‘Thinking’ as a class of potential behavior is hard to study and thus, makes it ripe for speculation and interpretations beyond the data. As things are today, thinking is made more significant because it is presumed that humans are the only ones that do it making is a signature feature on what is human and what isn’t. “Mind”, “consciousness”, thought and all sorts of covert related properties are offered as evidence that humans are different and somehow more substantive than other animals. The past and existing organizations of what is going on inside the ‘vault’ [read: brain, head, mind, neural node, CNS] have been dismal. Answers are as elusive as they were 2000 years ago and are made more mysterious for some by being out of reach.
We have made no progress in regards to our understanding of what goes on there and how those things relate to subjective or empirical states of man or our institutions, including governance and law. They have suffered most while we hack away at deciphering the muddled mess of metaphysics and logically indefensible postulates that are put forth to explain how man behaves and why.
the verbal community has not yet been able to connect with what is going on that the community cannot experience. Any reinforcements that are delivered are not contingent on specific behavior because they can’t be seen in time or space. This comes to create a response class that looks like behavior that is reinforced on a VI schedule independent of a specific response on the part of the target organism. Yes; the prime requisite for development of superstitious behavior is non-contingent VI delivery of a reinforcer.
thinking may occasion in a person a fixed gaze, unblinking or reduced eye blinks, change in gate, or time insensitivity to many external stimuli, changes in galvanic responses and lowered heart and breathing rates. However, these are not thinking per se but may be part of what is inferred to be happening when one is doing any covert behaviors including thinking. All are part of other behaviors as well as behaviors with parameters of their own.
In describing thinking there is a lack of external conformation possible that any observer or the free-floating reinforcements can access. Thus, there is no connection between a specific covert behavior and a potential reinforcer. Thus, there is no way to show an increase in the future probability of occurrence of a target covert behavior occurring when the potential reinforcer was delivered.
Our covert behavior [including thinking] has several problems as a behavior class.
- it is not sensed and can’t be verified or falsified
- it does not have standard units of measurement
- results will depend on the way it is measured
- it is experiences through filters that transducer it to something else based on history and context
- vocabulary
- environment context
- culture
- in articulation of aspect (what parts are of interest – dreams, impulses, value, etc.)
- unknown empirical properties
Ultimately, the products of processes generated from within the ‘vault’ of the listener are routed and locked there. Everyone will continue to investigate how and what is going on there with whatever methods that can be mustered. Today the neurosciences are taking their shot at deciphering the relationships between what is going on inside our head and what we experience. To that end they are using 19th century models of man and behavior mixed with decrepit autonomous man inklings and sophisticated 21st century technology and chemistry. For some there is value in how they postulate the working of man and his mind. Those values are the same as postulated 2000 years ago and haven’t benefited our species as much as science methods have benefited biology, chemistry and anthropology. The value to science will depend more on changes in approach to man than the power of the magnet used in a portable fMRI.
Any set of the things related to what happens when someone is thinking is all just that, related to thinking for that person and not thinking itself. All the covert events can be related to things associated with other behaviors done when a person is not thinking as well as when some are thinking. The set of responses become associated as events related to a state that may be referred to as ‘thinking’ for that person who, when asked, “What are you doing?” or “Why don’t you answer me?” may report, “I was thinking…” and otherwise communicate something the other person will probably relate to as a set of private covert actions (events) that can be arbitrarily called ‘thinking.’
Of course it is very true that if thinking were an operant the people in the examples above would not have to ask, “What are you doing?” or “Why don’t you answer me?” If thinking were doing something overt, the observer could learn from observing or measuring behavior and would know the answers to those questions after learning to discriminate what was/is thinking and what is something other than thinking.
Psychotherapists, bosses, clergy, spouses, friends, parents etc., all have a version of why we do what we do. They have a story about what relationships exist between us and the world around us; the environment. There is a good chance that, after some time experiencing a person, that each could be right. Of course their story is riddled with inaccuracies as well seeing how they only see what they were trained to see. Seems impossible but consider that each of us has a VERY broad and complex behavior repertoire. Our complex behavior allows us to behave differently and distinctly in the different environments and contexts of different people. Sometimes the people we are, how we behave, overlaps. Sometimes they don’t.
SUMMARY
Great thinkers as well as the delusional philosophers, pontiffs, despots and princes and even the man and woman on the street have been reinforced for reporting their internal covert musings in subjective and fantasy terms focusing on the exhaust of the human thinking process – emotions and feelings. These 3 thousand years of focus has outdistanced the empirical study of thinking by overlooking histories of the individuals and the use of the least productive research methods NOT found in 17th century science! In the not-so-grand scale of things, it is more interesting for the lay person and the scientist alike to be enamored by the fantasy than by the environmental contingencies. We pay for that interest every day we live on this earth.
in some sense, you’re concluding that there isn’t really such a thing as “thinking”. i.e. we’ll never find a unit of “thought”.
there are covert things going on (events we cannot report or observe) that we’ve come to group and label as “thinking”, but it’s a bit like saying a swarm of bees has “intelligence”. we sorta know what we’re talking about, but really it’s nothing you can analyze concretely.
Thanks for the sharp response…
No, I am not concluding anything like that anymore than one would conclude in 1960 humans would never get to the moon. I am postulating that with the tools we have… paired with some empirical definitions of behavior (that separates it from metaphysics and mystical expression) that the thinking we all do does not qualify as “behavior” today.
For all the reasons mentioned, plus thinking has no start and never seems to stop – despite how we want to characterize our boss… there are parametric problems that need to be solved. Having the wrong model [purpose, meaning, and assumptions of prediction and control] wreaks havoc with how we approach “what the heck is going on?”
Once we stop trying to find the seat of this and that in the brain and start to absorb its neural net patterns and chemistry, thinking could come to fall under the classification of behavior; i.e., we can manage contingencies, tell if “it” (thinking) changes independent of the thinker and other cultural filters.
What I would also posit is that only by using our strengths in science and will we rid ourselves of 2000 years of garbage and superstition.
To get to where we know what is going on inside the ‘vault’ is not easy and the successive attempts to short-circuit the hard stuff in favor of the blab stuff has not been kind to us as a species or as thinking organisms.
It occurs to me that there are some who are reading all this and they finally respond in some way with “Hey, that is not what thinking is to me!” or, “That is amazing. I was just thinking about this last week…” or an infinite set of versions.
The trouble is, we don’t know that those things are shared or different, do we?! The environment can’t get at them.
Each of us has a different experience and represents a different history. It is up to each to describe what thinking is to them and that is a function of culture, timing, training, etc.
That is part of the argument for thinking is not the same as ‘behavior’.
ok… let’s propose another question.
without language, do we think?