Afraid of being seen as gay, are you?

[Colleen Thomas]

I have had the distinct pleasure of being taught by Behavioral Analysis guru Dr. Kelly Wilson, in my day. Behavioral analysis is an essential clinical psychology tool. Absolutely fanscinating subject that I'd be delighted to talk about any day of the week.

I think he, and I know I, and I suspect the rest of the behavioral psychology world would say... "we can prove that we induce fear-like behavior in the animal, not that we prove fear". There's a huge difference. We can cause behaviors, through conditioning, but we don't get a glimpse inside the animal's head. Behavioral Psychology, at best, gets to say "we can predict and influence X behavior"... it has no business saying "we can predict and influence fear" as it can't meter, register, measure, or quantify "fear".



See... there's no good reason why significant cognition is needed to hate. That I hate beestings is no great achievement of intellect or reason. I don't need miraculous cognition to really hate that guy over there for everything from stealing my parking space to hitting on my girlfriend to stealing my lunch. Hate seems to be a regression of the intellect, not an achievement of ot--as such, it is possible that its just a natural instinct.

Hate-like behavior is evident in the animal kingdom. Why we choose to call those behaviors "umm, not hate" and yet the same behaviors (with the same justifications) "hate" in humans is beyond me. If I take a dog's food when its hungry enough, it may growl and snarl and jump me. If I take someone's property when they are especially protective of it, they also may growl and snarl and jump me. Hate-like behavior.

By your logic, nothing can be proven. Fear and fear like behavior are one in the same, yet where most of us would call a spade a spade, you would say no, one is fear one is just fear like behavior. So when I see a roach and start throwing things at it, it isn't fear, it's a fear like bahvior. Well duh.

Argueing for the sake of argument or playing devil's advocate are not new here. However in you I detect a pathalogical need to avoid any defining absolutes at all cost. So my question is:

Is that fear? Or just a fear like behavior?

-Colly

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Colleen Thomas
By your logic, nothing can be proven. Fear and fear like behavior are one in the same, yet where most of us would call a spade a spade, you would say no, one is fear one is just fear like behavior. So when I see a roach and start throwing things at it, it isn't fear, it's a fear like bahvior. Well duh.

No, by my logic, very few things can be proven... "animals don't hate" being one of them--and for very, very good reason. The roach example is, yeah, fear-like behavior--maybe you did it out of actual fear, maybe you did it out of relfex, maybe you did it out of hatred. The motivations become a matter of possibility that is helped by direct communication--"I was scared" helps eliminate some possibilities.

Animals aren't so good at the communication thing, so assuming what they do and do not experience becomes a big dangerous game of "possibilities".

Argueing for the sake of argument or playing devil's advocate are not new here. However in you I detect a pathalogical need to avoid any defining absolutes at all cost. So my question is:

Is that fear? Or just a fear like behavior?

-Colly

No pathological anything. Just being rational. Especially when the consequent of not doing so might lead to "all anti-gay people are secretly ashamed of their own sexuality" and that statement might lead someone to believe something about themselves or other people that just isn't necessarily true. Letting people know the options isn't devil's advocate, its helping limit the number of erroneous ideas that procreate out there.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

No, by my logic, very few things can be proven... "animals don't hate" being one of them--and for very, very good reason. The roach example is, yeah, fear-like behavior--maybe you did it out of actual fear, maybe you did it out of relfex, maybe you did it out of hatred. The motivations become a matter of possibility that is helped by direct communication--"I was scared" helps eliminate some possibilities.

Animals aren't so good at the communication thing, so assuming what they do and do not experience becomes a big dangerous game of "possibilities".



No pathological anything. Just being rational. Especially when the consequent of not doing so might lead to "all anti-gay people are secretly ashamed of their own sexuality" and that statement might lead someone to believe something about themselves or other people that just isn't necessarily true. Letting people know the options isn't devil's advocate, its helping limit the number of erroneous ideas that procreate out there.

A rational response would be that fearlike behavior is fear, unless some other motivating factor could be shown to produce the same results.

An argumenative response is to make an artificial divide: fear vs. fear like behavior and then begin a nit picking psuedo intellectual argument over your defining line between fear and fear like behavior. An agument you cannot loose, since your definition of fear is explained by fear like behavior. It's a circular argument. Also a naked asertion, one you can make and as long as you aren't forced to prove it, it cannot be disproven.

So I will simply ask you to define fear in a way that is not bounded by fear like behavior.

In substance, I think your argument is very sound. Hateing homosexuals is by no means a solid indicator of repressed homosexual desires in the individual. Some people simply need to hate someone or something and hateing gays is a socially acceptable way to do so. I know of one person who hates gays because of a psycological mechanism. He was nearly raped by a homosexual and rather than hate the individual he now projects his hate onto all people who are gay.

