X-Envelope-to: CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
X-VMS-To: @CSG
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 12:21:08 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Language-learning manipulation

[From Bill Powers (920911.1200)]

Gary Cziko (920911) --

>So I packed up our stuff and carted the family off to France.  The
kids >wound up in a two-room country school in the Alps where nobody
spoke >English.   Talk about error and manipulation!

It wasn't purposeful manipulation, but an open-loop attempt to have an
effect. It also depended on your having greater physical resources
than your children, so they couldn't object. You made an arbitrary
change in their environments, but had no means of adjusting that
change until the result you wanted -- learning French -- matched your
reference level for it. If the children had been so miserable, or the
teachers so unsympathetic and xenophobic, that your children just
clammed up and gave up, you would have felt sorry that you used that
method. Perhaps you had experience that told you your bet was a good
one. But it was still an open-loop method, not control. Perhaps we
could call this the "sink or swim" method of manipulation.

This method is necessarily statistical and imprecise. It can't be used
reliably to produce a wanted effect, although sometimes it may work as
you wish.

In case you think I'm criticizing, I'm not. I think you showed great
respect for your children's autonomy, and considerable confidence in
their ability to reorganize. You presented them with a situation and
let them work out the solution. The only "control" involved was
getting them to France and enrolling them in the school (with all the
implied force in the background, such as truant officers). If they
accepted that as "just the way the world is," then you controlled
nothing that violated any of their higher goals. All the rest was
their doing; you only made it necessary for them to do it (swim) or
fail (sink). A judgement call.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Ray Allis (920909) --

I echo Rick Marken's thanks for the posts on behaviorism.

This seems to be an excellent example of what I call "trying to learn
the rules." This is what you have to do when you don't use generative
models. You observe, classify, and try to memorize what class of event
leads to what class of result. There is no explanation at all for why
any of these pairings should occur; they just do, and you remember
them. In most of the life sciences, this is called "research." When
Skinnerians see lower life-forms learning about their environments in
this way, they call it "supersitious behavior." The chicken asks not
why it has to walk in figure-eights to make food appear. That's just
nature's rule. Chickens don't make generative models either. Like
Skinnerians, they deal strictly with the surface appearances of
natural phenomena.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Chuck Tucker (920911) --

Your comments are on the money. Be patient. We are working our way
toward conclusions you will find acceptable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Best to all,

Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU