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Date:         Tue, 18 Aug 1992 12:08:32 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      interactionism
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              17 Aug 1992 22:33:59 -0700
              <92Aug17.223730pdt.11689@alpha.xerox.com>

(penni sibun 920818.1200)

i'll reiterate two things up front:

1)  i'm not defending cognitivism; interactionism isn't cognitivism
(or behaviorism!).

2)  i'm quite willing to believe that as far as a technology for
building things goes, pct might be the best candidate; i do like the
feel of the model in a lot of respects.

   [From Bill Powers (920817.2100)]

   My question is this: would you explain, in terms of cog. sci,
   interactionism, or any other approach HOW a driver keeps the "left wheels
   near, or quite possibly over, the center line (if it is visible)"? By this,
   I mean just explain how the intention that this result should happen gets
   turned into the actual happening.

no i can't explain how; i couldn't build or design something to do it.
i can say that i don't think it's necessarily the right question.  in
other words, if we could account for all the things that i've
mentioned (customary ways of driving, road construction, etc.), then
maybe we don't even need to posit an *intention* to keep on the road.
maybe, given everything else, keeping on the road is just the easiest
thing to do.  (i'm not arguing that organisms always do the easiest
thing.)  that's what interactionist approaches try to get at:  an
organism doesn't have to posit its goals _de novo_ and figure out how
the satisfy them.  there's already a lot of stuff around that
facilitate doing what needs to get done.  as agre puts it, we ``lean
on the world'':  our roads and cars are culture are designed to make
driving down the road a plausibly easy thing to do.

   [Avery Andrews 920818:1543]

   I guess I don't (yet) see the point of not drawing a line between the
   inside & outside of critters.  [...]
   the food-patches, barriers, etc. on the outside.  I take Beer's point not
   to be that there is no inside-outside distinction, but that the
   explanations for behavioral patterns (at the `molar' level, if I
   remember my psych. jargon corrrectly) are often to be find in neither
   place exclusively.

i agree.  the rhetorical point of saying that there aren't any
``real'' lines is to make us think when we draw them, and be open to
the possibility that it might be sensible to draw them in a different
place for a diff explanation or a diff model.

   [Martin Taylor 920818 11:50]
   (Penn[i] Sibun 920817)

   >  there's just tons of literature on
   >perception that suggest that perc. is a *lot* of work; in fact it
   >involves action--perhaps to the degree that p. and a. are inseparable.
   >(``active vision'' is a current buzzphrase.)

   This was cast as a criticism of PCT, but in fact it seems to be a reasonable
   description of how PCT says perception works.  An ECS that is trying to
   achieve a percept can go only by its error signal.

maybe someone can explain this to me.  when you say ``signal'' or
``variable'' or ``percept'', it has connotations to me of a unified
thing, like a tone, or a light intensity.  but when i look at the
road, i am not perceiving something like a tone.  if you can explain
how all the stuff my eyes take in can be a single unified thing, maybe
i won't find it so oversimplified.

cheers.

				--penni
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