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Question Session 01

Week 01 Questions:

Philosophical Issues in Behavioural Science

[email protected]

philosophy is done by asking questions

Abiopa

Do habitual processes not still occur with the desire/intention of bringing about the same outcome as in the past?

outcomes:

press red -> electric shock -> pain experience

press green -> chocolate flake -> pleasure experience

stimulus--action associations:

buttons -> press red [becomes weaker]

buttons -> press green [becomes stronger]

You might desire to bring about the same outcome as in the past. I might desire, conversely, to bring about a different outcome (novelty seeking).

But it doesn’t matter what we desire when the process is habitual. All that matters is the strength of the stimulus-action associations.

preference can influence what is rewarding, and so which links are strengthened

During instrumental learning,

preferences can influence which experiences are pleasure and which pain,

and so which stimulus--action links are strengthened and weakened.

While acting,

habitual processes are entirely unaffected by your preferences.

habitual process

Action occurs in the presence of Stimulus.

Agent is rewarded [/punished]

Stimulus-Action Link is strengthened [/weakened] due to reward [/punishment]

Given Stimulus, will Action occur? It depends on the strength of the Stimulus-Action Link.

‘goal-directed’ process

Action leads to Outcome.

Belief in Action-Outcome link is strengthened.

Agent has a Desire for the Outcome

Will Action occur? It depends on the Belief in the Action-Outcome Link and Agent’s Desire.

Abiopa

Do habitual processes not still occur with the desire/intention of bringing about the same outcome as in the past?

but ...

You can intentionally exploit habitual processes in yourself.

Desiring to repeat the high from a daily exercise routine,

and using what she knows from studying animal learning,

Ayesha sets a novel and unique alarm sound,

exercises immediately on hearing this alarm,

and treats herself immediately after exercising.

(Better living through cognitive science.)

Of course, the more common scenario is that one person intentional exploits habitual processes in another person. (tiktok & whatever).

But you can do it to yourself.

Abiopa

Do habitual processes not still occur with the desire/intention of bringing about the same outcome as in the past?

Tiago - background

‘an action is goal-directed if it is mediated by the interaction of a representation of the causal relationship between the action and outcome and a representation of the current incentive value, or utility, of the outcome in a way that rationalizes the action as instrumental for attaining the goal’ Dickinson (2016, p. 177).

Tiago

How should we understand the term 'representation'?

Is it a theoretical term with a specific definition we should know,

or should we not think too much about it?

neither

If I understand correctly, we could explain what 'representation of the causal relationship between action and outcome' means by saying, "The causal relationship between action and outcome is represented by our belief that action X will entail outcome Y."

and something similar for representations of outcome utility (but referring to a desire)

but understanding what 'representation' means becomes trickier if we consider, for instance, the idea of motor representations. Thank you!

step back: what do we need to characterise a representation?

On a widely accepted view, representations involve subjects having attitudes toward contents. Possible attitudes include believing, wanting, intending and knowing. The content is what distinguishes one belief from all others, or one desire from all others. The content is also what determines whether a belief is true or false, and whether a desire is satisfied or unsatisfied.

There are three main tasks in specifying a form of representation. The first task is to identify its subject (a person, perhaps; but not necessarily).

The second task is to characterise some attitudes. This typically involves specifying their distinctive functional and normative roles.[^ex-brat-vell] [^ex-brat-vell]: For examples, see Bratman (1987) on intention or Velleman (2000, p. ][chapter 11) on belief.

The third task is to find a scheme for specifying the contents of mental states. This typically involves one or another kind of proposition, although some have suggested other abstract entities including map-like representations.[^see-maps] [^see-maps]: See Braddon-Mitchell & Jackson (1996, p. 163): `what is inside our heads should be thought of as more like maps than sentences.’

Might need additional ingredients like format later. But we should be careful to justify postulating any further ingredients.

Tiago represents the causal relationship between pressing the red button and getting an electric shock.

has a belief,

knows,

supposes,

guesses,

...

Tiago

How should we understand the term 'representation'?

Is it a theoretical term with a specific definition we should know,

or should we not think too much about it?

neither

and something similar for representations of outcome utility (but referring to a desire)

but understanding what 'representation' means becomes trickier if we consider, for instance, the idea of motor representations. Thank you!

So now we have a view why Tiago might say this.

Why does Tiago say this?

Motor represention is distinct from intention, belief, desire and the rest.

So we will have to characterise the attitude (and, eventually, the subject, which might be different in kind from the subject of an intention if it turns out that motor representations are not states of whole agents)

Tiago

How should we understand the term 'representation'?

