ragavpayne
05-04-2008, 06:56 AM
Pseudo Causal Conditioning
Analogy I:-
The Subject(s): a mother bear and her cubs
Her objective: To protect her cubs from the predators
The Obstacle(s): The cubs have not yet developed their natural ability to sense or sniff out predators from a distance and as a result, are very vulnerable when they're left on their own. There is no way a mother bear can communicate the concept of "predation" or how harmful it is. These concepts are generally learnt through small first hand experiences after their growth. But, till then, the cubs need protection.
The Solution (hypothetical): The mother bear can make the cubs causally associate running and hiding in the den from the predators to a stimuli of her own choice. She can use a stimuli such as shrieking, biting or just about any unique gesture that would get the attention of the cubs and then associate that stimuli to the hiding.
Inference: For the cubs, a direct cause and effect relationship between the mother's chosen stimuli (biting/shrieking/thumping etc) and running and hiding in the den is established. So, from the perspective of the cubs, the only cause for their running and hiding is the mother's unique gesture. The gesture is the fundamental cause for the cubs to do what they're conditioned to do. There is no why to that gesture in the minds of the cubs (assuming they have the faculty to ask why) i.e. they don't even understand or know that they're being predated and so, don't know the real cause for their actions.
Analogy II:-
The Subject(s): Financially unstable parents and their child
Their objective: To make the child study harder at school so that financial stability can be gained through his academic prowess.
The Obstacle(s): The child is too young and inexperienced to understand the need for financial stability. His sense of recognizing responsibilities hasn’t yet well developed to house the capacity to understand his own responsibilities. The child cannot instinctively feel anything particularly about the scores on his report card because the human brain cannot instinctively interpret little squiggles on sheets as having either positive or negative repercussions. He lacks the long term planning capacity that is required for such interpretation.
The Solution: To accomplish the parents’ objective of making the child a good performer at school, the child has to be made to understand the idea that poor scores lead to a very bad future for all of them. In short, poor scores must have a direct, negative causal repercussion in the child so that he would do everything to avoid it. The parents cannot try to communicate or reason with the child about the real negative repercussion (i.e. the family ending up in ruins financially) because the faculties of long term planning and sense of responsibilities usually develop in a child only during the late teens. Till then, a typical child cannot have an understanding or simulating of long term repercussions. So, the parents can create a pseudo negative repercussion that is both short term and can also be understood with ease by the child. This short term negative repercussion should be of such nature that the child will directly associate poor scores to negative repercussions. To acheive this, the parents can hit the child every time he scores poorly so that a cause and effect relationship is created between Poor scores and negative repercussions that ought to be avoided at all costs.
Inference: This is also Pseudo causal conditioning because, as seen from the child’s perspective, the only reason why he shouldn’t score poorly is to avoid the immediate short-term negative repercussion, (whatever that may be) and not the “real” long term repercussion.
To understand the reason why this type of association is called "Pseudo causal conditioning", one has to know what "causal relationship" is. Assuming your ignorance of it, I'll explain it here. A causal relationship is one that connects two successive events in space and time. The act of pushing a block is the causal stimuli of the block moving forward. The act of impacting a ball with an upward impulse is the causal stimuli of the ball moving upwards and so on. These causal relationships cannot be broken. If at all they're broken, it would mean that the laws of nature as we know it no longer work. Ordinary these causal relationships are embedded in our minds because we constantly see and experience these causes and effects occurring in succession and we haven’t seen it happen any other way. As time proceeds, these inherent causal relationships embedded in nature become very obvious to us.
So, getting to "Pseudo Causal Conditioning", the causal relationships in such conditioning are framed not on the laws of nature but on self-defined rules. The causal relationships established through this method aren't supported by the physical laws of nature i.e. the cubs CAN defy the rules of such conditioning by not running and hiding when the gesture is noticed whereas in real causal conditioning, the block can never ever do anything but move forward when it is pushed.
In other words, Pseudo Causal Conditioning “creates” a false causal relationship between two otherwise unrelated events/acts etc. And, I call this type of conditioning “Pseudo” because the causal relationships created by them are created and established inside the mind rather than on the realm of physical reality.
Cautionary note: Bears or any other animals may or may not be known to have such associations. I just used the simplicity of that hypothetical analogy to get the point through.
