Marken Psych Reports Paper

Hello, Rick --

RM: I welcome your comments, criticisms or suggestions for further work. which you can send to me personally or to CSGNet.

Thank you all for asking!

BP: I think that with this paper you have made a transition to an important new level of teaching and writing. You are patient with explaining the necessary details, and accurate in deciding what is necessary. It is no accident that the editors have given you such a welcome -- can't wait to see the other discussions you mentioned in an earlier post.

One of the best features is the way the paper relates all major points to writings by others in the psychological literature. This makes it perfectly clear what is new about the PCT approach and what is like more conventional approaches -- and in the end, shows with devastating clarify where the conventional approaches are lacking, and especially where clearly purposive researchers have managed to ignore purpose in their experimental subjects. And you did all that in a polite, low-key way, which makes it all the more powerful.

If this paper gets the attention it merits, you are going to become rather well-known. Simplicity, clarity, and thoroughness! What has happened in your life to explain this new development?

Best,

Bill

[From Rick Marken (2013.03.05.1320)]

BP: I think that with this paper you have made a transition to an important new level of teaching and writing…

If this paper gets the attention it merits, you are going to become rather well-known. Simplicity, clarity, and thoroughness! What has happened in your life to explain this new development?

RM: Thanks so much Bill. That was very kind of you. If the paper is good it’s largely thanks to you; you made some very important suggestions/corrections early in its development (long ago; you may not even remember). And the reviewers were also very helpful, not so much with the substantive stuff but in terms of helping me develop the paper in a way that would get hackles up as little as possible.

So it’s just the same old me – nothing much new in my life that could explain it. I think I may be a little more skillful but I think with this paper I was just lucky to have gotten such good advice – and taken it;-)

By the way, I talked to the editor today and she said the interview about this paper should be posted at

http://www.amsci.com/category/news/author-interviews/

by the end of next week, after the print edition comes out.

I plan to spend the rest of my life inundating the journals with PCT papers until I can’t type anymore in the hopes that eventually psychologists will start paying attention to this stuff. Clearly some have already.

Thanks again for the nice words about the paper.

Best regards

Rick

···


Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

Rick:

Thanks again for the paper.

I agree with Bill; you are likely to create quite a stir with it.

It is very, very clear; well-written; easily understood; dispassionate, calm, rational and logical. At the same time it elicits a “Holy S—t!” reaction.

I think you have done a fine job of pointing to a huge, gaping hole in current experimental psychology and you have done so in a way that will be extremely difficult to refute. I can imagine there will be some blustering but no well-founded criticisms. You dismantled it a piece at a time and there is no reassembling it.

I absolutely LOVE your opening line: “. . . yet they pursue this goal using research methods that ignore the possibility that the behavior they study is as purposeful as their own.”

The only place I stumbled was on page 190 where you wrote that the reference value was assumed to be zero. My immediate reaction was, “Huh?” Then I got it.

On page 191 where you talk about behavior always having strong and immediate feedback effects, I made a note related to the notions of Proximate, Intermediate and Ultimate in relation to controlled variables and effects upon them.

On page 193, Figure 6, the top portion, I made a note about “Skinner’s Black Box.” In my early days (the heyday of behaviorism), I understood Skinner’s Black Box to refer to Skinner’s view that what goes on inside the organism is in fact extremely important but we can’t get at it so he treated what’s inside as a black box. What your paper and PCT do is make visible what is likely going on in there.

On page 194 I like the way you deftly introduced the notion of a hierarchy of control systems.

On page 195 I really liked the way you introduced a disturbance into the reaction time task. What was going on in me (I think) and what I hope will go on in lots of others is that your arguments have been moving forward, slowly, in small steps, with surgical precision and, suddenly, there’s no going back. A coup de grace has been dealt to the old model.

On page 197 I greatly appreciated you pointing out that conventional researchers use methods that ignore purpose yet they themselves rely on it to make those methods work.

