Ship of Fools: Pavlov And Free-Will

Thread: Pavlov And Free-Will Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

People think Pavlov's experiments proved that animals (and presumably humans) functioned automatically, like machines. Actually that's an Urban Myth. Pavlov wanted to prove this, but he failed.

Initially, Pavlov's dogs gave him Conditioned Responses, as desired. But then they got bored and went into a state of Animal Hypnosis, where they ignored the intended stimulus and responded to just about anything else, however trivial. They could even react the opposite way to what Pavlov intended.

Animal Hypnosis is a Defence Mechanism which allows animals to play dead and make a surprise escape when caught by a predator. Seems like it worked as a Defence Mechanism against Pavlov too.

It's not exactly Free Will, but it worked well enough for Pavlov to decide the dogs weren't suitable for further experiments when they reached that stage.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Frank Mitchell

That is not a proper opening post. You get one further attempt to state clearly what issue you would like discussed. Failing that, the thread will be closed. I'll give you a few hours.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

Posted by Fool on the hill (# 9428) on :

"Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box.[7] He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human action was the result of the consequences of that same action. If the consequences were bad, there was a high chance that the action would not be repeated; however if the consequences were good, the actions that led to it would be reinforced.[8] He called this the principle of reinforcement."

This intrigued me because of my work, (teaching) and I am interested in free will, so I will try to keep the thread alive.

If there was no free will, we cannot choose good or evil, we can only do what we are conditioned to do. This leaves eternal punishment and etc problematic.

Personally, I believe in "limited free will".

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Fool on the hill:
This intrigued me because of my work, (teaching) and I am interested in free will, so I will try to keep the thread alive.

If there was no free will, we cannot choose good or evil, we can only do what we are conditioned to do. This leaves eternal punishment and etc problematic.

Personally, I believe in "limited free will".

What would someone who had no freewill do? How would you be able to tell? How can you tell if someone has freewill?

And did I have a choice about writing the above? Belief in free will is so deeply rooted in our psyches that though we can logically doubt it (I do) we never give any emotional consent to it. Nor is clear how our actions would change even if we did.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

I have trained my dog to come back to me, to the whistle, whatever the circumstances.

The training began when she was a tiny puppy. It took about six months to be totally ingrained, but it is now.

Part of the training is the 'gambling effect'. When the dog is coming back regularly for jackpot treats, you then give lesser treats and sometimes no treats. Eventually you give a Jackpot about once a fortnight, with occasional ordinary treats. The gambling effect has the coming back without fail.

If we are rewarded for certain behaviours then we will repeat them imo.

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

Part of the Conditioning Myth comes from those American experiments on pigeons, which apparently do react in a mechanistic way. Pavlov's mistake was to impose Experimental Conditions which amounted to Bondage and Sensory Deprivation, things not found in normal dog training.

If you've ever heard of a guy named William Sargant, you'll know where I'm going with this. Brainwashing techniques use these unnatural conditions to get people to abandon their usual behaviour-patterns and reject their previous Value-Systems. That's how real mind-manipulation works. But the effect isn't permanent when normal life resumes.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Extreme forms of communism tried to get people to function in a similar automatic way. But it ultimately failed because there are always some people who think for themselves and question too much, despite (often) severe punishment for doing so.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
Part of the Conditioning Myth

What is the Conditioning Myth? Does anyone now believe that human learning or behaviour can be modelled/modified so simply? Look at advertising, political spin, military training and such to see how it's done. Things have moved on a long way.

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
If you've ever heard of a guy named William Sargant

I remember reading Sargant in about 1969 (I assume you are thinking of "Battle for the mind") and the book was old then, published in 1957. I doubt whether many people would rely on its findings now.

You haven't mentioned Skinner, or indeed Chomsky's devastating critique which would I think apply equally to Pavlov's experiment.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Human behavior can be modified through conditioning; anybody who doesn't think so has never raised a child. A buddy of mine in university was in a psych class where one day the prof was late to class. They got together and decided that thy would try a conditioning experiment on the prof. Every time he looked at the students on the right side of the room, they would look up and smile or look interested Every time he looked to the left side of the room, the students there would look down at their notebooks and pretend to be writing.

