloud my view here, this is entirely from the fact of good ol' Gage, and others like him.) - This is obviously another category where psychology and I don't get along--though I am not aware of what views have come into being since Adler wrote his book. I did take a psych 101 course but that prof was much more interested in application than history. - The other question: Why would we think that human-like behavior would be observable only in the natural habitats? If human-like behavior were to manifest, it would have to be as a response to selective pressure, in other words, we should be stressing the animals with completely new stimuli in order to see the rudiments of humanlike behavior if they exist. By comparing only in natural conditions, we are only observing animals in their habitat, wheras the "natural habitat" for humans is so diluted that we cannot really resolve what exactly that could be. - At any rate, even if that gorilla--Koko, wasn't comfortable and "in her element" it remains that she had the capability to learn speech. - Of interest is that Adler seems to be hinting in the long run that the reason that it is computer science that will shed the most light on the question might be because of the Turing test. I got this in the mail the other day (as an ACM member I get really neat things in my email box...) - http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/comment/2245613/turing-test-retire - I'll let the last three words of the link speak for themselves. - And yeah... I interview for my university's AI lab in the near future, though what they do is much more space-oriented.