🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Rick Marken (950214.1540)

Martin Taylor (950214 12:10) --

>My procedure in both cases was what Bill P required--to present what ought
>to be incontrovertible demonstrations.

They ought to have been "incontrovertible", perhaps, but they were not; Bill
and I controverted them.

>Here's the claims: (1) It is through the perceptual function that the
>information needed for control is obtained.

What is information? How can we tell that it is coming through the perceptual
function? Who "obtains" it? How do we know it is obtained? What is done with
it once it has been obtained?

Your inability to answer these questions made it clear that your only
interest in making claims about "the information needed for control" was to
preserve, in your own mind, the relevence of an old, beloved theory
(information theory) to perceptual control theory. Preserve away.

>(2) There are more perceptual functions involving controllable perceptions
>than can be controlled at any moment,

Even if this were true, so what?

>and there is a need for some mechanism to shift what is controlled when
>some currently uncontrolled perception is disturbed sufficiently to matter.

This doesn't follow from the first part of the statement. Moreover, the
mechanism that does this shifting MUST be a control system -- it must have a
reference for the maximum amount of error in another control system and it
must be able to act on this other control system so that, when the perceived
error exceeds the reference (is "sufficiently" large) the error is brought
back below the reference. So an "alerting mechanism" is a control system --
nothing new.

>Perhaps I should ask you to take the other position, and show, using only
>the core PCT assumptions, how it is possible to avoid the necessity for
>the existence of some alerting mechanism, given the larger number of
>potentially controllable perceptions than available outputs.

Can I start with an easier problem, like "starting with the core assumptions
of christianisty, show that it is possible to avoid the necessity of
purchasing a pin when you've already got a large number of angels dancing on
the head of a gold club";-)

>Looking at the world for data, to show that they are so, happened earlier
>in the case of the alerting system

So alerting systems have already been discovered, eh? Just like reflexes and
reinforcers? I guess now that these have all been discovered we know that
they really exist? No more looking at the world is necessary, eh?

Martin Taylor (950214 11:10) --

>There's no "goal" to reorganization. Systems just stay the way they are when
>reorganization is not happening much, and that is when perceptual control is
>generally good.  That's true within the individual, and therefore true
>within social structure composed of individuals.

Is this another one of the "truths" you are bringing to PCT. Do you really
think reorganization has no goal?

Very interesting;-)

Best

Rick