-Colly

 

[RebeccaLeah]

So am I

You weren't a perky cheerleader by any chance, were you?

Nope sorry, ballerina all the way. Give me pointe shoes over pompoms anyday. They're in my backpack right now actually. I might mention though that the proper ballet skirt is about the same length but translucent.

Mat, my love, my heaven sent angel....You are the temptation I try to distract myself from by said studies. I can't very well walk around all day thinking of you....damn well could walk at all if I did.

Liar, I agree, such topics are sooo much more important in daily life.

Abs, darling, we're used to you forgeting things. We've all learned to deal with it....and take advantage of it, bet you don't remember last night do you?

 

[gauchecritic]

You just had to do this on a Wednesday didn't you?

First off. Bikini lines. Hate them. Give me wild pubes every time.

Second. 1 + 1 is very easily disproven to = 2. (you didn't define anything at all. Shame on you being a famous behavioural psychologist or at least his apparent self proclaimed equal [and you know exactly what that fallacy is].)

Third. expressed behaviour in animals has no equivalent to human expressed behaviour excepting on an animal level.

Human beings are other than animals.

I can't readily believe that you haven't seen at least one of my posts (and someone else's quite recently) that the difference between animal and human is not tools or behaviour but story telling.

The ability to forecast.

How do we do that? Because we employ complex language.

Complex language gives us the ability to brood and therefore harbour grudges which generates hate and then fear and then comes the dark side.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

Bahamas? I thought they were going to have fun with bananas!

I'm just glad I didn't say anything stoopid.

(it's crash cymbal with kick base. Or maybe it's a crass symbol with bitch-face)

Gauche

(with a dead hold on the cymbal almost immediately following)

http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/musik/528.gif

Yep.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Colleen Thomas
A rational response would be that fearlike behavior is fear, unless some other motivating factor could be shown to produce the same results.

No, that would be an assumptive respones. Rationality (logic) would dictate that things can look alike and be different and calling two things the same when they can be different is intellectually irresponsible (fool's gold and gold, for instance). Fearlike behavior isn't Fear. They shouldn't be (and in behavioral psychology they aren't) treated like the same thing.

An argumenative response is to make an artificial divide: fear vs. fear like behavior and then begin a nit picking psuedo intellectual argument over your defining line between fear and fear like behavior. An agument you cannot loose, since your definition of fear is explained by fear like behavior. It's a circular argument. Also a naked asertion, one you can make and as long as you aren't forced to prove it, it cannot be disproven.

It isn't an artificial divide at all. It isn't pseudo-anything, either. In psychology (behavioral psychology, especially), things are talked about in terms of them as behaviors that can be observed because the cognitions isn't provable or measurable. Is the rat avoiding the electric wire? Behavioral psychology could only say "the rat is exhibiting avoidance behavior", as it could be true that the rat isn't "avoiding" at all.

It isn't even a circular argument (I have no idea where you're getting that). Fear can exhibit fear-like behaviors... it can also NOT exhibit those behaviors (I knew a girl who laughed when scared, not a fear-like behavior at all). Fear-like behaviors can be indicative of things Not-Fear, as well... like when a creature cowers and gets tense when the food shute is opened, but if it was conditioned to do that it may not be afraid at all, just acting like it (again, Pigeon Dancing is a good psychology example of complex behavior in a case like this).

I have no idea what your rationalizing, but it isn't using logic to do it. That's not an offense, that's just saying... take a minute, and look at the evidence here. My position is only that we cannot be certain of the cognitions of animals based on their behavior (and psychology agrees with me on that).

So I will simply ask you to define fear in a way that is not bounded by fear like behavior.

I bring up the girl who laughed at spiders because she was afraid of them... totally not fear-like in behavior.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Re: You just had to do this on a Wednesday didn't you?

Originally posted by gauchecritic
First off. Bikini lines. Hate them. Give me wild pubes every time.

Second. 1 + 1 is very easily disproven to = 2. (you didn't define anything at all. Shame on you being a famous behavioural psychologist or at least his apparent self proclaimed equal [and you know exactly what that fallacy is].)

Please stop haphazardly using the term "fallacy", guache. Its a bit of an offense to my profession--I'm a little sensitive about that. Mostly because again, you're calling a fallacy when there isn't one...

1 + 1 isn't easily disproven at all. Failure to define the terms isn't a fallacy, but I can take caution on your lacking an understanding of the concept of the numeric "one" and the idea of "addition", the idea of "equal in value" and the numeric "two".... I mean those things. Nothing more complicated than that.

