[From Bruce Abbott (951025.1045 EST)]
Bruce Abbott (951014.1550 EST)
Bill Powers (951015.0945 MDT)
I do hope you still plan to read Bowlby, especially Volume 1 (Attachment),
because Bowlby comes about as close as anyone to expressing my view of brain
and behavior . . .
I've started reading the Bowlby materials and have skimmed through all
the volumes once, with more detailed reading of Vol 1 on Attachment. I
can see why you recommended it -- he really made an attempt to get away
from the less defensible aspects of Freud's ideas and to substitute
control theory as a different paradigm. It's too bad, in a way, that
Bowlby and I couldn't have got together in the 1950s and 60s when he was
picking up all this stuff about control theory. He really had a pretty
good grasp of the principles, but he didn't know what to do with them
beyond saying that organisms control for outcomes and don't just produce
behavior open-loop. Unfortunately, just as he was getting revved up to
write these books, all this control theory stuff went out of favor. I
don't suppose that Bowlby made much more headway with introducing
control theory after that than I did, although he did a lot of other
work for which he was deservedly recognized.
I'll comment more on the net.
Bill, I hope you have not given up reading Bowlby; what you had to say thus
far could have been extracted from Chapter 1, which simply sets up Bowlby's
approach without getting into the real nitty-gritty of it. Regarding my
defense of the term "imprinting," you [Bill Powers (951024.1010 MDT)] have
offered the following commentary:
This whole way of framing the observations shows only that you are up to
your eyeballs in a particular theoretical frame of reference which is so
ingrained that you don't even recognize theoretical statements when you
are making them. Everything you are saying sounds completely reasonable
to you, I'm sure, and I'm also sure that you can't understand why most
of the PCTers on this net find your descriptions doggedly biased in
favor of a non-PCT world view. Speak up, PCTers, am I right about that?
You have made a similar case against Bowlby's term "attachment," which
labels the same general phenomenon by reference to a different set of
observations. Because I am basically elaborating Bowlby's approach, what
you have to say about my descriptions being "doggedly biased in favor of a
non-PCT world view" would apply with equal force to Bowlby. Therefore, it
would be of considerable interest to see just what Bowlby has to say. If
his adopting such terms as imprinting and attachment reveals and maintains a
deep-seated S-R world view, as you claim, that will become apparent enough
in his theoretical analysis. Here is a sample of Bowlby's thinking:
Perhaps the simplest method of organising behaviour that has to change in
a specified way over time is by means of a chain, each link of which is a
behavioral system. When this is done behaviour proceeds in the correct
sequence because the effects produced by the action of one behavioural
system, when fed back centrally, not only terminate that system but also
activate the system next in the chain. As a result one activity stops
and another starts.
The effects produced by the first activity may be registered by
proprioceptive sense organs or by exteroceptive ones, or by both
together. An example of a behavioural sequence that is dependent on
proprioceptive feedback is walking. Here the end of the first phase
of alternating action is registered proprioceptively and, when fed back
to the controlling system, simultaneously inhibits the first phase of
movement and initiates the second. Most of the more complex and
interesting instinctive sequences, however, are dependent on feedback
from exteroceptors, notably eyes, ears, and nose. Many examples are
given in the ethological literature. The reactions of a foraging
honey bee provide a good illustration: links in the chain of responses
have been identified by experimental work using models.
The collection of honey by a honey bee starts with a visually controlled
behavioural system; on perceiving, often at a considerable distance, a
flower-shape of colour yellow or blue the bee flies towards it until it
reaches within 1 cm. The next link in the chain is controlled by
olfactory stimuli: on perceiving an odour that lies within a certain
range the bee settles on the flower and explores its shape. The third
link is controlled by tactile stimuli: on perceiving structures of a
certain shape the bee inserts its mouth parts and begins to suck. In
the ordinary course of events the collection of nectar results. Thus
the behavioural equipment of the bee is so organised that within the
environment of evolutionary adaptedness behaviour resulting from the
action of one behavioural system leads to a situation which simultaneously
terminates that system and activates the next in a series of steps such
that the final result is a gathering of nectar.
Many intricate and beautifully adapted sequences of behaviour are now
known to be due to systems organised in simple chains of this kind. Yet,
remarkable though the achievement of systems so organised may be, such an
orgainsation is subject to grave limitations. For example, the whole
organisation fails in its purpose if the action of one link in the chain
miscarries. If, because of a chemical spray, the flower's odour cannot
be detected, the second behavioural system in the chain is not activated
and the bee moves elsewhere without finding the honey to which is came
so near. Thus, only when the environment conforms exactly to the
environment of evolutionary adaptedness does each of the behavioural
systems in the chain produce its effect and the whole organisation lead
to behaviour of survival value. As in other chains, the strength of the
organisation is no greater than that if its weakest link.
There are, however, ways by which a chain-linked organisation of
behavioural systems can be made more flexible. For example, at any
point in it a chain can have one or more alternative links so that,
whenever activation of the first of a set of alternative behavioural
systems fails to achieve results that activate the succeeding system in
the chain, one of the other systems of the set becomes active. In this
way it may happen that the same outcome is attained by any of a number
of alternative behaviours.
A further point to remember regarding the potentialities of chains is
that any particular link in a chain can be a behavioural system of any
degree of complexity. Thus, whilst the chain itself is always strung
together without goal-correction, any or even all of the individual
links in it can be a goal-corrected system. . . .
John Bowlby (1969) _Attachment and Loss. Part 1: Attachment._ Pp. 76-77.
So, based on this little exerpt, what do you think? Was Bowlby a closet S-R
theorist or a man whose ideas were highly compatible with the view that
behavior is the control of perception?
Secondly, where in the label "imprinting" do you see any evidence of S-R
thinking? