[From Rick Marken (921209.0900)]
Mark Olson --
Whether it's perceptions
or error that is controlled is dependent on what LEVEL from which one is
speacking. From an individual ECS level, its percpetions,no doubt--the
math shows that conclusively. But from the perspecive of teh whole
organism (the organism as an organism, as I said earlier) its error.
I hate to be a pain about this but I think this debate about "controlling
error" gets at the basic idea of what it means to CONTROL. I don't
see how this can be a matter of perspective. The error signal is a
physical variable. It is either controlled or it is not. It is a particularly
interesting variable because it is a component of a negative feedback
control loop, but it is still a variable like any other variable. If the
determination of whether or not it is controlled is a matter of perspective
then the same is true for the determination for whether ANY variable
is under control. This would mean that the basic methodological tool for
investigating control phenomena (the test for controlled variables) must
be informed by the perspective (or level) from which it is done. This
would make it VERY important for those of us who want to study
control phenomena to understand clearly how perspective might influence
the results of this test. So I ask you (and Greg) to explain how "perspective"
(or "level") influences the results of the test for controlled variables. If
the "error" variable can be "not controlled" from one perspective but
"controlled" from another, then I could be coming to the wrong conclusion
when I say "this variable is not controlled" because I happen to have done
the test from the "wrong" perspective. It also would be possible to conclude
that, say, the difference between curson and target is "controlled" from
one perspective and "not controlled" from another. If this is possible, then
methodologists should know how to tell what perspective they are
doing the test from and how it influences their results.
Ed Ford --
I've always believed that there should be no conflict between science
and religion.
Greg says --
Regardless of the potential and (I
believe) actual conflicts between science and certain religious ideas,
it appears that the major problem is religion vs. religion.
Righto Greg. I think Ed's grandchildren were having a religious
dispute -- no science involved at all. Using scientific terms (like
immune system) to describe the cause of perceptions (health) doesn't
make it science. "Science" and "religion" are words that refer to
lots of different perceptual variables. For me, the best definition of
science was given by Bill Powers -- "disciplined imagination"; we
invent models (imagination) and then test to see if we observe in perception
what the model does when "switched on" (discipline). This is a nice
definition because it makes it easy to juxtapose it to what I think of as
the essense of religion -- "faithful imagination". The crux of the difference
is the way you ultimately test whether your imaginings are"right"; In
science, the final arbiter is God -- ie.the cause of one's perceptual
experience (we call her Boss Reality). In religion, the final arbiter is
People -- perceptions are made to fit the faith (too often, violently). ( I
should note that, by this definition, much that is called "science" is not
-- Lysenkoism in the USSR is an example of religion [faith in inheritance
of acquired characteristics] posing as science). To my knowledge, there
is no religion that would qualify, by this definition, as a science.
Yours in Boss Reality
Rick