I am not a famous behavioral anything, and I never proclaimed to be his equal... now you're just being an instigating fucktard. I hate to use that term, you command a lot of respect around here and I like you, but you're being a bitch by making comments like that. Dr. Wilson is a brilliant behaviorist, and I was lucky enough to learn behaviorism under him--that was the beginning and end of what I'd said. Taking shit like that out of context is you being a fuck. Please don't go there.

Third. expressed behaviour in animals has no equivalent to human expressed behaviour excepting on an animal level.

Modern Psychology treats it as so. Behaviorism definitely treats it as so. I choose to treat it as so. There are any number of cases where human subjects, conditioned in the ways with the behaviors that animals were conditioned, came to have the same resulting changes... that does show a conceptual equivalency, which is what we were talking about.

Human beings are other than animals.

That's a conclusion without premise. Coke is other than Pepsi, but we can still find similarities and categorical correspondances to talk about them in similar terms--most significantly, terms that bring about accurate data. "Other than" isn't an excuse without real evidential validity under it. Every good scientist will tell you that. It was in the comparing of microcosmic events that macrocosmic events have been explained and vice-verse... but they, too, are "other".

Complex language gives us the ability to brood and therefore harbour grudges which generates hate and then fear and then comes the dark side.

Gauche

But hate isn't solely the product of "brooding". Any more than "biting someone" is solely the product of "thinking about biting someone". Hate-like behaviors, which are easier to talk about than a cognitive ideal ("hate" is a purely cognitive ideal), are exhibited in animals. If hate-like behaviors are apparent in animals, why not call it hate?

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Sigh, Joe, when will you learn that this is a pub? Let yourself be human.

Okay, first up. Fuck the psychology. I'm sorry, but your blind faith has brought me to point the obvious. Psychology bases its assumptions on the normal trend much like how statistics make something out of the middle. Your fear of extremes, of showing any tendency towards any absolute seems to mme on a subjective basis to be rooted in your fear of being out of the societally determined normal of humanity. I can't substantiate this, nor can I quote famous psychologists. But on the other hand, neither am I treating a science invented by a coke addict has the end all word on how humans should act and do act. Psychology has its uses, but it's a soft science where correlation is difficult and causation nigh impossible. Your mixture of logic with this field comes off very flawed because of this nature of psychology.

Second, an old illogic game of mine: 1+1 is 2 and 2+2 is 3 and 3+3 is 4 and 4+4 is 5 and...

Third I disagree with the assumption that animal studies reveal too much about human behaviors. I tend to side with Richard Dawkins and his theory of The Selfish Gene where our instincts may push towards certain behaviors but humans have full faculties to ignore those instincts, indulge in them, or even not have them in a mutation or abnormal case. I do this cause it meshes with what I've seen. I don't know what psychology's current view on Dawkins is nor do I care.

Fourth, did I mention this is a pub atmosphere not an anthropology journal. There are different standards for argumentation. Anecdotal evidence has weight. Authoritative sentences without backup proofs as well have weight if other pub-goers agree and correlate. And the way an argument is phrased is less worthy than whether an argument is made that correlates well with the other pub-goers experiences and subjective observations. If I say the moon is made of cheese and cite Dr. Mangenfreud's 1942 analysis of the phenomenon, the other people would laugh at me because it doesn't mesh with what they know of the moon. None of them have been to the moon and therefore none could disprove me and I could debate all night long on how their counterarguments are all wrong. On the other hand I could have a foul-mouthed and sophmoric whine about how fucked up relationships are and I'd get a lot of head-nodding and shared stories of fucked-upedness. There is no logical basis to this comment. I can't quote the current research on relationship fuck-upedness but it feels stronger to the pub atmosphere. Anyway, nod if any of this is getting through.

Fifth, you want a refill on your mai-tai?

Sixth, Hi Colly. Good points, but I see what he means about the difference. He just overuses the different terms in a logical fallacy. One can fear and one can have a stereotypically fear-llike reaction. Think of an actor pretending to be afraid of a mouse and jumping on a chair. The actor is not actually fearful, though the reaction appears to be one of fear. Overall he's extending this limitation on the observor's part (a common problem in the sciences) to make a statement on the emotion itself. While one can exhibit behaviors associated with hate and fear without being hateful or fearful (see Hollywood for examples), it has no bearing on the absolute nature of the emotions (which I believe was your point Colly). One fearing or hating is a different kettle of fish than the observed stereotypical response sheet. It is mixing observor's perceived reality with actual reality (a fallacy which makes me emphatically disagree with Shroedinger's cat).

Seventh, we're gonna need some mai-tais over here. How bout Liar comes over in a speedo and tops me off (or bottoms as taste may vary).

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Lucifer_Carroll
Sigh, Joe, when will you learn that this is a pub? Let yourself be human.

