Pleasure and Joy

[genkaus]

Fine. I will refine my statement. The problem is that your criteria don't prove that something is actually experiencing. They only outline the particular behaviors which you are willing to assume indicate actual experience.

Except I'm not "willing to assume" anything - my knowledge here is based on the criteria you set out.

I know that I experience (a position held by you as well, with regards to yourself).
I know that some of my specific behavior is necessarily the result of my experience.
Therefore, I know that such behavior indicates actual experience.

No assumption necessary.

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Joking aside, though, Skinner was of the opinion that psychoanalysis was bullshit, and that people should be treated like black boxes: data in, behavior out. And the mechanisms for altering behavior (i.e. learning) were operant: an organism would be rewarded or punished for a behavior, and the number of trials, degree of punishment or reward, etc. could be analyzed to arrive at an effective system of training regardless of the underlying mechanism of the brain and/or the subjective mind. This completely disregards philosophical issues with mind, and gets right down to the science of making things (or people) do want you want them to. It's also very much the starting point for artificial neural networks, which are programmed to use an evolutionary system (random output combined with "punishment" or "reward") to guide a machine to do things it was not directly programmed to do.

That doesn't sound like my position at all.

In other words, Skinner is the start of a chain of ideas that will eventually arrive at the creation of the Cyberboy 2000.

Yeah, I don't think so. Skinner's basic premise - of using reward/punishment model - would work only if the entity is capable of subjective experience. I can kick my car when it sputters or I can take it to a car wash when it works fine - neither will affect its future 'behavior'.