Analogy I:-
The Subject(s): a mother bear and her cubs
Her objective: To protect her cubs from the predators
The Obstacle(s): The cubs have not yet developed their natural ability to sense or sniff out predators from a distance and as a result, are very vulnerable when they're left on their own. There is no way a mother bear can communicate the concept of "predation" or how harmful it is. These concepts are generally learnt through small first hand experiences after their growth. But, till then, the cubs need protection.
The Solution (hypothetical): The mother bear can make the cubs causally associate running and hiding in the den from the predators to a stimuli of her own choice. She can use a stimuli such as shrieking, biting or just about any unique gesture that would get the attention of the cubs and then associate that stimuli to the hiding.
Inference: For the cubs, a direct cause and effect relationship between the mother's chosen stimuli (biting/shrieking/thumping etc) and running and hiding in the den is established. So, from the perspective of the cubs, the only cause for their running and hiding is the mother's unique gesture. The gesture is the fundamental cause for the cubs to do what they're conditioned to do. There is no why to that gesture in the minds of the cubs (assuming they have the faculty to ask why) i.e. they don't even understand or know that they're being predated and so, don't know the real cause for their actions.
Analogy II:-
The Subject(s): Financially unstable parents and their child
Their objective: To make the child study harder at school so that financial stability can be gained through his academic prowess.
The Obstacle(s): The child is too young and inexperienced to understand the need for financial stability. His sense of recognizing responsibilities hasn’t yet well developed to house the capacity to understand his own responsibilities. The child cannot instinctively feel anything particularly about the scores on his report card because the human brain cannot instinctively interpret little squiggles on sheets as having either positive or negative repercussions. He lacks the long term planning capacity that is required for such interpretation.
The Solution: To accomplish the parents’ objective of making the child a good performer at school, the child has to be made to understand the idea that poor scores lead to a very bad future for all of them. In short, poor scores must have a direct, negative causal repercussion in the child so that he would do everything to avoid it. The parents cannot try to communicate or reason with the child about the real negative repercussion (i.e. the family ending up in ruins financially) because the faculties of long term planning and sense of responsibilities usually develop in a child only during the late teens. Till then, a typical child cannot have an understanding or simulating of long term repercussions. So, the parents can create a pseudo negative repercussion that is both short term and can also be understood with ease by the child. This short term negative repercussion should be of such nature that the child will directly associate poor scores to negative repercussions. To acheive this, the parents can hit the child every time he scores poorly so that a cause and effect relationship is created between Poor scores and negative repercussions that ought to be avoided at all costs.
Inference: This is also Pseudo causal conditioning because, as seen from the child’s perspective, the only reason why he shouldn’t score poorly is to avoid the immediate short-term negative repercussion, (whatever that may be) and not the “real” long term repercussion.
To understand the reason why this type of association is called "Pseudo causal conditioning", one has to know what "causal relationship" is. Assuming your ignorance of it, I'll explain it here. A causal relationship is one that connects two successive events in space and time. The act of pushing a block is the causal stimuli of the block moving forward. The act of impacting a ball with an upward impulse is the causal stimuli of the ball moving upwards and so on. These causal relationships cannot be broken. If at all they're broken, it would mean that the laws of nature as we know it no longer work. Ordinary these causal relationships are embedded in our minds because we constantly see and experience these causes and effects occurring in succession and we haven’t seen it happen any other way. As time proceeds, these inherent causal relationships embedded in nature become very obvious to us.
So, getting to "Pseudo Causal Conditioning", the causal relationships in such conditioning are framed not on the laws of nature but on self-defined rules. The causal relationships established through this method aren't supported by the physical laws of nature i.e. the cubs CAN defy the rules of such conditioning by not running and hiding when the gesture is noticed whereas in real causal conditioning, the block can never ever do anything but move forward when it is pushed.
In other words, Pseudo Causal Conditioning “creates” a false causal relationship between two otherwise unrelated events/acts etc. And, I call this type of conditioning “Pseudo” because the causal relationships created by them are created and established inside the mind rather than on the realm of physical reality.
Cautionary note: Bears or any other animals may or may not be known to have such associations. I just used the simplicity of that hypothetical analogy to get the point through.