By the end of the term, he was teaching only to the right side of the room.

(He was by the way furious when he found out what they had done, although I can't think why; they were putting what they were being taught to a simple experimental test, like good scientists. By my way of thinking he should have been proud of them.)

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

I could have discussed Skinner and his pigeons, but I concluded they weren't relevant to human behaviour. Pavlov's dogs gave a more sophisticated response because they have better brains, and human brains are more sophisticated still. I wanted to go on to William Sargant, "Battle For The Mind" and "The Mind Possessed", because his observations relate to the Toronto Blessing and suchlike. Some Christians agree with his conclusion that these manifestations involve Mesmeric Trances. They also relate to Stress Disorders, like Depersonalization. I've met people who were preoccupied with the strange feeling that they didn't exist. Peter Sellers the actor was well-known for this. I conclude that Skinner, with his belief that consciousness was an illusion, was himself a victim of this condition. And there's more, if I can manage to discuss this stuff without upsetting people too much.

Posted by pydseybare (# 16184) on :

I think freewill is the wrong term. I quite like Plato's idea of the divided soul - into logic, spirit and appetite - which can be trained in different ways.

Aristotolian virtue ethics seems to go even further, suggesting that one can train oneself into certain behaviours. To become a great blacksmith, you need years of training and practice. To be a person of great character, you have to train yourself into those behaviours.

In that light, I'm not sure there is any action that is entirely free or any that is entirely conditioned (after all, you have to choose (presumably freely) to condition and train yourself). How could you ever know whether any given choice or action is a result of freely choosing at any given moment between a choice of actions or whether you are conditioned to favour one over the others - and in the latter somehow convince yourself that you're making a rational choice?

But then, Aristotle's mean seems to be largely unhelpful in this context, given that he appears to imply that one could only know the virtuous mean with proper training. Which seems rather circular.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

Is this a thread about free-will vs determinism in humans?

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
I conclude that Skinner, with his belief that consciousness was an illusion, was himself a victim of this condition.

I think you have misunderstood Skinner. His belief was that consciousness was not an appropriate subject for study: it wasn't definable scientifically and seemed to mean different things to different people

quote:
From an earlier behaviouralist, John Watson

[Consciousness] is neither a definable nor a usable concept, it is merely another word for the ‘soul’ of more ancient times. . . . No one has ever touched a soul or seen one in a test-tube.

Consciousness is just as unprovable, as unapproachable as the old concept of the soul . . . the Behaviourist must exclude from his scientific vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined

(taken from here)

Skinner was one member of a (once powerful) movement in psychology. The issue was what should be considered as scientific psychology, and so, in the positivist spirit of the times, consciousness (which cannot be measured or observed from 'outside') was considered non-scientific.

The link above claims, among other things, that Skinner originally wanted to be a novelist in the style of Marcel Proust, James Joyce and John Dos Passos. It would be hard to emulate Joyce or Proust (I know nothing about Dos Passos) without a belief in consciousness.

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

I did read Skinner's book once, though I don't remember much about it. I decided Pavlov's "Paradoxical Phase" of response was much more interesting after I read Sargant's books about Religious Conversion and Spirit-Possession. Yes, you get Criminals describing how their lives were transformed by the Holy Spirit. I once encountered a guy in the Salvation Army who devoted his life to helping homeless people as a result. But if you read "Mein Kampf" it seems Adolf Hitler was inspired by a similar vision. And I used to know a guy who got a revelation from God about the Secret Of The Universe and decided the Apartheid System in South Africa was the appropriate way to treat Black People.

Posted by Fool on the hill (# 9428) on :

quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:

quote:
Originally posted by Fool on the hill:
This intrigued me because of my work, (teaching) and I am interested in free will, so I will try to keep the thread alive.

