Causation and complexity: old lessons, new crusades.
A body of experimental work performed by Israel Goldiamond and his colleagues over 30 years ago is used to help define the evidential problems raised for inferences concerning the causal efficacy of human thought. This work suggests that matches of public indicator responses of inferred private rules or states to experimenter score sheets may be considered only as weak evidence for causality. Further, the problems of inferring causality raised by Wittgenstein's skeptical challenge, and its implications for investigating the role of human thought in determining human behavior, are briefly described. A selectionist approach, which is currently being used by biobehavioral scientists to investigate the behavioral complexity which concerns Bandura (this issue) and others, is suggested as one way to study the role of private events in human behavior.
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Malcolm X College, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.
D003071:Cognition; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D009042:Motivation; D012649:Self Concept; D012919:Social Behavior; D013850:Thinking