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Date:         Sat, 26 Dec 1992 12:37:50 MET
From:         Maler <maler@IMAG.FR>
Subject: Re: PCT Fanatics

[From Oded Maler (921226)]

Instead of entering into a biblical discussion I'll answer the
rest of Rick's original post about fanatism. Your main problem
is not being able to go up one (or several) levels above your
background as an ex-"scientific psychologist" and realize that
some people are simply asking different questions or have different
scientific goals than "building a predictive theory of human behavior".
So it's no use attacking this or that person/theory immediately
each time you detect the he/she/it has not realized what behavior
is, etc. People who are doing, say, mathematics of non-linear dynamics
are interested in general properties of some systems obeying certain
rules. Period. Although some others may try to apply this math to
psychology by using the wrong (i.e., non-PCT) model of behavior, it
does not mean that some fundamental truths about such systems are
not relevant and will not be needed when more complex PCT models will
be built. The same is true with info theory, which, if I understand
Martin's intentions, has implications to every situation where
information passes along a complex network. I think he is trying to
answer the question "what in the structure of the world enables
a system organized according to HPCT architecture, survive".
If we take your favorite mathematical formalism, linear algebra,
does the fact that arithmetical operations are also used in analyzing
behaviorist models, make them uselss in modeling?

The same goes with your outrage toward roboticist until you
realized that they have other (orthogonal..) goals, namely to
build toys and not to analyze existing living systems. The same
goes with Braitenberg, whose main occupation is experimental
neurobiology and his little "vehicles" book was just written for
fun and speculation (and yet it has some interesting ideas,
including the imagination-loop idea used in planning) and not
as a serious suggestion of an all-embracing theory of behavior.

Your observation on the trendiness of science are correct, and I also
buy your observations on the non-foundedness of most of Psychology as
a science (thank god I resisted the temptation to quit my CS B.A.
studies and move to psychology, now I know that I did not miss
anything), but please remember that there are other questions and
goals. The world (at least not all of it) does not turn around
the PCT-non-PCT controversery in the explanation of human behavior.
This hard fact do not under-determine the *objective* beauty and power
of PCT, nor its importance as a stage in the development of human
understanding. But not realizing this, and classifying all the rest
of the world as "us" and "them" might lead an untrained observer
to perceive a peace-loving other-cheek-turner as a fanatic.

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

On another topic, I'm reading Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife
for a hat" and although apparently the author does not know that ...,
I think it is really worth reading. It might be intersting to try to
give PCT crude explanations of the phenomenon he describes.

--Oded


--
===============================================================
Oded Maler, LGI-IMAG (Campus), B.P. 53x, 38041 Grenoble, France
Phone:  76635846  Fax: 76446675   e-mail: maler@vercors.imag.fr
===============================================================
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