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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 21:43:29 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Misunderstandings & miscellany
X-To:         CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu

[From Bill Powers (920826.2000)]

Spent a fine morning at Hovenweep ("Deserted Place" in Ute) National
Monument just across the border into Utah. Variation on Chaco Canyon
construction, but still the same idea: pile up big and little rocks
with adobe mud between them. It struck me that having a Plan for
stacking up rocks would have been futile when the Anasazi builders put
up one of those round, square, or D-shaped towers that abound at
Hovenweep. How can you make a Plan of Action when you don't know
exactly how one stone is going to fit on another, or how many thin
stones you'll need to make the next course level? The only Plan you
can have is for how the thing is supposed to look when it's done, and
they clearly had that. When I look at those T-shaped doors, the little
windows between rooms, the slanted peepholes, the straight corners on
some buildings and nicely rounded walls on others, I get the sense of
seeing into minds nine centuries dead. They have left their reference
images behind for us to see, in stone.
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Avery Andrews (920825) --

Avery, you are becoming the voice of reason on this net. Keep it up.
You will get us back on track.

I have received your C program. It is easy to read and understand,
which to me is good programming. I'll try it tomorrow -- no reason why
it shouldn't work. Only a few very small changes ought to make it work
even better. Back to you later with some ideas about how to tie Astro
to language.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Penni Sibun (previous posts) --

From all the comments by others, I suspect that I misunderstood your
last post in most of the possible ways. My apologies. As Avery said,
we are ALL arguing against somebody else's point of view without
really understanding it. You keep your temper remarkably well, which
should be a lesson to all of us.

Just to clear the air, I interpreted your rhetorical questions as if
they were addressed to PCTers, with the "why" part a (misplaced)
criticism of PCT and the "when" part your suggested remedy. Now I
realize that this was a quote and not your words at all, and that the
target was the old-fashioned AI weenies. So we really have a three-way
collision going on here (4 counting interactionists, if I understand
correctly). It will help if we can keep straight what aspect of whose
ideas is being discussed, and why. I'm an old, old, man, Penni, so you
have to forgive me (heh, heh).

With Avery's explanations, I can certainly go along with the idea of
looking for the minimum necessary machinery. My philosophy of modeling
exactly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Hank Folson (920826) --

Very nice elaboration on the riding-the-bicycle thread.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Greg Williams (920826) --

There's one problem with the "self-consistent" behaviorist scheme that
you didn't mention: the reference signal. When a behaviorist trains a
rat to do something, what the rat is to do is already known to the
experimenter. As I've said before, a behaviorist who wants to
demonstrate the reality of stimulus control of behavior must state
BEFORE the demonstration what behavior is going to be brought about.
In other words, the experimenter must describe what will be perceived
when the process has finished.

Skinner himself discussed shaping in those terms. He said that the
experimenter should simply keep in mind the final pattern that is to
be performed by the animal, and reinforce any little move that looks
like a step in the right direction. He emphasized that there's no
standard procedure here; he said in so many words that the
experimenter must be prepared to improvise. So he was describing the
behavior of a control system, but trying to explain it without using
any CT concepts -- avoiding particularly any mention of intention or
purpose. Without using those concepts, of course, he would have been
unable to explain the actions of the experimenter.

When Skinner spoke about an experimenter controlling an animal's
behavior, his language always contained some way of saying that the
experimenter desired, specified, or intended that a certain behavior
come into being. In talking about the environment controlling
behavior, of course, he did not use such terms. He didn't say that the
environment had in mind a particular behavior of the organism, and
improvised rules and happenings that reinforced any little move toward
that behavior. In speaking of "organisms" (meaning non-experimenters),
he also had to avoid anything sounding like a purpose, such as
knowledge in advance of the outcome or a desire for a particular
outcome. Only the experimenter was allowed to behave in a purposive
way, knowing what was to happen and doing whatever was required to
make it happen. Therefore he attributed true control only to
behavioristic experimenters, and not to subjects or to environments.

When he use the term "control" with respect to non-scientific
organisms or environments, he did not mean goal-directed error-
correcting actions like those the experimenter used. He meant
"influence" or "determine" or "cause" -- purposeless cause and
purposeless effect. In that context, "control" was a code-word, a
euphemism. He was doing as he often did: he used a common word that to
most people implies intention or purpose, but with the understanding
that only his meaning was allowed. Something like the way certain
politicians are now talking about "family values."

