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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for January 23, 2002; #107
The new location at the Yankee Clipper Library
is more conducive for on-site after meeting social time, so we
have begun doing the refreshment sign-up again. The secretary
brought in this meeting's snacks and beverages and provided a
sign-up sheet for volunteers for up-coming meetings. The next
two meetings (Feb. 13 & Feb. 27) are covered at this time.
Contact Charles: calart@hotmail.com if you would like to volunteer
for this between meeting sign-up times.
Other
volunteer opportunities are as follows: -We need someone to make
a sandwich board style sign for our group with our logo and name
on it. (See Jeff S.) - We could use someone to act as our coordinator
for social events. Also, suggestions for purely social gatherings
and activities are always welcome. (See Jeff S.) - Contact Don
H. or Jeff S. if you are able to coordinate this year's summer
picnic. - If you can volunteer to present a topic for future meetings
or can provide contacts for others to speak to our group, let
Jeff know.
Our
website has been updated and revamped with a message board, volunteer
opportunities, bookstore, group member recommended reading list,
place to make a monetary contribution and more links. Take a look:
www.freethoughtassociation.org.
Information
and copies of sheets advertising the AiG (Answers in Genesis)
Family Conference for January 27 & 28 were provided. Creationist/
Bible-literalist author and speaker Ken Ham is the presenter for
the two-day conference aimed at ages 11- adult with such "culture
wars" topics as "A Literal Genesis- Key to Reclaiming
America!", "The Bible Explains Dinosaurs" and "How
to Evangelize a Secular Culture." Ham is also gracious enough
to explain "The Origin of Races" and how the "Six
Creation Days" is "Foundational to Biblical Authority."
The location for this Fundamentalist spree is the Calvary Baptist
Church in Grand Rapids.
The
membership directory is available at meetings and Dennis M's survey
of our group is also available, showing where respondents fall
in various survey questions and how best to shape the group in
the future.
New
to our list of upcoming topics is one on May 8th to be presented
by Buddhist and group member, Steve Anderson, regarding meditation
for secular people. The title is subject to change but is listed
currently as "An Overview of Meditation."
Our
next meeting will be on February 13th. "The Secular Basis
for Human Rights." It will be presented by group member,
Bill Merriman at 7PM.
Rob
A., our treasurer, had provided the 4th quarter financial report
that Jeff gave. Expenditures and revenue were listed. Donations
and volunteer activity are both welcome, especially if we wish
to be able to procure special guest speakers while paying for
meeting space rent and other necessary expenses.
Those
who wished to go out, rather than remain in the social area of
our meeting space, adjourned to Kurley's Bar on Michigan Street,
after the meeting.
It
was announced that on January 25 the Van Andel Public Museum was
showing the original film "Inherit the Wind" (with Spencer
Tracy) that dealt with the law against the teaching of evolution
in schools and gave a dramatized rendition of famed trial lawyer
Clarence Darrow in his defense of Scopes in what has been referred
to as the "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.
Long-time
member, Tim V., will do a presentation for our group, including
sleight of hand, in the summer. The title is "Skepticism
& Wishful Thinking."
Biology
professor, Carl B., reminded us that February 12 is the birthday
of Charles Darwin.
Our
topic for this meeting was "The Human Mind As a Prism"
and was presented by FA member, and private practice psychologist
Robert W. Collins, PhD. Dr. Collins circulated books of relevance
but not directly drawn upon for his presentation. Among these
were Descartes Error- Emotion, Reason & the Human Brain, published
by Quill; The Feeling of What Happens- Body & Emotion in the
Making of Consciousness by Antonio Damasio, published by Harcourt;
and Halo in the Sky- Observations on Anality & Defense by
Leonard Shengold, M.D., from the Guilford Press. This last offering,
being representative of a less rigorous and rational evaluation
of the human psychological condition. The Damasio book has to
do with self consciousness, how we know what we know and how brain
mechanisms mediate our sense of time, self and history. Another
book mentioned was Mind Behind the Brain.
Dr.
Collins also presented a series of visual aids to accompany his
talk. These were arranged to show the more nebulous beliefs "in
the air" (see book reference Halo in the Sky) and unsubstantiated
theory, in the Creationist use of the term. Even well established
theory, such as that of evolution, can be misused in ways not
anchored in reality, when utility and explanatory power is lacking.
More grounded and well- founded concepts were placed along the
base and flowed to reality directly. He presented B.F. Skinner
as a chief proponent of "radical behaviorism" in that
he had no interest in emotions or other mental or theoretical
constructs. For him, description was explanation. It was unimportant
and unnecessary to go to collateral events. The organism acts
on the environment; the environment acts back upon the organism;
the response increases, reinforcing the stimulus. In this presentation,
Skinner was depicted as Newtonian, harkening back to an earlier
topic Collins presented that contrasted the disparate approaches
of Goethe and Isaac Newton- this also with a "prism"
theme. The prism breaks up white light into its component colors,
as Newton showed and Goethe challenged. It was a simple and effective
apparatus, like the ones Skinner used in his experiments on the
behaviors of animals studied, employing cumulative counters and
graphed bar presses to gauge stimulus/response and reward reinforcers.
Skinner disliked what he thought of as essentially "physiologizing
the prism" by dealing with biochemical imbalances, etc.,
as factors in the behavioral outcomes measured. In this way of
looking at behavior, those who went to other factors and constructs
were seeing the prism as contaminating the light somehow-as Goethe
had in the Newton experiments with the light spectrum.
We discussed social and activity reinforcers. The former includes
nods, smiles, pats on the back and praise that help to create
the positive effects we wish to have happen. The latter include
such activities as going to movies, sporting events and plays,
creating art, etc. We also discussed "extinction bursting"
where there is a rapid burst before quitting when access to the
reward is impeded. This was noted in Skinner's bar-pressing rats
and can be seen with a person at a non-obliging soda machine.
Dr.
Collins provided several examples of problems and approaches to
them, showing how the Skinnerian way was to exclude, as chaff,
the aspects in the subject with the problem that go to how he
feels or his self concept. These he saw as speculative, misleading
and non-explanatory for behavioral changes seen. His "grounded"
approach would go directly to the social approval, success, or
other such factors in affecting change. He believed that one has
only what one can see and measure directly to go on. Collins,
in this vein, went onto talking about tautologies and "empty
explanations" that pull up any explanation that seems to
fit to explain a given behavior. We looked at the Freudian and
Jungian approaches. In an example Collins gave, using the father
of psychoanalysis' approach, a criminal's behavior might be explained
by his having an insufficient Super Ego, whereas Jung might speculate
on archetypes as explanatory mechanisms.
Dr.
Collins posed the question of how we break from this when dealing
with things we cannot see? An example of this being processes
at the atomic level. He showed how good theory unites direct observation
with unseen, inferred actions and reactions, by using examples
in chemistry. A good theory in this branch of science will involve
antecedent events, producing a repeatable and predictable result
that can be directly observed along with atomic activity, electron
exchanges and other processes that cannot be directly seen.
In
examples of the radical behaviorist approach, Collins showed how
Skinner would not even observe the rats during lever presses-but
simply counted the presses. In this way he missed out on other
behaviors that would emerge…these he would feel would go
too much to the state of mind of the subject.
Dr. Collins then took us into an exploration of how the environment,
including the test set up itself could effect not only the outcome
of the trials but actually the biochemistry and neurology of the
test subject. He gave the famous example of the cats in experiments
done in the 60's where one group was exposed only to vertical
visual elements and the other to horizontal ones. The brain mapped
for these visual/perceptual conditions with the result of those
exposed to horizontal stripes being able to navigate the world
of strata or levels but not longitudinal structures, while the
others had the opposite response; being able to move effectively
around poles, table legs, etc. but not effectively perceive changes
of height arranged in bands, such as jumping correctly on a couch
seat. Electrodes placed in the brains showed that neurons responsible
for processing certain specific visual cues were not firing for
those elements the cats were not exposed to, visually. Other tests
and scans of humans who had strokes, auto accidents or other brain
trauma could uncover the affected areas of the brain and link
these up with external deficient functioning and behavior.
In
the "good guy/ bad guy" test, Dr. Collins explained
how a subject with extreme memory deficits had been tested for
responses to three different types of interaction. One interacted
in an extremely pleasant, rewarding ("good guy") manner.
Another interacted in an emotionally neutral way and the third
was brusque, negative ("bad guy") and gave the subject
tedious, boring tasks to do. The man could produce no conscious
recollections of anyone even with a brief interval of time between
meeting and interacting with someone and cessation of the interaction.
Nonetheless, when the subject was shown photos of people in the
experiment and asked who he would go to for help or which person
he would regard as a friend- he chose the one in the "good
guy" role, overwhelmingly. The "neutral" resulted
in selection no greater than chance, whereas the "bad guy"
was almost never chosen. The subject even had an unconscious emotional
reaction manifested in his physical responses: flinching when
encountering the "bad guy", for instance, even though
the person was externally attractive and his memory was severely
impaired. A lot of conditioning can apparently occur at low levels,
resonating to other ones. The brain clearly operates on many levels
and extracts out specific aspects. In this and other ways Dr.
Collins discussed, the human mind is like a prism.
In
responses to a member's question regarding the influence of variables
on a given outcome, Dr. Collins talked about how Skinner would
"follow his nose" to where the data led him and eschewed
statistics, feeling this obfuscated the data.
Another
person mentioned the role of the "trickster"-the Uri
Gellers of the world playing upon typical responses to phenomena
not based on reality but upon the breakdown of critical perceptual
evaluation.
Different
scenarios were given of business and domestic choices made and
how they related to the external cues given; how much was based
on an emotional response and how much upon explicit information.
What role do the "intangibles" play in our choices that
we feel are based on a rational approach? How much of "intuition"
is based upon these intangible cues? In this regard we discussed
the limitations of a purely rational individual in life and business.
We
discussed how people with various cognitive disabilities seem
to access undamaged parts of their brain to respond to stimuli.
One example was of people who cannot make themselves smile when
asked to do this but will involuntarily smile over a joke.
We
also talked about how religious faith is internalized at a lower,
less conscious level, with conditioning operating upon the individual,
resulting in strongly held beliefs that are not typically able
to be explained rationally.
Secretary:
Charles LaRue.
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