RM: The point of all this is simply that there are more things in the behavior of collections of living control systems than are dreamed of in the “collective control” demo.
BN: That is correct. The PCT understanding of collective control has advanced quite a bit since that demo, and is much more comprehensive.
RM: Has it advanced beyond the understanding of collective control as defined by Martin in the Neural Activity thread:
MT: I understand a taxonomy of types of collective control, which all have in common just one property, that the actions of two or more distinct controllers all have some influence on a variable that is the same as would be observed if that variable were perceived and controlled by some single controller with a virtual reference level.
RM: It’s that “one property they all have in common” that I find troublesome.
BN: Chapters 9 and 10 in The Handbook (LCS IV) are a good place to start, though not current due to the publication delay.
RM: All I see in those chapters is theory based on arm chair speculation and anecdote. The only way to demonstrate (to me, anyway) that collective control is a useful theoretical addition to PCT is to show how collective control models can account for the real world behavior of groups of living control systems. I do this using plain vanilla PCT in the Social Control chapter of The Study of Living Control Systems. Until I see that that can be done with collective control theories I’ll continue to consider them useless extensions to PCT.
Best, Rick