Is it a theoretical term with a specific definition we should know,

or should we not think too much about it?

neither

and something similar for representations of outcome utility (but referring to a desire)

but understanding what 'representation' means becomes trickier if we consider, for instance, the idea of motor representations. Thank you!

So what I outlined so far, things look simple.

We cannot attempt to define it ...

So far we relied on belief as a paradigm case of representation. But should we do this?

first potential problem.

‘As a first pass, representations are

‘‘mediating states of an intelligent system that carry information’’

(Markman and Dietrich 2001, p. 471).

They have two important features:

(1) they are physically realized, and so have causal powers;

(2) they are intentional, in other words, they have meaning or representational content.’

(Egan, 2014, p. 116)

Is this true of beliefs?

‘There is significant controversy about what can legitimately count as a representation.’

(Egan, 2014, p. 117)

But why does Dickinson (and most scientists) talk about representation instead of sticking to belief, desire and the rest?

Pretty sure he doesn’t care whether beliefs are physically realised.

inferrential integration

a further problem

Here’s Ayesha and she’s about to act, which involves some kind of processes occurring in her imnd.

Ben want’s to predict Ayesha’s action, perhaps so he can coordinate his actions around hers. He is therefore having a think about what Ayesha might be up to.

Implicit in Ben’s thinking is a model of actions.

And along comes the philosopher and attempts to guess what is going on in Ben’s mind when he is thinking about Ayesha. The philosopher asks, in effect, What model of actions is implicit in Ben’s thinking?

And this, essentially, is the raw material for philosophical theories of actions.

Focus on Ben for a moment.

What mundane purposes does thinking about actions serve? Prediction and coordination; ethical (assigning responsibility, blame; living together); normative (he wants himself and others to live it out as much as to describe how things are; there may also be something about ‘understanding’ here). So it’s not all about accuracy; in fact, of these, only prediction and coordination even potentially requires that his model of actions is accurate.

Functions of Ben’s model of minds and actions:

ethical
legal
normative
predictive
Second, consider Ben’s concern with making predictions.
--- speed vs accuracy
Whenever you are making predictions about anything at all, you face a **trade-off between accuracy and speed**. Making more accurate predictions requires considering more information and integrating it in a more complex model of minds and actions. By contrast, making faster predictions requires narrowing the information you consider and using a less complex model of minds and actions. Since Ben often has to make predictions fast enough to actually coordinate his actions with Ayesha’s, and since making predictions consumes scarce cognitive resources, Ben is usually needs to trade accuracy for speed.
So Ben’s model of minds and actions is not built for accuracy.

So this is the model of minds and actions on which many philosophical theories are based ... they are cast as attempts to characterise this model.

two problems

If we rely on beliefs and desires as paradigm cases of representation, ...

... we may thereby be rejecting some widely accepted claims about what representations are; and

... we may be relying on an unspecified notion that is not optimal for explanation.

habitual process

Action occurs in the presence of Stimulus.

Agent is rewarded [/punished]

Stimulus-Action Link is strengthened [/weakened] due to reward [/punishment]

Given Stimulus, will Action occur? It depends on the strength of the Stimulus-Action Link.

‘goal-directed’ process

Action leads to Outcome.

Belief in Action-Outcome link is strengthened.

Agent has a Desire for the Outcome

Will Action occur? It depends on the Belief in the Action-Outcome Link and Agent’s Desire.

Implicit functional role for Dickinson’s representations (maybe we do not need to equate them with beliefs; and maybe we should not because that would imply that they are inferentially integrated with all beliefs)

Tiago

How should we understand the term 'representation'?

Is it a theoretical term with a specific definition we should know,

or should we not think too much about it?

neither

and something similar for representations of outcome utility (but referring to a desire)

but understanding what 'representation' means becomes trickier if we consider, for instance, the idea of motor representations. Thank you!

i don't know. But I do know that we need to specify subject, attitude and content when postulating representations. And, following Egan, I do think that we should be open to the possibility that explanations involving representations may eventually be replaced by deeper explanations that do not involve representations at all --- they may be a kind of placeholder.

‘What we normally think of as representational contents—contents defined on distal objects and properties appropriate to the cognitive domain (what I have called ‘cognitive’ contents)—are not in the theory; they are in the explanatory gloss that accompanies the theory, where they are used to show that the theory addresses the phenomena for which we sought an explanation. The gloss allows us to see ourselves as solving problems, exercising rational capacities, occasionally making mistakes, and so on. It characterizes the compu- tational process in ways congruent with our commonsense understanding of ourselves, ways that the theory itself eschews.’ (Egan, 2014, p. 131)

Jan