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∂MEM Patrick Suppes, IMSSS$$Comments on %2From Behaviorism to Neobehaviorism%1∞

Dear Pat:

	I enjoyed your paper %2From Behaviorism to Neobehaviorism%1,
and I have the following comments.

p.282.  I can't agree that the appropriate internal realization of
learning a new problem or classification is the addition of a subroutine
to a program.  If this were so, people would be inclined to speak
in programs.  I think it's closer to adding new sentences than to
adding new programs, but what changes correspond to learning something
is a deep problem as yet unsolved.

p. 283.  I agree that psychology is not reducible to physics, but because
the physical hardware will support almost any psychology.  Therefore,
it is irrelevant whether dissection of the brain will reveal the language
spoken.  If we stop a computer, then physical examination of its core
memory can reveal the programming language, but since the very same
memory could support a different programming language, the theory of
programming languages is still not reducible to electronics.  It seems
to me that there are two possible senses of "reducible".  The currently
uninteresting sense is whether the brain is a physical system whose
reactions follow from the laws of physics.  The second is the sense
mentioned above.  We could have the same psychology based on different
physics and a different psychology based on the same physics.

	Finally, I'm puzzled about how much doctrine is left in behaviorism when
it becomes neo-behaviorism.  For example, is it compatible with
doing metaphilosophy analogously to metamathematics?  The idea
is to consider a system that includes a person
automaton as a subautomaton of a world automaton.  We then study
what various philosopher programs in the person will learn about the
world as it depends on the program and the world.  This should
be an entirely technical subject.  Controversy would arise only
when one tried to map the technical results onto ourselves and
the world.

.reg