Rick,
I think you dramatize too strongly!
When I used the term instrumentalism, I meant an orientation in the philosophy science according to which the goal and task of a theory is just to help to explain the observations. Its counter party is scientific realism which says that the task of a theory is
to give a true story about reality. Thus, when a theory needs and uses concepts which are not observables, instrumentalism says that they are or should be just handy instruments for explaining the observations, and instead scientific realism says that they are or should be references to something which exist in the reality. For instrumentalism theories can have only a use value while for scientific realism theories should also have a truth value.
Of course, these scientific stances can naturally but not necessarily go with respective epistemological theories which form the most important historical and classical contradiction in the area, and which are often called idealism and realism. Shortly, extreme idealism says that the knowledge is produced by and based on the knowing subject, and conversely extreme realism gives all responsibility of knowledge to the known object and the knowing subject has only the role of receiver. Especially Kant saw the futility of this controversy and tried to give a due role for both subject and object. Afterwards Kant has been named the first constructivist. Today most of the reasonable epistemological views are somewhere between idealism and realism, and represent different kinds of constructivism: knowledge is somehow based on the that which is known about in the reality but on the other hand knowledge must be somehow constructed and formulated by the knowing subject. Thus, constructivism and realism do not exclude each other. But if you rule realism out then it is extremely difficult talk about truth anymore.
(The concept of representationalism is so complicated that I would not use it. Usually it also stresses the principal difference and exclusion between the areas of reality and perceptions. It goes very well with constructivism.)
RM: Both views are consistent with the idea that behavior is the control of perception. But representationalism leads to a focus on questions of how accurately controlled perceptions represent the real world “somethings” that are being controlled. Constructivism, on the other hand, leads to a focus on what types of controlled perceptions are being constructed from the raw material of the real world.
Yes and no. Both are consistent because there need not be any difference between them. Whether you give bigger or smaller role to the reality, it does no way lead the focus to the accuracy and away from types of perceptions. Because our only knowledge about the reality is based on perceptions, we cannot study the accuracy of perception by comparing reality and perceptions and neither can we derive the types of perceptions from the structures of reality. The types of perceptions can still be studied only by studying perceptions. Similarly, the accuracy of perceptions must be studied by comparing perceptions to other perceptions. So, you have no reason to be afraid of some amount of realistic thoughts. It will not close off the possibility to study types of perceptions. But it just opens one more possibility to try to study the accuracy, TOO.
RM: I believe that PCT is based on a constructivist view of perception. The research program described in Powers, 1979 and that I hoped to discuss over at Powers’ Model of a Research Program is all about determining what types of perceptions organisms control.
Perhaps your feeling of losing anyone to work with you on developing the research program that Bill proposed is a consequence of your unneeded strong commitment to epistemological idealism and thus setting too strict limits to that program? I myself would be extremely interested in researching experimentally the types of human perception, but I am too old to totally change my career because I have almost no training and experience in experimental research.
Best