If this the case regarding the Halle Berry concept, then by implication this applies to other concepts too. The symbols embodied neurologically are not the referent! When thinking of number, all that exists of that concept in my mind are indirections pointing to this universal. Unless you are arguing that this only applies to particulars and not to universals. In which case we are back at the original problem of *how * abstracts (universals) are embodied.
I found this study by Fagot, et al singularly unimpressive.
Behavioral studies are boring, I agree. I want to know what the brain is doing. Nevertheless your critique is off-target, and a psychologist would say your smug dismissal might be evidence that your worldview is in fact threatened by it.
The researchers are writing in a psychology journal. It isn’t necessary to define basic terms like these for the readership. And if the hypothesis involves conceptualization and abstraction, it’s not unwarranted to use those terms.
Just reflexively dismissing studies of brain activation as only having to with phantasms or studies of animal behavior as only having to do with perceptual thinking, without actually showing how that is so, and why the data is more consistent with perceptual vs. abstract thinking, is mere obscurantism.
Can you explain how mere perceptual discrimination and estimative sense can account for this result? Surely the explanation that the baboons have some rudimentary concept of “same” or “different” accounts for the data much easier?
Taking a swipe at the researchers because perhaps some part of your understanding of the universe doesn’t turn out to be the way you think is just silly. It’s like shooting the messenger.
So it *is *a problem that abstraction and conceptualisation are not defined.If you don’t like it, then you and itinerant should yourselves steer clear of armchair analyses of published researchers (projection and anthropomorphic identification), yes?. If you want to analyze, be prepared to be analyzed. Or, if you dish it out, you gotta be willing to take it, as we say in the US.Well…I’'m a psychologist (hence my interest in your research NowAgnostic) and I don’t find itinerant’s point as evidence of feeling threatened. That is a cheap shot and unmerited given the lack of evidence for a feeling of threat. I find it best to steer clear of armchair analysis of other posters
But why don’t psychologists agree on terms like that? Because, just like “intelligence”, it’s impossible to define them in a way that doesn’t use **other **terms that can be measured and conceptualized in differing ways - or else in desperation resort to a circular definition (intelligence is what intelligence tests measure).In addition, it is good practice in academic circles and papers to define one’s terms. Non controversial terms such as statistical methods used and technical method/design terms don’t need explication, but terms that can be measured and conceptualised in differing ways such as conceptualisation, abstraction and consciousnessness do. Psychologists don’t always agree on terms
They would be legitimate points, if a real argument were actually given, rather than simply a bare assertion. It is obscurantism, if no reason is given to think that the behavior actually was overinterpreted or that the tasks were not valid measures of abstraction or conceptualization; it’s an argument to ignorance. You could just as well argue the authors were misreporting their findings and indulging in scientific misconduct, without any reason to think so. And no reason was given. Why is the data more consistent with the hypothesis of perceptual processing vs. conceptual processing. If you would actually show this, then you would have an argument. OTOH the authors do discuss why their data is more consistent with abstract/conceptual vs. perceptual processing.
It involves an a priori expectation. It’s like Scheiner’s mode of argumentation out to refute Galileo’s observation of sunspots; the sun is perfect, therefore it cannot have any spots.
Absolute proof is for logic and whiskey. It doesn’t exist in science.
But what they also conclude is that both are able to transfer the relational matching-to-sample to novel stimuli, supporting the abstractness of the behavior in question, even if it is not performed in exactly the same manner.
Really? By whom? Not by me.
Well the evidence shows **some **rudimentary ability in non-human animals to conceptualize and abstract, not realized without a lot of training. No one is saying that ability is “similar” to humans, as though with the proper training a baboon could be writing scientific papers.
This suggests a difference in kind, not just in degree.
It also seems that you are relying on an intuitive and subjective belief that the mind is material as it has not been shown that it is not immaterial
It seems that you are referring to property dualism here, when what I am talking about is integrative dualism. This is the idea that consciousness and its contents, though generated by the brain, are distinct kinds of existent entity. The mind then is an emergent reality that is logically, (but not in this world) causally inseparable from the physical body.
I agree, the evidence is getting stronger that there is a close correlation between mind and brain, but that does not mean that the mind is the brain. Integrative dualism deals with this adequately in my view. The two are linked - no argument there!
I like to know what the brain is doing, also. Any scientific information in that area is valuable. When my interest first developed in these matters, I took courses in psychology which included the history of experimental psychology and theories of perception, to mention just a couple. My world view is grounded in reality and so it is incapable of being affected in the slightest by baboon studies.
My comments may seem obscure to anyone who takes an unquestioning and uncritical approach to researchers’ conclusions.
I understand that. But I also see plenty of evidence that cognitive abilities on the perceptual level in higher animals and anthropoid apes are more sophisticated than what is generally acknowledged. Rather than understanding perceptual cognitive abilities deeper, the easier and less challenging route is taken by invoking “conceptual abstractions.” In this sense, I see many researchers going for the easy money explanation without realizing additional work is required.
Your comments raises a critical question about your use of terms. Unpack precisely what you mean by “rudimentary concept”. Darwin was very unspecific and ambiguous about the “rudimentary” and has drawn plenty of criticism up the present time by historians of science, philosophers, and so on. Perhaps you can do for us what Darwin could not do. Explicate precisely the notion of “rudimentary concept”.
The training factor may be more significant in ways that have not yet been considered.
Don’t lie, especially not with a patronizing attitude. That really sets people off in my area of the world.I am surprised that you don’t see the difference between accusing another poster of feeling personally threatened and an intellectual discussion of the methodology and validity of a published study
And what problems are those, precisely? The question of how intelligence is defined is not irrelevant, it shows there are terms that one simply can’t provide a precise definition for. And yet, intelligence research goes on, and papers don’t provide a “precise” definition of intelligence. Are you suggesting all research into intelligence is worthless?
Talking about scientific misconduct is to show by analogy how vacuous an argument to ignorance is, you need actual evidence in support. No real “question” was raised about the representativeness of the task, only the unsupported bare possibility that “maybe” the task wasn’t representative, which makes it a mere argument to ignorance. Additionally, it was tacitly insinuated the authors weren’t really seriously aware of the possibility of task non-representativeness, being led by a desire to anthropomorphize and project, whereas in fact they discussed it in a fair amount of depth in their discussion.
More patronizing intellectual dishonesty on your part
. I said this earlier:So, obviously, I’m aware of the question.
You **selectively **quoted it. They do not conclude relational matching-to-sample is similarly performed by baboons and humans (they think the question is quite complicated for which the answer is not a simple yes-no), true, but they also conclude that the transfer to novel stimuli supports the abstractness of the behavior in question without such qualification. And, you are a psychologist so you know this.
Me neither. I’d like to see a humpback whale compose a symphony though.
Don’t equivocate on “no difference”. Clearly there is a difference in **how well **non-human animals can conceptualize or abstract compared to humans. But there may not be a difference in the fact that there is **some **ability for conceptualization and abstraction in both non-human and human animals.
So if you concede non-human animals have rudimentary abilities for abstraction and conceptualization, what exactly are you disagreeing with?
I don’t do research in animals.
I eagerly point out that there certainly are differences between human cognitive faculties and those of other animals. There’s been some remarkable work done with chimps and other apes in the area of language, enough that I think it’s really a tortured claim to make that chimps do not have the underlying abstraction and conceptual infrastructure on which language processing is build (cf. Premack’s “Sarah”). Yet, chimps do not have language capabilities like we do, nor does any other animal (so far as we know).
Your world view is **not **grounded in reality if it can’t change with new evidence. If it can’t change, it’s fixed and dogmatic - why shouldn’t theories of perception and experimental psychology change with new evidence. In fact, they have - enormously - as you well know.
Questioning and criticism are good and necessary but you have to do better than say, maybe the researchers’ conclusions are wrong because, well, maybe they just are. You actually have to provide some reason to think they are.
This is still an argument to ignorance. If you don’t like the researchers’ explanation you should come up with a better one and show why it’s better. The fact is you don’t really have a good explanation for these results only using perceptual processing otherwise you’d provide it.
Darwin wasn’t referring to concepts when he used the term rudimentary. But anyway, a rudimentary concept is something which is basically understood, but not in as much detail as is possible, or by others. An 8-year-old (most of them, anyway) has a basic understanding of right and wrong. He is not going to find the answer to complex moral questions. The fact that he is unable to do so is not evidence against the fact that he has a basic understanding.
