Addiction is a disease

[Jeff Corey]

Do they? Is it probabilistic?
Are they trained to press the bar?
Can we count anything outside of the bar press and record if they stand on their hind legs (rat) and if they scratch their ear?..

Pigeons are preferred in multiple response matching studies because they can readily be trained to peck different colored keys to get food and the keys can be back illuminated with stimuli, like colors, that rats don't discriminate.
Now you reinforce the bird by pecking on the red key, whatever its location, on a VI 20 sec schedule, whereby it gets a bit of grain on the average of every 20 seconds if it pecks there. On a green key, the grain is delivered on a VI 80 sec schedule. After a while, this dumb bird whose brain would fit comfortably inside your thumb matches to maximize reinforcement. She chooses to distribute 20% of her behavior to the VI80 schedule and 80% to the other. .
Of her own free will.

 

[Dancing David]

Pigeons are preferred in multiple response matching studies because they can readily be trained to peck different colored keys to get food and the keys can be back illuminated with stimuli, like colors, that rats don't discriminate.
Now you reinforce the bird by pecking on the red key, whatever its location, on a VI 20 sec schedule, whereby it gets a bit of grain on the average of every 20 seconds if it pecks there. On a green key, the grain is delivered on a VI 80 sec schedule. After a while, this dumb bird whose brain would fit comfortably inside your thumb matches to maximize reinforcement. She chooses to distribute 20% of her behavior to the VI80 schedule and 80% to the other. .
Of her own free will.

Thanks, I am aware of the phenomena, but that doesn't address critters who may be able to change their behavior in the face of stimuli. Yeah rats are color blind aren't they. I was involved in a thermoregulation studiy back in 1974-1975, unfortunately I was working with a luckless grad student. He killed one of the rats by testing it when it hadn't been bar trained. The rats associated him with the shock box because he forgot to wait five to fifteen minutes after placing them in the box to start the training trials. So he quit and I switched to another professor.

Funny thing, I did used to believe in free will, now as a result of the JREF I am an agnostic on the issue.

My point is that in CBT, there is a factor that a person can choose to desensitize and recondition them selves. I would assume, without evidence, that it is a factor associated with the large number of pathways in the brain and the interconnectedness. One area of the brain may be responding to the stimuli while other parts are responding to the response to the stimuli, and the 'lag time' allows for the illusion of free will. There is also the possibility that the 'higher' functions are responding to such a large variety of stimuli that there is a lot of wiggle room.


An alcohol has plenty of reinforcements for getting a beer when they see a beer commercial, but some can apparently choose to do otherwise. It helps to not have the beer in the house.

 

[SirPhilip]

Britney Spears: Chaotic

When you say "abstract" and "ephemeral", what are you saying, exactly?

Human behavior has a chaotic undercurrent. Predicting it is as easy and difficult as the weather. When clouds form and move, assumptions are rather simple, otherwise you take into account arising thermal conditions. Further analysis requires far more detailed assumptions, and it becomes less tractable. You can only reduce causes of a situation to arise to a certain point. So no, you can't really predict if Jane will be listening to The Ramones and what swear words she'll use on the highway a week prior, or how John's baseball game will pan out. It is a difficult concept to grasp how a nonlinear characteristic influences behavior. But absent of this, behavior of living systems would be entirely deterministic. You could argue that the prime motivation for behavior in all life is approaching ideal order except under chaotic conditions.

Regarding computers, there are some programs designed to make them perform "randomly" this is called fuzzy logic. You might be interested in the subject.

Apparent randomness isn't difficult to set into motion. It's used very successfully in fluid dynamics simulations. Interestingly, in theory, behavior could perhaps be "deterministic", but only quantum computers could really provide a glimpse.

I also agree with DD in that there are not "psychological causes" and "physiological causes" for depression. The first category does not exist, if the organism reacts the cause its physiological.

They share a relationship. If you upset a specific part of your physiological balance, your mood is constrained. Normally your mood fluctuations are half regulated by physiological fluctuations, the other half is situational cues. Their interaction is what results in behavior.

 

[SirPhilip]

One area of the brain may be responding to the stimuli while other parts are responding to the response to the stimuli, and the 'lag time' allows for the illusion of free will. There is also the possibility that the 'higher' functions are responding to such a large variety of stimuli that there is a lot of wiggle room.

Then of course, is the person recognizing this, and ironically, refuting the illusion of free will. "Free will" and "awareness" in this sense, are related.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Then of course, is the person recognizing this, and ironically, refuting the illusion of free will. "Free will" and "awareness" in this sense, are related.

Well, I just don't get that. DD's point, I believe, comes from studies which show the motor areas of the brain send signals to the muscles before people can report that they are "aware" that they made a "choice". They never recognize this.
In any case, "free will" and "awareness" don't seem to have any correlation. Possibly because the former is an illusion and the latter is private event.

 

[JJM 777]

Addiction is a natural response of the body to certain chemicals, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and drugs.

Becoming addicted to these is not sick. What may be sick is the practice of consuming risky amounts of these. The obvious cure for that sickness, would be for the society to better control the use of such substances.

Alcohol needs not be freely sold in unlimited amounts, it could be served in restaurants to relatively sober persons only. End of your sickness. (With your medical record, you would never get a license to work as a bartender though.)

 

[SirPhilip]

Well, I just don't get that. DD's point, I believe, comes from studies which show the motor areas of the brain send signals to the muscles before people can report that they are "aware" that they made a "choice". They never recognize this.

