[Peter J. Burke (11/28/95 13:37)]
Rick Marken (951128.1000) --
From the discussion of the pigeon discriminating between pictures with and
without Herrinstein's girlfriend in them (which I take it the pigeon was
able to do).
Conventional IV-DV; not The Test type of IV-DV. There is no hypothesis about
what the pigeon might be controlling and no monitoring of that variable given
different types and amounts of disturbance. So you have learned nothing
about what variable(s) the pigeon is controlling (though you can glean some
hypotheses about what the pigeon is controlling; but these hypothesese must
be tested -- and, of coursed. they never are tested by conventional
researchers).
This raises an interesting question, for me. I am not sure (philosophically,
even) whether it is possible to discover "the" controlled variable
(perception), since it is likely (as in this case) to be a gestalt which is
made of some weighted combination of stimuli from the external world (and
possibly from internal states as well). We can discover what disturbes the
controlled perception (by disturbing it), but I am not sure we can ever know
what the "it" is in this case. At some level, the pigeon is controlling for
the presence/absence of the girlfriend in the picture. At a more detailed
level it is apparently impossible to say. But, isn't that true for any
stimulus which can always be characterized on many dimensions. Do we ever
know exactly what combinations and in what proportions? Is there some way
around this? Should we be content with the more molar analysis? I am sort of
leaning in this latter direction since it is the one that "works," (at least
so far).
Peter
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Peter J. Burke Phone: 509/335-3249
Sociology Fax: 509/335-6419
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