One of the recurring conundrums of teaching. Finger pointing at the moon....
On Nov 22, 2017 14:32, "Eric Charles" <eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote: > "Is there any way to put those two things together: the abduction thing > and the misattribution thing? " > > I would head in a different direction. The question is about, how one does > the attribution; the answer is, most people do it poorly. In a large part, > the history of scientific *method *is a history of determining the > conditions under which we allow causal attributions. When I used to teach, > I illustrated this most directly in my intro-to-behaviorism class. > > That class included a lot of discussion of applied behavior analysis > (altering the environment of a person in an effort to improve their > behavioral functioning within that environment). The central challenge is > that the ABA practitioner typically only has access to the (usually a) > child for a very limited time, and you don't want to jump to the conclusion > that your efforts are working when external factors might equally explain > the change in the child's behavior. We work up from very basic methods of > increasing confidence. We eventually build up to an ABAB design, in which > the prospective solution is applied, then removed, then applied, then > removed. Every time the problem behavior goes away, comes back, goes away, > and comes back, etc., our confidence increases that our intervention is > *causing > *the improvement in behavior, because it is increasingly unlikely that > some other factor just so happens to be varying at exactly the same times. > > Part of the process of "becoming" "a scientist" is increasingly the > sophistication of research needed before you draw such conclusions... or, > perhaps more accurately, how well you match the tentativeness-vs-solidity > of your beliefs to the type of empirical evidence in favor of them. > Eventually one is drawing on a wealth of difficult-to-specify > domain-specific knowledge in support of any conclusion, but likely > justifies the conclusion on the basis of the latest bit of crucial evidence > (the one which, for them, solidifies the pattern). > > Though... suddenly I might have a legitimate response to your inquiry: I > would hypothesize that people often mistakenly point at the bit of > information that was crucial to them, rather than the larger pattern that > the crucial bit of information brought into focus. > > With Murder on the Orient Express on my mind.... Hercule Poirot would > narrate such a thing explicitly, would he not? He would say "The crucial > clue in helping me unravel my confusion was X" and then he would explain > the larger pattern thus illuminated. A lesser detective would act as if the > clue itself were crucial in its own right - "This is the key!" - even if it > was a trivial thing on its own, thus committing a dramatic misattribution > by virtue of not being self-aware of the abduction taking place. > > Did that get anywhere? > > > > ----------- > Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. > Supervisory Survey Statistician > U.S. Marine Corps > <echar...@american.edu> > > On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 1:07 AM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net > > wrote: > >> Hi, Eric, >> >> >> >> Thank you, Eric. OF COURSE, that is what I should have said. Thank you >> for saying it so excellently. Peirce did in fact see causal attribution as >> a form of abduction. I would hope I would have thought to say it myself, >> if I wasn’t so distracted by the “counter-factual” thang. But that way of >> speaking makes me CRAAAAAY-ZEEE. How can something defined in terms of >> something that didn’t happen >> >> >> >> Before you wrote, I was about to get on my “mystery” high horse. A >> mystery, you remember, is a confusion arrived at when a bit of language is >> applied to a situation where it doesn’t really work. Causal attributions >> are often falsely singular, in the sense that , we often speak as if the >> motion of a billiard ball was caused by the motion of the cue ball, say. >> But what we really have to back those attributions up is a pattern of >> relations between impacts of cue balls and motions of object balls. When >> we step up to the next level of organization, the confusion disappears, >> doesn’t it? Events of Type A are said to cause events of type B when >> experiments with proper controls show that an increase in the occurrence of >> type B events is dependent upon the previous occurrence of Type A events. >> But to say that any particular Type A event causes a Type B event is an >> abuse of language, a mystery. >> >> >> >> Is there any way to put those two things together: the abduction thing >> and the misattribution thing? >> >> >> >> Nick >> >> >> >> Nicholas S. Thompson >> >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology >> >> Clark University >> >> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ >> >> >> >> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric >> Charles >> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 21, 2017 6:43 PM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < >> friam@redfish.com> >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward Hicausation >> >> >> >> What great timing! One of the best philosophy comics on the web right now >> is "Existential Comics." This very week they took a swipe at "causation." >> Here is an adventure of Sherlock Hume: http://existentialcomics.com/c >> omic/212 >> >> I suspect that the best I can do to contribute beyond that is to try fall >> back on my role of scolding Nick. >> >> Nick *should *be asserting that "causation" is a metaphor. The billiard >> ball are the understood scenario. Billiard balls sitting on a still table, >> unmolested don't move. But if you knock one ball into another ball, the >> other ball move so. When I say something like "The approaching lion *caused >> *the gazelle to move", I am invoking the metaphor that the lion-gazelle >> relationship is like that of the billiard balls. Had the lion not been >> doing what it was doing, the gazelle would not have moved away. It isn't >> simply a "counterfactual." It is an assertion (an *abduction*) regarding >> broad patterns of gazelle behavior that can be readily observed under many >> other situations.** Some of those, I have presumably already seen. Those >> constitute the "basic implication" of the metaphor. Others I have not >> observed, and those constitute potential investigatory events - not >> ethereal thought experiments. As in true of any metaphor, there are also >> aspects of the billiard-ball scenario I do not intend to map perfectly onto >> the lion-gazelle scenario (e.g., the lion and gazelle are not spheres). >> >> So that is where Hume and those like him go wrong. They want to beat the >> billiard balls scenario itself to death. But that's not how metaphors work. >> There is something understood about the billiard balls, and it is >> that-understood-thing that is being generalized to another scenario. Any >> attempt to explain the billiard balls will involve evoking *different >> *metaphors, >> which would entail different assertions (abductions). There is no >> foundation (Peirce tells us, amongst others), Descartes was on a fool's >> errand: In the land of inference, it is turtles all the way down. >> >> >> >> ** The breadth of the patterns being referenced is, I believe, where >> Frank's point about probability slips in. One could certainly simplify the >> complexity of the assertion by making lumping similar scenarios together >> and speaking about the probability of a certain gazelle behavior within the >> cluster of similar situations. >> >> >> >> >> >> ----------- >> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. >> Supervisory Survey Statistician >> >> U.S. Marine Corps >> >> >> >> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 5:08 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Also Known As: Beware equating experience with existence. >> >> On 11/21/2017 02:00 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: >> > Beware the tendency to think that if you can't immediately measure >> something then it doesn't exist. >> >> >> -- >> ☣ gⅼеɳ >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove