Andrew Fildes wrote:
> I disagree. :-)
>
Oh, goodie!
> To be contrary would be to have a particular disposition, a tendency
> to disagree with any particular suggestion or instruction.
And absent any particular suggestion or instruction, there is no
contrariness. No object, no action. We could have a nice existential
discussion about latent, as opposed to active, contrary behavior, but I
don't think that would fit in with your next topic. :-)
> There is a whole branch of philosophy (behaviourism) that posits that we are
> no more than dispostions generating behaviours - that we are disposed to act
> in particular ways in response to stimulii.
>
I personally hold behaviorism to be a tiny island of largely useless
truisms in a vast sea of realities in which it is at best irrelevant and
at worst, simply wrong. Well, put another way, it does little or nothing
that widens or elucidates my understanding of the human psyche or the
universe. The powers of reductionism used beyond their useful bounds.
> It no more requires an object than if we describe someone as being
> angry. Of course you can argue that there is always a potential
> object but that misses the point somewhat - it's claiming that there
> is a potential object of any behaviout type.
C'mon now, you are trying to have your cake and eat it too, something I
admire when one can get away with it. In behaviorism, at least as I
studied it so long ago, the individual psyche, or whatever they call it,
is a black box. To attribute personality characteristics to it is to
abandon the scientific, statistical model of behaviorism.
Stimulus/response is a model of.... But I suppose I am confusing the
psychological school of behaviorism with a philosophical school. That's
probably an empty bag too, but I withhold judgment, sort of, pending
further information.
> Disagreeable would certainly be in the same class as contrary - it really
> means the same thing but the agreed meaning has shifted.
>
Agreed, I put iit in there for fun exactly because of the way the
literal meaning and commonly used meaning have come to differ.
Moose
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