Events according to Plooij

[From Dag Forssell (2002.06.26 08:55 PDT)]

[From Bill Powers (2002.05.08.0807 MDT)]

Bruce Nevin (2002.05.07 21:10 EDT)--

>Sequences that are not short and stereotyped, however well learned they
may be, are not events at >level 5 in the (current) standard proposal about
the perceptual hierarchy. .....

I'm not very happy about the state of Level 5. It's too much like the
sequence level. My reasons for wanting events to be at that level are
getting pretty ragged, if not fading from memory entirely. I would support
a principled effort to justify doing away with this level altogether and
letting its supposed functions be handled by the current sequence level.
Why shouldn't the next level up from transitions be relationships, still an
analog type of variable? Then the process of categorization would provide a
clean demarkation between continuous and discrete control processes. For
some reason that sounds nice to me.

I noted
"My reasons for wanting events to be at that level are
getting pretty ragged, if not fading from memory entirely. I would support
a principled effort to justify doing away with this level altogether."

I think it is OK to expect others to carry on the introspection and
development you went through to suggest the levels in the first place. I
wonder if you are saying here that you want to do away with events
altogether, or if you meant something else. I am not concerned and am not
really asking, but this exchange "stimulated" me to make an effort to make
the following available on CSGnet.

Frans Plooij has made an effort to introduce some fundamentals of PCT and
specifically the idea of reorganization in the summary chapter of a book
(now in print) he has edited with a colleague. His purpose is not to mix
PCT with something else, but to show others that PCT explains what they are
concerned about. The summary chapter contains an extensive discussion of
events. The chapter is available from me on request as a 200 kb pdf file
"Plooij Trilogy prepub ms.pdf" and may be freely circulated.

Frans planned to reprint the illustration of reorganization shown on page
188 of B:CP, but Bill has now redrawn that illustration to remove the
opportunity to interpret it as if reorganization operates from above. This
revised illustration is included here. The pdf-file can be viewed and
printed, but is otherwise password protected against changing and
extraction of text and images.

Best, Dag

[From Dag Forssell (2002.06.26 13:45 PDT)]

In my post earlier today, I mistakenly stated that Frans' book is in print.
It is in press.

While Frans thought it a good idea to password-protect his ms, Bill's
illustration, Figure 2 in Frans chapter, is available from Bill and myself
as an eps or cdr file.

Best, Dag

Best, Dag

[From Bill Powers (2002.06.26.1507 MDT)]

Dag Forssell (2002.06.26 08:55 PDT)]--

I wonder if you are saying here that you want to do away with events
altogether, or if you meant something else.

The "Complex Movements" paper under discussion lately described how
stimulation of a single neuron (or small group of them) resulted in a
monkey's hand's closing, turning over, and being moved up to the mouth.
That's the sort of thing I envisioned at the 5th level, where rate of
movement and position were controlled in several dimensions at once. This
could be called an event, of course, and maybe that is still a good name
for it. But in that example we're not talking about a discrete happening;
it's more like a trajectory in many dimensions, and maybe that would be a
better term for the perceptions under control at this level. A trajectory,
a path, a movement, a gesture, a coordination -- all these terms seem to
fit at that level where perceptions up through transitions are controlled
to make a single recognizable dynamic or space-time pattern. Bob Clark, I
think, was trying to define something like that.

Gary Cziko was, if I remember right, the one who said we had to get
"sequence" in the sense of ordering out of the fifth level. If we could get
everything discrete out of it, I think that would be even better, because I
think that the introduction of discrete, either-or perceptions --
categories -- is the last stage before, or perhaps the first stage of,
symbolization and the development of sequences and then rule-driven
processes. Everything below those levels ought to consist of continuous
analog processes.

Some cross-species developmental studies would really make things clearer.

Best,

Bill P.

Bruce,

>Should this be made available on a web site for download?
>(Yours, the CSG site, Bill's, Rick's....)

I expect to post it on PCTresources.com for sure

>One way or another, I'd like a copy.

Ask, and you shall receive.

Best, Dag

Dag Forssell
dag@forssell.com, www.forssell.com
23903 Via Flamenco, Valencia CA 91355-2808 USA
Tel: +1 661 255 6948 Fax: +1 661 254 7956

Plooij Trilogy prepub ms.pdf (110 Bytes)