At 8:06 PM -0600 1/19/07, Michael Scoles wrote:
I'll take a shot. Maybe the other Michaels S. was making a distinction
(intentionally or not) between proximate and distal causes?
Maybe, but there are still problems.
We're talking about two different distinctions.
An evolutionary cause of behavior would be both biological and
distal; whereas a neurological cause would be biological and proximal.
And I'm still not happy with labeling environmental (usually distal)
causes as nonbiological, since they involve an interaction with a
living organism.
Ultimately, I think that the (unstated) issue is one of monism vs. dualism.
Skinner (going back to the original posting) was unabashedly monistic
-- all human action (including events observable only by the behaving
individual) is natural in the sense of meeting the standards of
scientific observation.
From this point of view the 'mind/body' distinction is either trivial
or meaningless.
A (Cartesian) dualist assumption, on the other hand, holds that there
is something called 'mind' that does not inhabit space/time in the
naturalistic sense but that still can function as a cause of behavior.
From this point of view one can logically talk about nonbiological
causes of behavior.
--
The best argument against intelligent design is that people believe in it.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Department 507-389-6217 *
* 23 Armstrong Hall Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ *
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