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  Date:    11-Dec-92 14:14
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Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
From: 0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM (Hortideas Publishing)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: CLOSED LOOP; mollusc of opportunity
Date: 16 Dec 92 13:16:00 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

From Greg Williams (921216)

I plan to put the papers by Tom & Bill and by Rick in the next CLOSED LOOP,
together with the second (concluding) part of the thread begun in the last
issue. Rick, please send the latest version of your paper via e-mail. Tom,
Bill, and Rick, I'll try to send galleys to you for final checking ca. first
week in January.

>Tom Bourbon (921215.0925  CST)

>If I had the skills and techniques
>to work at the single-cell level with Aplysia, the marine snail, I
>would drop everything else and begin a crash program, starting with
>behavioral studies to test whether the creature controls anything.
>After demonstrating the obvious, I would begin a systematic
>analysis of the control-system properties of the creature's
>exquisitely mapped nervous system -- anatomically exquisite, I do
>not trust most of the functional maps.  They were created in S-R,
>or I-O, research procedures.  If anyone out there is interested in
>a trip to Oslo, I believe I just handed you a ticket.

I don't think you need to do the neurophysiology yourself. What you need to do
is sort through the volumes (one big book, one small book, and many papers) on
APLYSIA neurophysiology and behavior studies, see what you can find relevant
to the creature-as-control-system (reinterpreting results in the light of
PCT), and then come up with concrete, detailed proposals regarding exactly
what crucial experiments are needed to be done by Kandel and the other
experienced workers in the field, given the (I predict) suggestive results
already in hand. Don't just claim that "they done it wrong" in vague
generalities. How, SPECIFICALLY, can they do better? Hand Kandel et al. the
ticket. (Actually, I think Kandel would get a Nobel any way.)

As ever,

Greg
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From: marken@aero.org (Richard Marken)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: Re: citations;social;Gabriel
Date: 16 Dec 1992 22:01:49 GMT
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aerospace.aero.org

I'm going out of town until next week but before I go I've
just got to make one quick comment on:

John Gabriel to Tom Bourbon (921216 11:54 CST)
	
>And Bill P's
>obervation that you can only act on what you perceive goes to the
>heart of matter. It is exactly why the light that Shannon sheds
>on reliable perception is important.

I think Plato predated Bill P. in this observation. Bill P.'s
important observation was that perception is one link in a
causal loop in which we are all locked -- a loop that obviates
Shannon's concerns about reliable transmission since, in living
systems, perception is not the "start" of communication (or the
"end", for that matter); it is both the start and the end at the
same time. The excitement about information theory in psychology
was based on PRECISELY the model of organisms that is disposed
of by PCT ; INPUT --- CHANNEL -- OUTPUT. Shannon is great for
ATT but not for PCT.

Regards

Rick
 
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1992 13:23:34 CST
From:         Thomas Baines <bainest@SMTPLINK.EID.ANL.GOV>
Subject:      GANGWARS

    RE: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN POWERS, CUNNINGHAM & GABRIEL

    I generally grazed through the traffic rather than rolling into each
    bail, because I am generally too tucked into the quagmire on my plate
    to do anything else.  This time, however, I feel compelled to respond
    to the issues raised by Bill Powers.

    I certainly don't understand all the math that John Gabriel uses to try
    and capture the essence of our innumerable offline conversations.  I do
    find the effort worth the risk of oversimplification simply because of
    the insights into observed phenomena that the exercise has given me.

    My interest in what the Gang of 3/5 is (are?) up to is very narrow.  I
    have no desire to try and solve any universal questions; although I
    have enough intellectual curiosity to appreciate the lure of doing so.
    My interest in PCT is merely to acquire another useful way of
    dissecting problems.  I think PCT can be used to organize one's
    thinking about human interaction, even if the specifications of the
    complete model are, as yet, unknown.  One must only make sure that
    there sufficient "tooth tests" to guard against placing absolute trust
    in incomplete understanding.

