Cc: "evol psychol" 
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 204.127.202.64
From: "Jay R. Feierman" 
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:24:45 -0600
Subject: Re: [evol-psych] What is "behavior"? What is "actions"?


[snipped]

Is there something to be learned about why different disciplines want 
specific terms to be defined differently? The term "behavior" is a good 
example, since that has been the topic of this thread. Why do ethologists 
want the definition of behavior to be purely descriptive or phenomenological 
and the cognitive and evolutionary psychologists want to add other 
properties into the definition? What would change in cognitive or 
evolutionary psychology if behavior was just defined descriptively? Or, is 
this just a dominance issue with each field of study trying to get the other 
field of study to use its definition? Ethologists would not want function, 
evolution and development to be in the definition of behavior because they 
start with descriptively defined behavior and then try to figure out 
function, evolution and development. Perhaps the issue is the referent or 
nidus or the starting point around which the discipline is built?

[snipped]

Regards,
Jay R. Feierman