Original_To:  BITNET%"csg-l@uiucvmd.bitnet"
Original_cc:  TBOURBON
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:54:00 CDT
From:         Tom Bourbon <TBOURBON@UTMBEACH.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: neuroscien cont

From: Tom Bourbon  (921216  22:44 CST)

Mark.  Regrettably I lost the first half of your two-part post on
neuroscience.  I believe the second part got to the heart of the
matter, so here goes.

>Mark William Olson (16 Dec 1992 13:11:31 CST)
>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.

And  later,

>I don't  think we should shun present research--we would do it the
>same and interpreet  it diffently.

But that is just my point.  PCT does not merely "describe" things
differently -- it explains something that most neuroscientists,
especially most memory researchers, do not know exists, or if they
do they don't try to explain it in their literature.  PCT explains
control.  Once you recognize that organisms control some of their
perceptions, you cannot investigate memory exclusively the way you
did before.  Well, you can, but you will be right back to missing
the point and you will never learn what "memory" is or how it
occurs in brains.  More on this after your next remarks, that
follow.


>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.

Here, you come to the core of the problem.  Before you can search
for anatomical and physiological correlates, substrates or call
them what you may, for memory, you must define memory.  Most often,
it is defined in terms of changes in behavior during or after
certain tasks.  Tasks.  Living system doing things.

What kinds of tasks will you choose?  That is an important
consideration; the kind of task will determine what you can call
evidence (a) that memory exists and (b) that you have found it and
its correlates-substrates-etc.  If you think living systems react
to stimuli, you will use tasks in which they respond to stimuli and
you probably will define learning as a particular change in which
responses are associated with which responses, or in how often
response (or response class) X occurs in the presence of stimulus
(or stimulus class) Y, and so on.  You will employ the revered
behaviorists' tool kit.

If you think living systems process inputs, cognize on them, select
appropriate outputs, and either in parallel or serially, plan and
produce outputs, you will still use many of the items in the
behaviorists' tool kit, but you might irreverently call them by new
names.


In either case, if you are true to the grand traditions in the
literature on physiology-anatomy-chemistry-etc of memory, you will
look for memory in the parts of the nervous system between where
stimuli-inputs come in and stimulate, and the parts where
responses-outputs go when they are on the way out.  You will
conceive of memory as a step between in and out and you will assume
it has a function or form or quality that lets it mediate between
what comes in and what goes out.

If you realize that living systems control some of their
perceptions, you will not use tasks that treat them as though they
are funnels into which causes pour and out of which effects emerge.
Nor will you think of memory as a process-place-thing that resides
somewhere between the orifices of the funnel and matches them up in
"proper" fashion.  What you look for, where you look for it, and
how you decide whether or not you found it all depend on your ideas
about the bigger picture -- the levels you say do not matter.

You said, "...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."  I would
describe the situation differently:  "If you want to know about
neurochemistry sorts of things during a task, you had better
determine, right up front, whether perceptions, or outputs, or both
of them, are controlled -- that determination is crucial in all
else that follows in your research at the level of neurochemistry."


>Maybe I should ask if PCTers are evn intererestd in mapping brain
>functions.

Check out my return address!

Until later,

Tom Bourbon                             e-mail:
Magnetoencephalography Laboratory       TBOURBON@UTMBEACH.BITNET
Division of Neurosurgery, E-17          TBOURBON@BEACH.UTMB.EDU
University of Texas Medical Branch      PHONE  (409) 763-6325
Galveston, TX 77550                     FAX    (409) 762-9961 USA
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