If there was no free will, we cannot choose good or evil, we can only do what we are conditioned to do. This leaves eternal punishment and etc problematic.

Personally, I believe in "limited free will".
What would someone who had no freewill do? How would you be able to tell? How can you tell if someone has freewill?

And did I have a choice about writing the above? Belief in free will is so deeply rooted in our psyches that though we can logically doubt it (I do) we never give any emotional consent to it. Nor is clear how our actions would change even if we did.

I'm not sure how you can tell if someone else exercised free will because it takes place in their mind. I believe in limited free will because even though my actions are partly determined by my circumstances (environment, what is available to me, my nature, my intelligence) and in part by my previous actions and how I've been conditioned to behave, I feel I have a certain amount freedom to make a choice. I had a choice, for example, to either respond to this post or ignore it. Both responses carry their own set of consequences, both reinforcing and not reinforcing. I chose to respond. Free will. Limited.

Maybe I ultimately had no choice, based on the ultimate stronger reinforcer for each course of action, but I believe I made a choice.

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

I seem to remember somebody tested people's ability to invent a sequence of Random Numbers, and found they were unexpectedly good at it. That's a sort of Free-Will.

[ 04. January 2014, 23:54: Message edited by: Frank Mitchell ]

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
I seem to remember somebody tested people's ability to invent a sequence of Random Numbers, and found they were unexpectedly good at it. That's a sort of Free-Will.

How on earth would one determine they were truly random? How could the person inventing a sequence of numbers truly be assured they were random?

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Frank Mitchell: I seem to remember somebody tested people's ability to invent a sequence of Random Numbers, and found they were unexpectedly good at it. That's a sort of Free-Will.

I would be surprised by that, because we really suck at it. Not that it has anything to do with free will.

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

Try playing Poker for small coins, and see how you get on. Low Poker, where the worst hand wins, is better. Table Stakes work best, when the amounts involved are small. It's not really a Game Of Chance because the winner tends to be the most unpredictable character.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

que sais-je - your first comment. Spot on. Chomsky link saved.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

I don't know much about poker, but I do know that humans are bad random number generators. Really, we're terrible at it. Try saying a long string of digits without any pattern at all, it's very hard to. It isn't just me saying that, there is a whole lot of scientific research that confirms this. I guess it has to do with our human bias for patterns.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I don't know much about poker, but I do know that humans are bad random number generators. Really, we're terrible at it. Try saying a long string of digits without any pattern at all, it's very hard to. It isn't just me saying that, there is a whole lot of scientific research that confirms this. I guess it has to do with our human bias for patterns.

And when picking numbers, as in "Pick a number between 1 and 100," we tend to avoid numbers ending in 0 and 5.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
mousethief: And when picking numbers, as in "Pick a number between 1 and 100," we tend to avoid numbers ending in 0 and 5.

Exactly. In fact, we find this really hard to do. I've read research that shows that in this case, we have a preference for prime numbers, especially the number 17. We also choose our numbers too far apart, for example after saying 83 we have too much of a tendency to go for a low number like 19. It isn't random at all.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Seems relevant.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

I've relented. The thread is a bit "knockabout" but there are some serious points being made, so there's no harm in it carrying on until you're tired of it.

B62, Purg Host

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
lilBuddha: How on earth would one determine they were truly random? How could the person inventing a sequence of numbers truly be assured they were random?

In fact, this is very easy to define mathematically.

I've read about a computer program where participants were asked to simulate the flipping of a coin many times in a row by pressing the 'H' or the 'T' key. The computer tried to predict what the next flip would be, based on the previous entries of the participant.

If the participant's choices were truly random, the computer would have a success rate of 50% in the long run. However, this experiment showed that the computer consistently scored above 60%, indicating that our choices aren't random.

I tried it myself last evening, and I found that I have a tendency to say 3 H's in a row. This alone could be used by a computer to score well above 50%.

