BS Attempt at Neuroscience

ARE YOU READY FOR ME STEALING STUFF FROM STUFF I'VE WRITTEN ELSEWHERE?

Anyways, this will hopefully fit into my next post...

I was into behaviorism for a long time, and I would use it quite often for self-motivational schemes (get myself to do exercises or read or etc.). But then I realized the hard way about the behaviorist regression problem (if X reinforces Y, and you use X to do Y, then problem is the same: you now have to reinforce X instead of Y (or if it naturally reinforcing, have some other scheme Z to keep X in check, and then Z has to be properly reinforced)). I realized it really wasn't working, although I might have had short term successes, it was no different than the yoyoing short term successes I had before implementing ridiculous behaviorist schemes.

So then I got off my high horse thinking the cognitive revolution was a bunch of bs and that Skinner was a God and started reading Chomsky's critique of Verbal Behavior, finally understood why the cognitive revolution took place and why all this fuzzy therapeutic nonsense is actually beneficial because...

The key idea I form around all of this is the triune model of the brain. To some extent, I already alluded to this in a previous long post. And I'll be brief because I know you're all a pretty smart crowd here, so this is more for my own benefit but...you have the brain stem-cerebellum which regulates hormones and base instincts/pleasures like eating and sex and what-not. The limbic system is the next layer on top of this, and for my purposes of thought here, regulates emotions, and reinforcement schedules, and basic learning and what-not. The neocortex is on top of that and controls our rational thought and interpretation of events and language and what-not.

The way I think of it now, is that the Behaviorist model hooks up with the brain-stem/limbic system. And the reason it can't explain where certain other reinforcement comes from--or the inability of it to explain cognitive reframing (a.k.a. "being positive")--is in part what I described of part of the problem with the regression problem above.

Therefore, there's actually something to be said about the importance of interpretation in motivating one self and all these 'fuzzy' sort of concepts (which is why I was so apprehensive to them, and I'll get back to this IN MORE DETAIL IN LATER POSTS (aside from what I've already said in that old post)).