That's a reflex arc, an autonomic reaction, not a function of intelligence. Base motivations always primarily influence thought, and lastly, behavior.

In any case, "free will" and "awareness" don't seem to have any correlation. Possibly because the former is an illusion and the latter is private event.

Both are abstractions. Someone with a neurological deficit will be observed incapable of apprehending things in any coherent, enabling way. It's simply order and disorder. Actual free will would imply an apprehension of causation - at which point both conditions cease to exist, and you would have what could be termed an 'awareness', like a conscious hard drive. Isn't quasi relativistic rhetoric fun?

(I'm probably going to pay for it when David weighs in, and by weight I mean volume..)

 

[Dancing David]

Well, I just don't get that. DD's point, I believe, comes from studies which show the motor areas of the brain send signals to the muscles before people can report that they are "aware" that they made a "choice". They never recognize this.
In any case, "free will" and "awareness" don't seem to have any correlation. Possibly because the former is an illusion and the latter is private event.

That is one of the points I was making, as to the nature of the illusion of free will.

As stated before I think that I am not a strict behaviorist because I feel that internal behaviors can be stimuli and modify the response to external stimuli. (I think that is how I would want to phrase it, that might be methodological behaviorism) In that there are a large set of internal behaviors that can be modified as to the response to them, such as modifying the chain of behaviors involved in negative cognition.


There are a large set of potential stimuli that are internal and external and it would appear that the response to stimuli are mediated somewhat by the internal behaviors.

It could all be illusion in terms of free will.

 

[Jeff Corey]

That's a reflex arc, an autonomic reaction, not a function of intelligence. Base motivations always primarily influence thought, and lastly, behavior....

No. The studies DD was referring to do not involve reflexes at all. Besides, many reflexes involve skeletal responses not controlled by the autonomic N. S. Perhaps you meant "automatic reaction".

And DD, you seem to be implying that all response are controlled by some stimuli. That's Watsonian behaviorism that even the Methodological behaviorists abandoned long ago. Responses are controlled by their consequences, even private responses.

 

[Dancing David]

No. The studies DD was referring to do not involve reflexes at all. Besides, many reflexes involve skeletal responses not controlled by the autonomic N. S. Perhaps you meant "automatic reaction".

And DD, you seem to be implying that all response are controlled by some stimuli. That's Watsonian behaviorism that even the Methodological behaviorists abandoned long ago. Responses are controlled by their consequences, even private responses.

I was using inexact language. I suppose I could have said that verbal cognition can be an antecedent to responses, and that verbal cognition can be part of reward and avoidance cycles.

More inexactness on my part.

At my Alma Mater they never mentioned Watson, only Skinner, and all sorts of general stuff, especially neurobiology and neurochemistry. No labeling other than 'behaviorism'. Since then it has been cognitive behavioral and social modeling all the way.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Addiction is a natural response of the body to certain chemicals, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and drugs.

Becoming addicted to these is not sick. What may be sick is the practice of consuming risky amounts of these. The obvious cure for that sickness, would be for the society to better control the use of such substances.

Alcohol needs not be freely sold in unlimited amounts, it could be served in restaurants to relatively sober persons only. End of your sickness. (With your medical record, you would never get a license to work as a bartender though.)

The world according to JJM 777.

And the addiction is not an illness because? Lead and mercury in sufficient quantities evoke a natural response in the body as well. I would call those toxic responses sicknesses.

And I do believe alternative forms of prohibition would give the same result as the one we all know about from history and early gangster movies. Not to mention the implications of requiring bartenders to review patron's medical records.

 

[SirPhilip]

It could all be illusion in terms of free will.

Well that's just !@3$% great!

 

[Dancing David]

Well that's just !@3$% great!

I have stated that I believe in free will and have argued such in many a thread on the JREF.

However I came to realize that I could not prove is was not illusory. And being a sceptic I have to say that I believe in free will but it could be illusory.

I have many thoughts and some evidence that leads me to believe in free will.

The strongest of which is that I have lived without free will I have had two kinds of compulsions in my life when I had not started medical therapy. The first is your rather normal OCD, I would wash my hands a hundred or so times a day and I had a major contamination phobia. When I lost things I was compelled to look for them in strange places like sock drawers, I would occasionally have to check locks and things like that. Standard engage in the compulsion or suffer panic attack type stuff.

The second kind of compulsion was really weird and like a command impulse. I have stuck my hand in car doors when they were being shut and other weird things, I was almost like an automaton when it happened, very strange and always under extreme stress. Sort of like an intrusive thought but with an action instead of a thought.

So having had constrained free will I believe in free will, but as a result of participating in threads on the forum, I have realized it is a believe and not something I can prove.


And yes free will is !@3$% great!

 

[Jeff Corey]

Free Willy!

 

[calebprime]

So having had constrained free will I believe in free will...


And yes free will is !@3$% great!

This would be an excellent example of what Dennett calls a variety of free will worth having--a tangible difference between compulsion and normal control.

Free will makes sense in terms of contrasts between more or less freedom in real-life situations. (At least for people like me who don't really understand the philosophical arguments...)

and now, I'd like to post a picture of a slick willy, to show the tragic consequences of being addicted to risky sex with subordinates--but I don't know how to post pictures....

not this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton

 

[SirPhilip]

And yes free will is !@3$% great!

It sure is.