I will have a great deal of use for this paper and plan on pointing to it as often as possible.

From hence forward I will refer to you as “Marken the Magnificent.”

With great respect,

Fred Nickols

···

From: Richard Marken [mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 5:33 PM
To: Martin Taylor; Grace Gadsby; Andrew Nichols; Fred Nickols; davidmg; rupert@moonsit.co.uk; Bill Powers; bob.hintz@gmail.com; profcwt@earthlink.net
Cc: Richard Marken
Subject: Marken Psych Reports Paper

Hi all

I think I’ve copied all those who asked to see the paper. Thanks you all for asking.

I believe that Psychological Reports publishes comments on published papers. So if you do have any comments or criticisms you can get them into print by submitting them to Psychological Reports.

I welcome your comments, criticisms or suggestions for further work. which you can send to me personally or to CSGNet.

Thank you all for asking!

Best

Rick


Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[From Rick Marken (2013.03.05.2200)]

Rick:

Thanks again for the paper.

Fred

I am moved beyond words. Thank you for this remarkably detailed and undeservedly flattering review. If you think I’m going to let it go to my head then you are darn right.

This has been one amazing day for me. Thanks again, Fred, so much.

Best regards

Rick

···

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Fred Nickols fred@nickols.us wrote:

I agree with Bill; you are likely to create quite a stir with it.

It is very, very clear; well-written; easily understood; dispassionate, calm, rational and logical. At the same time it elicits a “Holy S—t!” reaction.

I think you have done a fine job of pointing to a huge, gaping hole in current experimental psychology and you have done so in a way that will be extremely difficult to refute. I can imagine there will be some blustering but no well-founded criticisms. You dismantled it a piece at a time and there is no reassembling it.

I absolutely LOVE your opening line: “. . . yet they pursue this goal using research methods that ignore the possibility that the behavior they study is as purposeful as their own.”

The only place I stumbled was on page 190 where you wrote that the reference value was assumed to be zero. My immediate reaction was, “Huh?” Then I got it.

On page 191 where you talk about behavior always having strong and immediate feedback effects, I made a note related to the notions of Proximate, Intermediate and Ultimate in relation to controlled variables and effects upon them.

On page 193, Figure 6, the top portion, I made a note about “Skinner’s Black Box.” In my early days (the heyday of behaviorism), I understood Skinner’s Black Box to refer to Skinner’s view that what goes on inside the organism is in fact extremely important but we can’t get at it so he treated what’s inside as a black box. What your paper and PCT do is make visible what is likely going on in there.

On page 194 I like the way you deftly introduced the notion of a hierarchy of control systems.

On page 195 I really liked the way you introduced a disturbance into the reaction time task. What was going on in me (I think) and what I hope will go on in lots of others is that your arguments have been moving forward, slowly, in small steps, with surgical precision and, suddenly, there’s no going back. A coup de grace has been dealt to the old model.

On page 197 I greatly appreciated you pointing out that conventional researchers use methods that ignore purpose yet they themselves rely on it to make those methods work.

I will have a great deal of use for this paper and plan on pointing to it as often as possible.

From hence forward I will refer to you as “Marken the Magnificent.”

With great respect,

Fred Nickols

From: Richard Marken [mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 5:33 PM
To: Martin Taylor; Grace Gadsby; Andrew Nichols; Fred Nickols; davidmg; rupert@moonsit.co.uk; Bill Powers; bob.hintz@gmail.com; profcwt@earthlink.net
Cc: Richard Marken
Subject: Marken Psych Reports Paper

Hi all

I think I’ve copied all those who asked to see the paper. Thanks you all for asking.

I believe that Psychological Reports publishes comments on published papers. So if you do have any comments or criticisms you can get them into print by submitting them to Psychological Reports.

I welcome your comments, criticisms or suggestions for further work. which you can send to me personally or to CSGNet.

Thank you all for asking!

Best

Rick


Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com


Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com