Actually, its a forum... beyond that, its a discussion... beyond even that, its a disagreement where psychology and its study /does/ come to bear (despite personal preference, and on account of the other party bringing it up in the first place).

But, I'm way more interested in what she has to say.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Actually, its a forum... beyond that, its a discussion... beyond even that, its a disagreement where psychology and its study /does/ come to bear (despite personal preference, and on account of the other party bringing it up in the first place).

But, I'm way more interested in what she has to say.

Ai'ght. I was just saying. And yes, I would rather listen to Colly than me any day of the week.

Minor question: What is your opinion of Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene theory?

P.S. The pub analogy was just that, an analogy to the social dynamics of this here forum and how they resemble those of your average brew pub.

 

[Belegon]

Sometimes Joe makes a hell of a lotta sense....

Other times I just want to try and get him so stoned he sits for an hour and watches the ice cream melt...

Hi guys, how's the "serious discussions" going?

Sorry, I can't be serious tonight... the 1st of the month at my work is as close to hell as anything this side of Christmas Eve in retail gets, and I am burned out.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Hi guys, how's the "serious discussions" going?

There is no serious discussion, only Zool.

 

[Belegon]

There is no serious discussion, only Zool.

What did you do Ray?

 

[thenry]

Colly, Lucifer, Joe: I am no one. Yet I applaud you for your debate.

Perhaps you give up because no one cares? Or understands all sides?

(From my viewpoint, anyone who particpates relinquishes an arbitrary viewpoint. Lucipher Carroll is my ideal of arbiter who gives an opinion, however, by giving an opinion you have given up objective judgement.)

Suffice to say, people follow the entire course of the argument.

To relinquish my own objectivity, without a truly objective viewpoint on any emotion the nearest measure of emotional behavoir must suffice so long as it can be objectively proven. (p < 0.05 ?)

P.S. (after following Lit's average IQ) Is normal actually enviable?

 

[Guest]

There is no serious discussion, only Zool.

LMAO!

I wanna party with you and Belegon!

 

[Guest]

To relinquish my own objectivity, without a truly objective viewpoint on any emotion the nearest measure of emotional behavoir must suffice so long as it can be objectively proven. (p < 0.05 ?)

P.S. (after following Lit's average IQ) Is normal actually enviable?

Well, there's normal and then there's normal.

For statistical significance I generally choose the one in the pub. Or the one in speedos. Or the one who brings me a terrific rum and coke.

P.S. Luc - leave Shroedinger's cat outta this! (Goddamn physicists, anyway . . . mumbling. . . cat haters . . .)

 

[Belegon]

LMAO!

I wanna party with you and Belegon!

I'm sure Luc will agree that we would love to party with you. Meet us on Black's Beach at noon.

 

[sweetnpetite]

False assertion unless you have direct cognitive access to the laws governing the natural state of man...

...bored with Joespeak, yawn.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by sweetnpetite


...bored with Joespeak, yawn.

I feel that way, myself, when I have to explain the easy stuff.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I can't prove that animals hate... only that they display hate-like behavior. I can't prove that humans hate either... only that they display hate-like behavior (plus, they can communicate "I hate"). As such, I can't speak intelligently about what /is/ in the mind of an animal... only what is possibly in the mind of an animal.

This is just taking logic, and proofs and all of that nonsence too far.

And there isn't anything about animals that preclude the possiblity of their hating things.

Can you prove that?

 

[Guest]

I feel that way, myself, when I have to explain the easy stuff.

Be nice, Joe. You seem the one who cares most. Just saying.

Perdita

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by sweetnpetite
This is just taking logic, and proofs and all of that nonsence too far.

I'm sure have some sort of justification for that accusation? Anything?

Can you prove that?

Yes. Because nothing about the essential properties of animals precludes, logically, the possibility of emotion--those things being a part, naturally, of an animal doesn't conflict with rational coherance, experiential confirmatin, or conceptual clarity (three pillars of good philosophy). Simple, really. Proving possibilities is as hard as showing how they aren't impossible.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by perdita
Be nice, Joe. You seem the one who cares most. Just saying.

Perdita

I'm trying. Really.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I'm sure have some sort of justification for that accusation? Anything?




Yes. Because nothing about the essential properties of animals precludes, logically, the possibility of emotion--those things being a part, naturally, of an animal doesn't conflict with rational coherance, experiential confirmatin, or conceptual clarity (three pillars of good philosophy). Simple, really. Proving possibilities is as hard as showing how they aren't impossible.

for a smart guy, you're pretty thick.

>>>sweet straddles the line between good natured ribbing, and just plain rude, but w/ no actual milice intended.<<<<