It may be. Then again, it may not be. This is still an argument to ignorance
You are begging the question here, assuming that Morgan’s canon was violated when that needs to be proved. To accuse someone of violating Morgan’s Canon you actually need to show that the data can be explained by lower-order processes. You can’t just make an argument to ignorance. Otherwise you could never infer the existence of a higher-order process because maybe, someway, just possibly, we don’t know right now, but maybe after 50 years, we’ll be able to explain the data by lower-order ones. I could deny conceptual processing in humans and you wouldn’t be able to refute it.
It would be, if it were **automatically **dismissed as wrong merely because it was pre-scientific. However, using scientific methods unavailable back then to disconfirm or confirm the view and, if and only if the evidence warrants, rejecting the view, is not a prejudice, but an open-minded viewpoint.
No, but they are valid and reliable ones and the evidence from them carries significant weight.
I don’t see how my example of the “rudimentary” sense of right and wrong in an 8-year-old could possibly be confused with a perceptual generalization. Nor do I see how seeing a picture with two or three similar (or dissimilar items) and then being asked to match the similarity or dissimilarity to a subsequently presented picture of 16 objects (similar or dissimilar) could be a perceptual generalization. Tell me, what is the object and what is the equivalence class if this is a mere perceptual generalization? It looks awfully like the “object” is “similarity” or “dissimilarity” which means you need you-know-what.
Argument to authority. Fail.
Well not according to the paper:
Evidently they didn’t accept the Darwinian model at first. Nor do many of them now, or at least they didn’t not that long ago.
Ah yes, the researchers are all biased. We’ve heard that one before. Geologists set out to produce experimental evidence in favor of uniformitarianism, physicists set out to produce experimental evidence in favor of long universe, biologists set out to produce experimental evidence in favor of biological evolution, because they were all biased in favor of “Darwinism”. And now, neuroscientists and behavioral researchers are getting in on the act, late to the party though they may have been. It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya!
You can always stretch mightily on a Procrustean bed…
My world view, as I intend the expression, is not grounded on the tentative conclusions of modern science. Paradigm shifts on a cosmic level would not threaten my world view, either.
Whoa, there! I suggest you read more Darwin. Darwin definitely included conceptual thinking in what he considered to be of a part of the biological continuum and what exists in the higher animals in a rudimentary manner. To deny this is to misunderstand Darwin. Darwin also described human abstract thinking in terms of images, and he referred to thought as “secretion of brain”. My point is incontestable.
If this represents your definition of “rudimentary concept” then it is not much of an explanation at all. I thought perhaps you could articulate an explanation with some detail.
I don’t see how they can be confused either. Certainly I don’t confuse them.
Do you think that when a human and an animal perform an identical task, and in the same manner, that the explanation of the cognitive functions involved are the same for the human and the animal?
I suppose that comment represents your own conspiracy theory. Yawn!
Well there you go. NO amount of evidence would ever convince you that animals have conceptual/abstraction abilities, or that the Thomistic/Aristotelian model of human cognition is incorrect. You’re simply seeking evidence to confirm your a priori notions, and you will simply* ad hoc* your way around any contrary evidence. And this, to me, is as silly as the Jesuit astronomer who denied the existence of sunspots because the sun was a “perfect” body.
OK, maybe you’re right about what Darwin said or maybe I don’t understand Darwin. It’s irrelevant to the main point of discussion and frankly I’m not really too interested about what Darwin said anyway.
No, I can’t, because “rudimentary” is a qualitative, not a quantitive, description, and it’s a relative, not an absolute, term, just like “small” or “large”. It’s impossible to do. I can’t give you the “benchmark” at which a conceptual understanding is “rudimentary” or “more than rudimentary”. I gave you an example though which illustrates the point.
Yes, that’s what Ockham’s Razor would say regarding the best explanation. If it’s not necessary to postulate higher-order conceptual abilities for animals performing the task, then it isn’t necessary for humans either. If it is necessary for humans, then it’s necessary for animals too.
No, and tossing around arguments from ignorance or to authority does not address the questions I posed either. You still haven’t provided an explanation as to how the data in the baboon experiment can be explained by perceptual processes alone.
OK, then psychologists should just pack it up and go home, if precise definitions are necessary. (In fact, more than once I’ve wished for them to do just that…) These terms, in themselves, can have no precise definitions. Having a notion of what a concept is itself a concept, making any non-circular definition impossible. “Rudimentary” is a qualitative, relative term.