Martin Taylor 2000 01 26 14:40]
[From Bill Powers (2000.01.24.1029 MST)]
Martin Taylor 2000.01.24 09:26--
>IF (A is true) THEN (Do X) ELSE (Do Y)
This describes a choice-point in a program; in a closed loop, it's the TOTE
unit. If this is what you want to mean by "choosing", then I guess I can go
along with it.
As a fundamental basis for computation, and as somthing that _must_ be
dealt with when we consider the logical parts of the hierarchy, I hope.
I don't thinks it covers all situations in which people use
that term, but if that isn't the concern -- if you're just establishing a
technical term -- that's not a problem. Of course in that case, the meaning
of "I see you've chosen ..." suggested by you, Tucker, the Bruces,
Jorgensen, and apparently almost everyone else but me doesn't apply, does it?
"A" = "I act disruptively"
"X" = "I go to the RTC room"
"Y" = "I stay in class"
Didn't you accept that it could be a true statement about what the teacher
perceived the student to have been doing? And didn't you accept that the
teacher's purpose in making the observation might be an attempt to get the
student to go up a level? I guess I must have misinterpreted you again, in
thinking that you had agreed with these people's understanding of the
"meaning" of the phrase.
I took this misinterpretation from Bill Powers (2000.01.22.1234 MST):
In the RTP case, I like Erling Jorgensen's interpretation as a kind of
warning or reminder. The meaning is not actually "choosing" -- it's more
like reminding the student that under the rules that everyone is supposed
to be aware of, disrupting for the second time always results in a trip to
the RTC, so it's _AS IF_ the student had made a conscious decision to go to
the RTC (even though it's unlikely that any such decision was actually
made). In fact, with a skillful teacher, there could well be an
understanding that "I see you have chosen ..." is metaphorical and
cautionary, and not to be taken literally. So this makes it into a tool of
rhetoric, a way of helping the student grasp what it means to agree to a
social rule -- at least in _that_ teacher's classroom.
To go deeper into this requires a thread on the PCT nature of dialogue,
which I call "Layered Protocol Theory."
It's a complex topic, some of which was discussed in the two papers I
co-authored in the IJHCS special issue, but those papers covered mainly
cooperative dialogue, whereas I think to some extent the RTP use of "I see
you have chosen" is--I use the term in a technical sense rather than the
everyday sense--"deceptive," which implies non-cooperative.
In a collaborative, or cooperative, dialogue, the top level reference
of the recipient is to perceive the originator to be satisfied that the
recipient has adequately interpreted the message. The originator has
some reference perception relating to a state or an action s/he wants
to see in the recipient, and the recipient has adequately interpreted
the message when that perception in the originator closely matches its
reference value--the recipient is prceived as having come to the
desired state or to have performed the desired action. In a collaborative
dialogue, the originator tries to ensure that the recipient knows what
that reference state is.
Technically, "deception" in dialogue means that the originator of a
message has a purpose that is not intended to be apparent to the
recipient of the message. The originator intends the recipient to come
to some state or perform some action without the recipient doing
it in order to see the originator as being satisfied. In other words,
a "deceptive" message is one that is intended to disturb one of the
recipient's controlled perceptions, but _not_ the controlled perception
of the originator's state of satisfaction that the message has been
adequately interpreted.
If the teacher's purpose in saying "I see you have chosen..." were
simply to let the student know what the teacher has seen, then the
message would not be deceptive. If the teacher says it with the intention
that the student perceives the teacher to want him/her to "go up a level,"
it is also not deceptive. But if the teacher says it with the intention
that the student questions his/her own purposes in the disruptive actions,
but does not intend the student to know that was the teacher's purpose,
then the message is technically "deceptive," no matter how helpful it may
be to the student.
The implication of potential force behind the removal of the student
to the quiet room is irrelevant. That potential force can be treated
as if it were a law of nature--it's like trying to put a glass down
with too much overlap over the edge of a table; the glass falls to the
floor regardless of the purpose of the person who placed it. An
observer could say "I see you chose to smash the glass" with the intent
of irritating the accident-prone person--i.e. disturbing their self-image
perception to the extent of reorganizing so that they include a perception
of the table edge the next time they try to put a glass down. (I have
a personal stake in this example, having many years ago scalded my leg
by putting a coffee cup down on a sheet of paper I mistakenly thought
to be wholly on top of the table; I now look carefully before putting
coffee cups down on papers during meetings:-()
···
------------------
The meaning is not actually "choosing" -- it's more
like reminding the student that ...
It's interesting that you treated the meaning of "meaning" as a purpose
rather than as a pointer to some real-world object or phenomenon, the
way most people do. Did you do that casually, or with malice aforethought,
or because it is so obvious to you as not to require special notice?
I was not aware of the necessity to equate "meaning" with purpose until
perhaps 5 or 10 years ago (I don't remember exactly when this important
fact became clear to me). It's so different from the way most people
define "meaning" that I think it worth remarking and re-emphasising.
I'd be interested, if you can introspect, to know how this insight came
to you. For me, it came through the later development of Layered Protocol
Theory, and was one reason why it was so easy for me to see LPT as a
special case of PCT.
Martin