Piece Of Behavior Research Articles

Mental causation, compatibilism and counterfactuals

AbstractAccording to proponents of the causal exclusion problem, there cannot be a sufficient physical cause and a distinct mental cause of the same piece of behaviour. Increasingly, the causal exclusion problem is circumvented via this compatibilist reasoning: a sufficient physical cause of the behavioural effect necessitates the mental cause of the behavioural effect, so the effect has a sufficient physical cause and a mental cause as well. In this paper, I argue that this compatibilist reply fails to resolve the causal exclusion problem.

Calculating and Believing: Ideological Norms in the Cradle of Utility Maximization

An individualist approach to political phenomena is not necessarily an economic approach. We can assume that beliefs and commitments as well as selfishness motivate individuals. Ideology provides a basis for individual choice for policy makers and for citizens and is as much a micro-foundation as narrow “self-interest.” Employing a “least-likely” case approach this paper shows that we can find legitimacy and norm-sensitive behavior in the cradle of utility maximization, the firm. In this paper I will lay out some puzzles found in the general areas of business, politics, and policy-making and show how the particular piece of behavior can be understood within the logic of ideological frameworks and the normative acceptability or legitimacy of actions. The purpose is more an “analytical narrative” than a systematic empirical investigation. It suggests the critical importance of examining the normative as well as the self-interest foundation of behavior. To that end, the empirical context of the discussion is provided by business social responsibility, by business participation in elections, by a snapshot of an ideologically driven political career, and by an antibusiness policy decision. The narrative moves from the generosity of business corporations, to foreign-owned corporations' political activity decisions in the host country, to Mrs. Thatcher and the median voter, and finally to the decision to abolish the slave trade.

Mentally disordered attackers and killers: Towards a taxonomy

Abstract Only a very small percentage of papers on homicide deal with multiple killers in spite of their intrinsic and theoretical interest for forensic clinicians. It is argued that prediction of future violent behaviour is one of the most important aspects of forensic psychiatry and psychology, particularly for mental health review tribunals (MHRTs) and for administrative officials. This article presents an analysis of interpersonal violence in terms of three broad interrelated concepts: ‘internal’ motivation, self-control and environment. Factors which predispose individuals to interact violently with their environment raise the probability of the occurrence of a particular piece of behaviour so that a range of precipitating factors will produce the behaviour. In other contrasting instances the precipitating or ‘trigger’ factors are pre-eminent in the understanding of the genesis of the behaviour. Attacks are dichotomized as premeditated and unpremeditated, and these two contrasting styles are describe...

Do Motives Matter?

Among moralists and social critics of several stripes, it is not enough that the right thing be done: they also insist that it be done, and be seen to be done, for the right reasons. They are anxious to know whether we are sending food to starving Africans out of genuinely altruistic concern, or merely to clear domestic commodity markets, for one particularly topical example. Or, for another example, critics of the Brandt Commission’s plea for increased foreign aid more generally say, in stinging rebuke: ‘Many of those who support the proposal... do so out of genuine humanitarian concern about... poverty. But it is doubtful whether this is the main concern of its authors, and it certainly is not their only concern. ... They are, instead, primarily concerned with the preservation of the existing world economic order.’What is common to all such cases is an attempt at motive differentiation. Any particular piece of behavior might have sprung from any of a number of different underlying motives; commentators (moralists, social critics) want to know which was the real motive. Here I shall show that this characteristic quest for motive differentiation is misguided. In most of the standard social situations, it makes no material difference to agents’ actions whether they act from one sort of motive or another. And in such circumstances, pressing the motivational issue will usually lead only to mischief, of both a pragmatic and a moral sort.

