Dear Cees-Jan
as you may see by Jim Blaut's response some people's reactions are
obviously completely determined by specific stimuli (at least that's the
way they want to have their own behavior explained). That's o.k. However, I
think that I have to prevent from some misunderstandings regarding my
former statements:
- I do neither equate the study of human behavior or location theory or
psychology with behaviorism, nor do I take an antogonistic stance to all of
science. Rather, I regard behaviorism as particular stream within science,
which tried to explain human and animal activities according to modes of
explanation which were developed within classical natural science, an which
were and are still very successfull/usefull for large realms of physics,
chemistry and biology.
- What I wanted to point out was, that today within philosophy of science
many arguments speak against the attempt to explain human behavior
according to a model of a deterministic and law-like relation of causes or
stimuli of some human environment which by necessity produce the effect of
certain human behavior.
- I did not say explicitly that my short argument just sketches two basic
ideal-types of modes of explanation. There are many variations or derivates
of them.
- Jim Blaut recognizes correctly, that the notion of action implies
something like a "Neo-Kantian" distinction of "Geist vs. Natur" as he put
it. I would rather speak of a Quasi-Cartesian distinction of mind and
matter. It is not really cartesian, because it is not regarded as an
ontological distinction. There are not two separate worlds ("res cogitans"
and "res extensa"), but two differently organized realms within the same
world. We, as observing agencies, we usually cannot (for a variety of
reasons) reduce mind to matter (as in principle the behaviorists would like
to do it) nor matter to mind. Rather, we face two (or more!) realms with
highly but not completely autonomous organization and dynamics, for which
we use different terminologies and different modes of explanation.
Well, that' how I see it, and that's as simple as I can express it. Good
luck to find out yourself what is "uninformed", "nonsense", "not true",
"just not happening" or an "extreme subjectivism/relativism/solipsism"!
Regards
Wolfgang
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Dr. Wolfgang Zierhofer
Imfeldstr. 4
CH - 5430 Wettingen
Switzerland
Tel. +41 (0) 56 426 00 75
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