[philip 4/16/15 13:30 PT]
Let us consider the difference between the phrases “control perception” vs “resist disturbance” vs “achieve purpose”. They all mean the same thing; but for general usage, I think it’s better to simply avoid using the phrase “control perception” for some reason. We all understand that purpose means perceptual control, so there’s no need to distinguish between the two. For instance, the reason I think this is because if you compare the phrase “the purpose of behavior is to control a perception of knot over dot” with “the purpose of behavior is to keep the knot over the dot”, then more people will understand the one which doesn’t contain the unfamiliar phrase.
People don’t like unfamiliar phrases.
Now, from what I understand, the reason it’s necessary to accept the fact that behavior is the control perception is because there exists an almost perfect negative correlation between action and disturbance; and almost no correlation between the controlled variable and either the action or the disturbance. Thus, S-R research - because it searches for a high correlation between an environmental variable and an action - is wrong. The only correlation is between action and disturbance, and this is an apparent paradox which S-R research will not accept. Thus, we are at an impasse, because we cannot seem to change the way people are doing research.
But I don’t think we need to change what anybody else is doing, I think we need to change only what we’re doing. Perhaps we should do something similar to what David Hilbert did for mathematicians in the early 20th century: we should establish a list of centrally important questions to investigate.