[Tracy Harms (980210.14)]
In regard to [Dan Miller (980206.1130)]
I could say that I think that anticipations are
absolutely necessary features of living control systems
(not models) ...
Looks like I missed the heart of this discussion, but I'll interpret
this to mean that Dan Miller would hope to defend the proposition that
anticipation is necessary. No wonder conflict arose; this is one of the
recurring ideas which gets most hotly contested here.
Claims to the necessity of anticipation are highly unconvincing to me
because I (try to) keep in mind that the vast majority of organisms are
unicellular. Where, pray tell, in their simple little bodies might I
find *anticipation*? My guess is that anticipation is rarified in the
extreme. I propose that it can only occur with an impressive depth of
control hierarchy, and that few are the organisms which are fancy enough
to anticipate.
To my eye one of the largest problems for PCT theorists is that the
field of psychology is where Bill staked out its primary ground. Thus
it naturally attracts people whose main attention is on complexities of
human mentation, emotion, etc. I don't deny that PCT applies to these
things, but I do propose that we do better to approach it FIRST AND
FOREMOST as a theory applying to GENERAL BIOLOGY. That does not explain
why psychology is something of a "dry well" when it comes to the
communication of PCT, but it I think it is suggestive. (How many
psychologists even think of their studies as a subset of biological
science? The number might be shockingly few.)
Tracy Harms
Bend, Oregon