Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« The Reverse Jihad | The Iran War and Obama »

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Science Pigeons and Spinoza

Posted by Charles Mudede on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:22 AM

Skinner's experiment on pigeons is famously used to explain the roots of human religious beliefs.

But another way of thinking about the superstitious pigeons can be made by thinking about Spinoza's wonderful cry: what can a body do? From Deleuze's Spinoza: Practical Philosophy:

The point of view of an ethics is: of what are you capable, what can you do? Hence a return to this sort of cry of Spinoza’s: what can a body do? We never know in advance what a body can do. We never know how we’re organized and how the modes of existence are enveloped in somebody.

Spinoza explains very well such and such a body, it is never whatever body, it is what you can do, you.

If you do not know all of the things a body can do, and you are certain of this ignorance because you discover new things about the body all the time, and all that you know and discover about the body is real, then what you don't know can only be real as well. This is the catch.

Comments (2) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

It must be a survival adaptation. If throwing a rock at an animal only provided food one out of thirty throws, it would make sense to keep trying what provided food even if only rarely. And in doing so one developes skill that increases the chances.

Posted by Vince on February 9, 2012 at 8:55 AM

@1 I'm sure finding patterns is absolutely a survival trait. We're great at finding rough correlations, just not so good at doing rigorous statistical analysis.

At least Skinner Boxes can be fun! I built an alcoholic version last summer (http://www.attoparsec.com/artifacts/skin…), will be taking it down for BarBot next month.

Posted by gfish