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Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1992 10:27:30 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      Zentall's a mensch

[From Rick Marken (921214.1000)]

In the spirit of putting everything related to PCT on the net, I am taking
the liberty of posting my reply to Tom Zentall -- the ONE reviewer  (out
of six -- seven really, counting Harnad) who recommended acceptance of
my paper. Tom sent me a note this morning expressing his regret about
the rejection. Here's my reply:
----------
Tom

>Sorry to learn about the fate of your submission to Psycoloquy.  My feeling
>was that your submission involved just the type of provocative theory that
this
>journal was meant to disseminate.

How sweet of you! Thank you very much. As you know, I completely agree
with your suggestion -- I know that the ideas in the paper are provovcative.
I though it would be nice to discuss them in a public forum with people who
might be interested. Thus, I was quite disappointed with the rejection.

Luckily, I am not in a position where I must publish or perish. I was a
psychology professor at one time, tenured long ago; now I am working as
a human factors/systems engineer. But I am still very much interested in
fundemental issues in psychology -- I don't see how one can do human
factors type work without some useful conception of human nature -- ie.
a theory.

I don't understand why (most) psychologists don't want to discuss the issues
raised in my paper. I believe that the reviewers missed the point of the
paper, by the way. I was not proposing a theory of behavior, really. My
point was:

"If organisms are in a negative feedback situation with respect to the
environment (as described by simultaneous equations 1 and 2) then
their behavior will APPEAR to be s-r, s-r-rnf or cognitive (depending
on the circumstances under which it is observed) -- when, in fact,
it is NOT; control is neither s-r, s-r-rnf or cognitive behavior -- it
is controlled perceptual input."

This is what I wanted to discuss. Obviously it's a debatable proposal -- but
only
if people are willing to debate it. None of the reviewers spoke to this point
at all; the paper was rejected simply because the ideas were too simple
(though
not so simple that they were understood by the reviewers), not intelligently
developed (I don't know how to be more intelligent) and "old hat" (though I
have never seen these implications of control discussed by anyone other than
Powers (in one Psych Review paper in 1978) -- and I have never seen Powers'
ideas debated in any detail).

Anyway, I might respond to Harnad about this but my impression (based on
previous experience with attempts to publish in B&BS) is that Stevan has no
interest in seeing a public discussion of the implications of feedback control
for psychological science -- he figures psychology is WAY past that.

Thanks again for the note -- I'm still waiting for your reprints. And I also
encourage you again to join CSG-L -- apparently the only place where people
can discuss the implications of the nature of control for understanding
living systems.

Best

Rick
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