[From Bill Powers (951118.1400 MST)]
Erling Jorgensen (951118.1100CST) --
In other words, is there a level [an order in the hierarchy] at
which population characteristics are not just an outcome or by-
product, but actually what gets controlled? I know we've talked
about the cumulative effect of bundles of muscles fibers, but that
is an emergent property of multiple discrete control systems moving
the arm through their additive actions. What I'm asking about is
whether attention to the population distribution is the very
purpose of the control system, and could this have something to do
with how we experience ourselves controlling for principles?
Sounds like a good idea to me. What you need to do now is think of an
experimental situation in which such a fuzzy population characteristic
is explicitly set up to be controlled, with some means of adding
disturbances to see if they're corrected.
Is this proposal creating error signals for anyone? Does the
notion of sampling perceptions over time for a population
distribution conflict with the idea that control is always present-
time?
Not at all. Control systems always control the present-time value of the
perceptual signal, but the perceptual signal could be a function of
multiple variables integrated or averaged over time and/or space.
Anything you can perceive and systematically affect can be controlled.
Go for it.
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Best,
Bill P.