So I dispute use of the term "self-consistent" in reference to
behavioristic notions of control.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Martin Taylor (920826.1100) --

RE: dynamics. I was interpreting Penni's reference to putting a study
of dynamics first as meaning that we should observe only the dynamics
of interactions as an external observer would see them. I think Rick
may have put the same interpretion on this passage. In fact, Penni is
right. Before we propose any model, we should first observe the
behaving system in its environment, and note the dynamics of the
interaction (by which I don't mean "psychodynamics," which involves
heavy layers of theory, but simply the temporal aspects of the
physical organism-environment relationship). This, I still maintain,
amounts to laying out the phenomenon that needs an explanation.

Then, of course, a model is required to explain the observed dynamics.
This model will have to have certain internal dynamical properties of
its own in order to show the same external dynamics as the real system
interacting with a real environment. So if I have misunderstood what
Penni was saying, at least my misunderstanding should be clear now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
RE: degrees of freedom.

>I demonstrated the absolute need for some means to pass control from
>one ECS to another (or, equivalently, a means to change the
perceptual >input function of controlling ECSs).

I think we will all continue to be frustrated on this subject until we
come up with experiments that demonstrate this "absolute need." You
are talking about a HYPOTHETICALLY absolute need, conditional on
certain premises being true. What we need is a demonstration with a
live human subject in which a phenomenon occurs that can only be
explained by this organization in a model. It should be something
simple enough to do on a PC, so that the modelers on the net can do
the experiments, program the model, and test the match. We can
stipulate (as Avery pointed out) the existence of perceptual devices
as required to provide perceptual signals representing whatever
aspects of the environment are needed. The actions required should be
simple motor behaviors, to accomodate mouses and joysticks, but these
behaviors can be translated into any special effects on the screen
desired, simulating other kinds of behaviors (such as cranking,
pressing buttons, uttering words, and so on).

My proposal that a given ECS can be applied to different lower-level
perceptions at different times is somewhat similar to yours. Mine is
no better founded in experiment than yours. I believe we have
approached the limits of what can be accomplished by passing words
back and forth. We need to devise critical experiments and carry them
out. Otherwise we might as well be arguing about angels and pinheads.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ed Ford (920826) --

Congrats on your new computer. And most particularly, congrats doubled
for having not only one backup disc, but two.

I have now read "Outcomes Drive the System," and I can see why you
think that ODDM (Outcomes Driven Development Model) is ripe for a
merger with control theory.

To all and sundry. ODDM is a method for organizing educational systems
according to some basic assumptions. The author of this booklet
(unnamed but possibly John Champlin) lists them this way:

1. What I want determines what I do.

2. What I do must reconcile and align with the most current, valid
knowledge.

3. All actions and all decisions are aligned and intentional.

.... [skipping a few rather vague generalities]

6. There is no condition [or] feature of behavior which cannot be
intenionally altered in such a way as to insure success.

7. Change is a holistic activity. Single parts cannot be altered
without significant impact in all of the organization.

8. Any change must be in response to an established and accepted need.

...[and another generality].

Later:

   A need is created by
    (a) a discrepancy between what we want and the condition presently
        existing.
    ....
    (c) a difference between what we claim to be doing versus what one
        actually observes.

>Rick, I'm a Republican....more on your convention comments later.

No, Ed, you are not a Republican. You are a control theorist. Being a
control theorist, you can find aspects of the Republican point of view
that are consistent with human nature, and others that are not. You
can do the same with the Democrat point of view, or Sun Yung Moon's. A
theory of human nature is contained in every political point of view
-- but is in important ways unfounded, because political points of
view are not based on any underlying principles that can be tested. I
put it to you that PCT and HPCT transcend political points of view, as
well as many others. Except for Rick. Yukayukayuk.

Belief: Each of us has criteria for what constitutes enough evidence
to justify belief (i.e., acting and thinking as if something is true).
If the true foundation of belief is evidence, then new evidence or a
reconsideration of old evidence can easily change a belief, because in
that case a belief is the result of evidence, not the reason for
accepting evidence. I define faith the other way around: faith exists
when the belief comes first, and the evidence is selected in any way
required to prove the belief true. So faith is preserved in spite of
the facts, while belief is generated because of the facts.

Of course there are several layers to this concept: what do you
believe to be the facts? And why?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Best to all,


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