More on Mind-Body Problem and Indeterminacy of Translation

In a recent I argued that one could derive a contradiction by combining three of Quine's philosophical theses, namely (i) his behaviourist inference (BI) from the indeterminacy thesis-that there is, beyond a certain point, no objective basis for choosing between various manuals of translation, (2) his mind-body theory (QMB) and (3) his restriction of the underdetermination of physics to an epistemological or inductive one (QRUP). My procedure, which I shall not recapitulate in detail here, was to picture two psychophysicists who use different manuals of translation, who apply QMB in their practice, and who seek to explain a particular piece of behaviour each by the theory he has developed. My claim was that under a certain possible development BI would be violated if QRUP also held. In a reply2 to my paper Mr. B. G. Crabb argues that my conclusion that Quine's theses are jointly inconsistent is not established. His reason (if I have understood him correctly) is as follows. My argument relies critically on supposing that our psychophysicists proceed to their explanations on the basis of translation; they must (in my Gedankenexperiment) have translated their subjects' utterances when they established their correlations, and they must now translate the words of the subject whose behaviour they are currently explaining. But, Crabb replies, why are they committed to this dependence on translation? Why should they not, ignoring what is said by their subject, proceed directly to a physiological explanation of the behaviour in question by the ordinary methods of physiology? Why therefore should a translational indeterminacy be regarded as coming into conflict with QRUP, since translation need not enter at all into what the psychophysicists do? The difficulty with this objection is that it interprets my argument as claiming that we cannot combine BI and QRUP without inconsistency. But I did not claim that, and can see no basis whatever for thinking that it is true. The inconsistency, I claim, arises when we combine QMB, BI and QRUP. QMB is a theory of mind which identifies mental states with certain physiological correlates thereof. (For sundry qualifications see my earlier paper.) It prescribes a certain routine for determining such correlates. Now what of psychological explanation? The surrogate of psychological explanation must, on QMB, consist in adducing as explanatory of behaviour the physiological state correlative to the mental state which we would normally invoke to explain that behaviour. Thus, in my story, the two psychophysicists are applying QMB, each according to his lights, when they give their diverse explanations of the fact that

Memory and Representation

S OF COMMENTS A. by STANLEY MUNSAT I am in agreement with what Malcolm has said in criticism of the role of images or some such representation of the past in theories of memory. A slightly different perspective on the motivations behind the requirement for (something like) an image in memory is this-we recognize that the behavior (such as a nod of the head) by which one manifests his something contains nothing on the fact of it to connect it with the remembered item. By bringing in a memory image as the medium for the memory content and seeing the behavior as somehow issuing from the image this connection appears to be established. The crucial issue is not merely (as one might suppose from Malcolm's discussion) that the image theory is factually mistaken in large numbers of instances. Rather, in being forced to admit that the theory is factually mistaken we are then in a position to recognize that the image theory had all along only relocated the real problem. For what has a piece of behavior like nodding one's head or pointing got to do with the image one has in his head of the remembered item? Once that question is answered, we will find that we no longer need the image to connect the memory behavior with the remembered item. For the answer to that question will enable us to establish the connection directly. Then what does make e.g. nodding one's head a case of remembering that such and such happened? The answer (as we now recognize) is to be found in the situation or the context in which the behavior takes place, though that involves many different sorts of things. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.170 on Tue, 20 Sep 2016 05:10:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Affective Behaviour produced by Electrical Stimulation in the Forebrain and Brain Stem of the Cat

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the affective patterns produced by electrical stimulation of the forebrain and brain stem in the unanaesthetized, freely-moving cat, and also describes the structures underlying these reactions. The chapter considers experiments carried out in a neutral, unconditioned milieu that is, experiments to which behavioral criteria conform with natural conditions can be applied. It is hoped, thereby, to avoid the tendency to study “pieces of behavior” rather than a complete “natural” pattern when dealing with cerebral organization. The fight pattern is regularly obtained at brain stem levels, but is rarely produced from the forebrain. The flight reaction obtained from the midbrain appears to be less deliberately prepared than is the response evoked from the hypothalamus. The flight reaction elicited from the hypothalamus suggests premeditation. The cat, soon after onset of stimulation, looks about as if in search of an outlet, gazes fixedly at an escape route and within 1-2 sec jumps over the wall of the table, landing firmly on its feet. The pattern obtained from the forebrain and the brain stem varies somewhat according to the level stimulated.