    I would never let whatever insight I might gain from applying PCT to
    the questions of field comand get in the way of better instincts and
    judgement.  I would, however, use whatever insight I could to help me
    get a firmer grasp on the size and shape of the particular struggle
    that I face.  The reason that I would rely on incomplete understanding
    and knowledge is quite simple - there is nothing better, and SOME
    insight may save the lives of my comrades and my enemy.

    I am one of those bastards that you call on when your national
    interests (as expressed by your President), or your corporate interests
    (as expressed by your Board), or your personal interests (as expressed
    by your complaint against your fellow) get threatened or abused.  As
    military officer, economist/consultant, or lawyer, I get to deal with
    the trash that others create.  I will use whatever paradigm, model,
    augury, or insight that helps me deal with that trash with the very
    least cost to all concerned.   One need only kill, or break a
    man's spirit and see the consequences, to know that total victory
    should be left only to those who think they ARE gods - not merely that
    they talk to God.

    You will continue to pull on my coat, Bill Powers, and remind me that
    my understanding is inexact and incomplete.  But you can't keep me
    from picking up and using whatever tools I find useful - even the one
    however crudely fashioned by you.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 15 Dec 1992 19:45:55 EST
From:         mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject: Re: continued neuro

[Martin Taylor 921215 19:30]
(Mark Olsen (cont) 921214)

>Hubel and Wiesel (sp?) found some pretty interesting (although incomplete)
> stufff about the organization of the occipital cortex and probably never even
> heard of PCT.  Do you want to claim that they are wronb because they have the
> wrong paradigm?  We know alot of visual processing occurs in occipital.

You've put your finger on one of the reasons why I decided in graduate school
and later never to take neurophysiologists at their word.  We knew (as
experimental psychologists) in 1959 about the need for spot detectors and
line detectors, and the like, because we got it from the requirements
imposed by psychophysical results.  We discussed it in our group discussions.
At that time neurophysiologists said there was no such thing in the brain,
so we said "OK, but it's a functional requirement."  A few years later
Hubel and Wiesel said "there are these funny specialized detectors in the
visual system--wonder what they are for" and got a Nobel prize for it.

This happens over and over in neurophysiology.  The psychologists needs a
function to explain something, the NP (complete?) says "No way," and a few
years later another NP says "Look at this neat thing--wonder what it does."
Think of linear correlators, for example (1970s. I think).  I can't think
of other specific instances at the moment, but I remember many occasions of
"Oh, so now they agree that the brain can do what we said it must but they
said it couldn't" over the last three decades.

I think the situation is the same as regards PCT and psychology or
neurophysiology.  If a PCT analysis suggests that some function is necessary
(such as the passive parallel monitoring and active quasi-serial control
structures), then I will believe it, and I will tend to accept it when
people say by other methods that they have found how such structures are
made at some other level of description.  I will not believe them when
they say that they know that these things can't be, or are not, done in
the brain.

It's nice to know what neurons CAN do, singly or in groups.  But I would
never trust a neurophysiologist to tell me what they DO do, and I would
not believe one who told me what they CANNOT do.

Martin
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:45:16 CST
From:         John Gabriel <gabriel@EID.ANL.GOV>
Subject:      Law and Order/Fratricide

[Gabriel 921215 05:29 CST]

Bill P. points out that among other things PCT could lead to better
understanding of reasons why people do/do not shoot at each other.

We have two quite different mechanisms in the two societies
chronicled by Rolf Peterson and the Altmans.

Among the wolves:-

Stop hassling you idiots. If you cut each other up, we'll none of us
be able to catch the moose.

Among the baboons:-

Eat your nice leaves junior, and don't sass the boss or the leopard
will get you.


And, uncomfortably close to home:-
In Los Angeles recently, as reported by LtC. William V. Wenger

As I (Wenger) watched in disbelief, a gang member in the car in front
of me, waiting to make a left turn, shot the occupants in the cars
on either side of him. I was unarmed, but quickly followed the shooters,
as did several police cars, until they were apprehended 2 blocks away.
I reported what I had witnessed to the police, and then drove to our
headquarters armory to supervise the mobilzation of my Army National
Guard battalion in Ingelwood, California.

The feedback mechanisms for Altman and Peterson's reports are quite
clear. The need for the pack to function successfully in hunting,
in order to eat, and predation by leopards on baboons, who have no
serious resource shortages in the way of food, but are the victims
of predation.

Any comments on exactly what feedback mechanisms were working and
what were not in Los Angeles??

                John (gabriel@athens.eid.anl.gov)
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Date:         Sat, 12 Dec 1992 20:06:28 -0700
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Harnad's reviews

[From Bill Powers (921212.2000)]

Rick Marken (921212) --

Incredible, ain't it? If you write a basic paper on PCT, they'll
say it's irrelevant to psychology. If you try to make it relevant
to psychology, they'll say it isn't basic. Looks like there's no
way to get there from here.

Those reviews you posted brought to my mind the whole dreary
stream of trivial reviews we have all seen over the years. This
really seems to be the best that established science can do, at
least in the journals we have seen (and that includes the major
ones, I think). The awful truth is that these scientists do not
want to learn anything new. They want their own scientific
endeavors and those of their colleagues to be validated. There's
no way to sneak PCT past the guardians of the gates, because they
all recognize that there is something strange about it, something
unfamiliar, and therefore something wrong. The whole system is
organized to protect itself against being upset.

It seems to me that we already have the forum where PCT is
understood and can be developed. Let's forget about the rest of
the scientific world and just do our modeling and talk about the
results here. People who are interested will stick around and
learn and contribute. People who aren't will go their own ways as
usual. Most of the people who subscribe to this List have been
here for over a year, most for almost two years. That says that
something of interest to them is going on. Maybe if we start
treating this list as a place to suggest and report on research,
and to trade methods and ideas for research, the list of
subscribers will become even larger. Maybe if we keep it up, most
of the people who are actually interested in exploring a new idea
will end up on this net, while the rest of the scientific world
reads the journals like comforting bedtime stories.

I think that psychology is old and tired, and ready to be
bypassed.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Best,


Bill P.
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The message that you sent

  To:      lanskylm @ CECIPOST
  Date:    11-Dec-92 14:48
  Subject: Re: "Models and their worlds..."

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Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 15 Dec 1992 01:43:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Theory

[From Dag Forssell (921214)]

Here is a slide from a presentation I am planning. I want to highlight
the common (I perceive) bias aganist theory.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

                   What does "THEORY" mean to you?


           APPROACH                   LEVEL OF        TYPE OF
           TO THEORY                  SCIENCE         KNOWLEDGE

Type 1     Hunch, expectation         Common sense /  What works
           based on experience.       Statistical     (sometimes)
           Intuitive / Formal         research

Type 2     Explanation,               Engineering     Why it works
           prediction, test.          science         (all the time)


Type 3     Logical reasoning.         Abstract        Abstraction
                                      science

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Continued to the right.

      METHOD OF            TIME TO          PREDICTION      RESULTS
      LEARNING             LEARN            CAPABILITY

..1   Trial & error /      Long             Poor            Spotty
      data collection


..2   Create theory,       Short            Excellent       Confident
      test theory


..3   Deduction            Short            N/A             N/A

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The idea here is to help the audience realize that when they say: "Don't
bore us with theory, show us what to do," what they object to is what
seems like useless abstractions. By contrast, a good engineering type
theory is very useful.

QUESTION:

Do you think that a mixed audience will relate to these "definitions" of
theory and level of science? Any suggestions on rewording, ever so small,
which will help will be appreciated.

Thanks, Dag
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 18 Dec 1992 14:11:53 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      discrete perceptions

[From: Bruce Nevin ()Fri 921218 13:50:21]

(Bill Powers (921217.0930) to John Gabriel ) --

Don't we get something like discrete states in the latch
mechanism for steps in events and sequences?  And indeed for
category perceptions and on up?

It seems to me that, as the strength of some category perception
grows, it becomes easier (more acceptable?) to fill in missing
category-attribute perceptions by imagination.  At some
threshold, or seeming threshold, where imagined perceptions are
integrated with real-time perceptions, it is as though the
exemplar of the category is perceived as fully or truly present,
whereas before there were only unsupported signs or symptoms that
fostered a belief, readiness, or expectation.

