🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Rick Marken (990421.1900)]

Me:

> Clearly there is at least one fundamental flaw in his understanding
> of control theory: he thinks control systems control objective
> states of affairs, not perceptions.

Bruce Gregory (990421.1610 EDT)--

> A flaw from your point of view not from his.

Oh, I forgot. Everyone's point of view is right.

And you're teaching _science education_ at Harvard!?!? Do you
recomend teaching that Ptolomy is only flawed from Galileo's
point of view? That Skinner is only flawed from Powers' point
of view?

By the way, why do you advocate studying the behavior of working
models and comparing the behavior of those models to that of real
systems if whatever one thinks is true, is true, anyway? If the
reviewer thinks control systems control objective states of affairs
then who cares what the control model does -- he's right. If I
think control systems control perceptual variables then who cares
what the model does -- I'm right, too.

Me:

> This flaw in his understanding made it impossible for him to
> understand the two main points of my paper: 1) controlled
> variables are perceptual variables and 2) in order to understand
> the observed behavior of a control system it is necessary to
> test to determine what perceptual variable(s) it is controlling.
> So he, a control theorist, rejected my paper out of ignorance
> of control theory.

Ye:

> As a youngster I was amazed to discover that my uncle believed that
> adjusting the sight on his hunting rifle actually "caused" the
> bullet to increase its range (rather than altering its trajectory).
> Nevertheless,  he was a quite successful hunter, even though he
> didn't "really understand" what he was doing.

I'll try my best to read this as a sequiter. It seems that you
are agreeing with the reviewer's rejection of my paper on
controlled variables. Apparently neither you nor the reviewer
believe that it is important to know what a controlled variable
_is_ or to know how to test to determine what variable(s) a system
is controlling in order to be able to have a correct understanding
of the behavior of the system.

What in the world do you see in PCT?

Best

Rick
---
Richard S. Marken                 Phone or Fax:  310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates          e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/