<[Bill Leach 950704.04:21 U.S. Eastern Time Zone]
[From Rick Marken (950703.1510)]
Into the fray (again)...
It seems that the effort to express EAB in math terms is essential.
What Bruce is saying (as I perceive it), is not that the EAB
explainations for all observed behaviour are correct and internally
consistent but rather that the can be made and are made, verbally, and
sound sufficiently plausible to be generally accepted in the field.
Building an EAB math vocabulary may well prove to be a monumental
undertaking (though it also may well not be necessary for such a work to
be complete). A careful start with well defined methodology provided for
extension should do.
It is necessary, I think, to show that many "formal" EAB explainations
are internally inconsistent and/or at variance with one or more
fundamental principles of the field.
It is not and will not be adequate to verbally point such things out,
there will always be "other" explainations... work of different
researchers to consider and all of it verbal and incomplete.
The "incomplete" part is a problem for HPCT just as much as for EAB and
an astute EABer should be expected to notice that fact. We are faced
with the quite serious fact that we have not modeled specific system
behaviour that is the object of EAB research. We have only "talked"
about non-linear and discontinous behaviour.
While I (and I think everyone else here) admits that Control Theory
itself provides ample assurance that the ability to model such systems
behaviour is a virtual certainty, such confidence, from an EABer's
perspective, looks little different than their own confidence.
What I think has to occur is that a sufficient precise symbolic EAB
system has to be created that exposes the existance of: "Albus type
models" (magic occurs here), use of "standard" terms that can not
possibly have the standard meaning when examined closely, use of
identities as causal explainations, hidden logical absurdities, and the
like.
The fact that EAB people already like to run "hard" data controlled
experiments and are uncomfortable with data anomolies is I think, a sign
that this is the one branch of behavioural science where a dispasionate,
solid, logically, and mathematically based challenge could be taken
seriously. It is not going to be accomplished without first producing a
common precise language for discussion.
It may indeed prove to be all but impossible to produce such a common
language with existing level of formality of EAB terms but even an honest
effort at just that should still prove to be very useful. As I
understand the situation now, many EAB researchers are already
dissatisfied with some of the ambiguities and vagueness that exist for
many of their "standard" terms now (this is not meant to claim that EAB
researchers are somehow horribly remiss but rather that ALL of the "soft"
science suffer from this problem of not having relatively complete formal
definitions for their terms).
-bill