There is an analogy to the relation of continua to discreta in
language.  In language, pronunciations are continuous phenomena,
but speakers and hearers perceive words (morphemes) as (probably
event-level) sequences of discrete tokens, where the types are
sound contrasts established by social convention for their speech
community.  Children probably learn a limited stock of words
first, and then learn the conventional contrasts and the
type-token relation of sounds to contrasts in words, which in
turn enables learning and recognizing a richer stock of words.
Language probably evolved in its first stages by such a route.

>>3. The idea of the rate of information transmission down a
>>discrete channel, being the the upper bound of the number of
>>binary decisions a recipent can make in a second, and first put
>>forth by Claude Shannon in the two 1949 papers in BSTJ.
>
>But all real neural systems work with continuous, not discrete,
>variables. Neurons do not respond to incoming impulse streams by
>making "decisions" but by harboring continuously-variable
>chemical concentrations and potentials which in turn determine
>the frequency of outgoing impulses. The computations done by a
>neuron are analogue computations based on continuous internal
>electrochemical variables. Certainly information theory could be
>applied to these processes. But it doesn't help you model them.
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 13:11:31 CST
From:         Mark William Olson <mwog8061@UXA.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      neuroscien cont

I would do memory research just the same.  Just because we would describe it
 differtnly, does not mean that we would investigate it differently.  We would
 investigate differently if we were working at higher levels of analysis (such
 as social psych research ) but not at levels below.  For example, if you wanted
 to know about neurochemistry sorts of things during a task, you don't care
 whether percpetions or output is controlled--its just not relevant at that
 level.  If you want to know how people learn to play tennis, its very relevant.
Wouldn't you want to know whether the monkey could remember under which bowl the
 food was located?  I agree that faulty paradigms lead to faulty data but its
 not necessarily true here.  For another example, whether or not you are right
 about whehter God exists or not is not going to change whether your PCT
 research is valid.
Maybe I should ask if PCTers are evn intererestd in mapping brain functions.  If
 we are--like it or not, lesion data and brain scand is all we got.  Concering
 analyss of such data, I agree with what Tom said about how we cannot say area z
 is responsible for funciton x (I just wrote that in my neuropscyh final) and I
 agree that we should be asking whether the lesion related to input, refernce,
 etc, and I agree that PCT could help neurosciene--that's my point.  But I don't
 think we should shun present research--we would do it the same and interpreet
 it diffently.Mark
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Original_To:  BITNET%"csg-l@uiucvmd.bitnet"
Original_cc:  TBOURBON
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 11 Dec 1992 11:01:00 CDT
From:         Tom Bourbon <TBOURBON@UTMBEACH.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: "Models and their worlds..."

From: Tom Bourbon  (921211  09:22)

Cliff Joslyn  (921210 00:45:16 EST)
Re: "Models and theor worlds..."

* Is there an ftp site or LISTSERV file server site from which we
* could download various PCT articles, this (TB: Models and their
* worlds), the Intro article, etc.? If not, how could that come
* about? If I INDEX CSG-L, all I get is a listing of the log files.

There is not.  We only recently made the decision about letting
this paper out as a tech report, after a third rejection.  When
Greg Willliams finishes with it, there will be figures included --
plots of data from people and simulations.  I don't know of a way
to include those in files distributed via e-mail.  Is that
possible?

Best wishes,

Tom Bourbon                        e-mail:
MEG Laboratory                     TBOURBON@UTMBEACH.BITNET
1528 Postoffice Street             TBOURBON@BEACH.UTMB.EDU
Galveston, TX 77550                PHONE   (409) 763-6325
USA                                FAX     (409) 762-9961
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Sun, 20 Dec 1992 10:44:53 CST
From:         John Gabriel <gabriel@EID.ANL.GOV>
Subject:      Signing out for a while

[Gabriel to Cziko 921220 10:43CST]
Dear Gary
        Please unsubscribe me for a while. I'm not taking my toys to
play elsewhere permanently, but there is other work I MUST do. I'll
rejoin in Spring or Summer '93.

Best to All, Peace, Joy, and many more years of happy and thoughtful
purusit of Truth and Beauty.


        John
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