Going back to the other example of choosing a number between 1 and 100, if we did this randomly, the computer would have a score of 1% of predicting our next number. However, I could already use the things I said here to program a computer to score well above 2%, perhaps even 3 or 4%. This means that our choices aren't random.

None of this has to do with free will however.

Posted by hugorune (# 17793) on :

Free will is the way God created us, that we could choose to do good, or to do evil, while it is His intent that we do only the former. It is only in having the freedom to do both that those things have any meaning.

edit - my apologies for introducing theology into a scientific discussion [Smile]

[ 06. January 2014, 10:11: Message edited by: hugorune ]

Posted by Frank Mitchell (# 17946) on :

I've just seen a post from a Lawyer saying there's no such thing as Right & Wrong, just the Will Of God. Now I'm even more convinced that Zarathustra had a better idea: The power of Evil was almost equal to the power of Good. In other words: Two gods are better than one.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
I seem to remember somebody tested people's ability to invent a sequence of Random Numbers, and found they were unexpectedly good at it. That's a sort of Free-Will.

Is freewill the same as making random choices? When believers in freewill say "I can chose A or B" they don't generally mean it's a random choice. There could be free-will, determinism or randomness (or maybe a mixture).

quote:
Originally posted by Le Roc:
In fact, this is very easy to define mathematically.

[tangent]
Rarely is there anything on SOF I know something about, but ....

The simplest test of randomness is whether all numbers occur with the appropriate frequency. A sequence of 1000 Heads is possible but rare so throwing that in a single sequence of tosses doesn't prove it's not random - strictly we need lots of sequences and even then, it isn't impossible to throw 1000 heads every time with a fair coin.

But is the sequence 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, ... 9, 9, 9 random? Digits appear with expected frequency. Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3, .. Expected frequency isn't enough.

There are lots of tests for other patterns but we don't have an exact enough definition for a pattern to be sure any sequence passes all tests. I would doubt that randomness can really be defined.

[/tangent]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
que sais-je: But is the sequence 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, ... 9, 9, 9 random? Digits appear with expected frequency. Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3, .. Expected frequency isn't enough.

Exactly, which is why I think the definition I gave above is the right one. (It's not me saying this, it seems to be the accepted definition of randomness). The sequences you gave here aren't random by this definition.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
que sais-je: But is the sequence 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, ... 9, 9, 9 random? Digits appear with expected frequency. Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3, .. Expected frequency isn't enough.
Exactly, which is why I think the definition I gave above is the right one. (It's not me saying this, it seems to be the accepted definition of randomness). The sequences you gave here aren't random by this definition.

[tangent]
Suppose some system generated sequences of digits and it never produced my examples. I'd say it wasn't a random source. If it was random it would eventually generate every possible sequence - including the examples. In the same way if you toss a fair coin 50 times it will eventually produce a run of 50 H or 50 T.

But if a sequence must ultimately be generated, and the generator is random, it could happen on the first run or the millionth.

Anything else usually reduces to the Gambler's Fallacy that after lots of sequences having some property it becomes ever more likely that the next won't have that property.

It's true there are lots of tests of randomness but they only ever give probabilities that a sequence is random. Also, there is no complete set of tests that is somehow 'given'. For every set of tests (which could be applied to arbitrarily long sequences) there would be some sequence which it claimed was random but where we might not agree.

This is taking randomness as extrinsic, i.e. something we deduce from the output. An intrinsic definition of what is random might be: a random sequence can only be produced by a non-deterministic mechanism. Intrinsic randomness could come from quantum effects, or maybe the universe just loses the plot sometimes.

The two views aren't consistent (perhaps). Nobody has ever found anything non-random about the digits of pi (3,1,4,5,9, ... ) but they can easily be generated deterministically. Oddly if you generate pi using digits in base 16 there is a pattern. I continue to puzzle over that. (For reference look up Simon Plouffe.)

I tend to assume the intrinsic definition is better in that there there may be patterns beyond human ingenuity to spot.
[/tangent]

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