🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Bruce Abbott (990502.1740 EST)]

>Rick Marken (990502.1340) --
>
>>Bruce Abbott (990502.0915 EST)
>
>> To stave off further discussion of what Herbert Simon did or
>> did not say about the ant in _The Sciences of the Artificial
>> (1969), I herewith present the relevant paragraphs from
>> "Chapter 2 -- The Psychology of Thinking: Embedding Artifice
>> in Nature."
>
>Thanks for taking the trouble to type all that in.

You're very welcome.  Thanks for sharing.

>It certainly
>validates Bill's analyses of Simon's "argument", doesn't it [eg.
>Bill Powers  (990502.0326 MDT)].

On the contrary.  Bill said that Simon was opting for a view in which
behavior is "controlled" by the environment.  That's not at all the
impression one gets from reading the quoted section.

>I guess I'm wondering why you are so anxious to give us a
>"clear sense of Simon's argument".

Because there was quite a bit of discussion about what Simon did or didn't
say, and I thought this would end the speculation.  As this is what I said
in my preface to it, I'm wondering why you don't seem to be aware of that.

>It seems pretty obvious from this except (_The Sciences of
>the Artificial_, 1969) that Simon had no idea that organisms
>control perceptual representations of external states of affairs.

I don't think that you could tell one way or the other from this exerpt.
Simon clearly stated that the ant has purposes and goals, and that what he
had in mind for the ant's internal system is precisely the sort of
goal-seeking system like that built by Grey Walter, which Bill Powers would
have been proud to claim as his own, had he rather than Grey Walter built it.

>So what's all theis fuss about Simon? He's a nice enough fellow
>(I met him at a conference in Minnesota); but he certinaly
>didn't know that purposeful behavior _is_ control (if he did, he
>was -- and still is, if he's alive -- keeping it to himself).

You're asking the wrong person.  I didn't start this thread.  But your
conclusion (that Simon didn't know that purposeful behavior is control)
seems rather bizarre given that Simon seems to have known what sort of
system is required in order for it to exhibit goal-seeking behavior.  I
rather suspect that this is what you _want_ to believe (and want _us_ to
believe), for whatever reasons of your own, but I find the question (of what
Simon may have known or not known) boring.  Scarlet, I really don't give a
damn.  Why you're so obsessed with it, I can't say.

What is interesting about Simon's hypothesis from our perspective is its
suggestion that very complex behavior may be produced by relatively simple
systems.  As the Crowd demo shows, some apparently complicated and
sophisticated behavior can be produced under the right conditions by a
_very_ simple system constructed along the lines of Walter's turtle, with
but a few elementary control systems and a few simple rules to coordinate
them.  I would think that you and Bill would welcome this bit of support
from Simon, but you both seem too intent on discrediting him (again, for
what reason, I can only guess) to notice that what he said in the quoted
piece is nicely congruent with conclusions that can be drawn from PCT, and
therefore lends support to the latter.  If you only had said something
gracious like "Simon was on to something there, although he may have
underestimated the importance of inner sources of variation in producing the
observed complexity of behavior,"  you probably wouldn't have gotten an
argument.  Instead, you resort to what I can only describe as extreme
defensiveness, as if admitting that Simon were right on this issue would
open the door to someone's believing that Simon invented PCT, or some such.
I don't see any need to worry in that regard.  No one here is making that claim.

I think your paranoia is obvious from the questions you asked me:

>Do you think there something
>about Simon's argument that contributes to our understanding of
>behavior in a way that goes beyond our underetanding based on
>PCT? Or do you think that Simon's argument is in some way
>"consistent" with  PCT? Or do you think his argument is the same
>as PCT, only using different wards?

My answer, of course, is "none of the above."  I think that after reading
Simon's quote, a reasonable person on encountering PCT would say "this is
just the sort of thing Simon was talking about -- a relatively simple,
goal-directed system that is capable of exhibiting complex behavior when
environmental disturbances and constraints require it.  This might be worth
looking into!

Regards,

Bruce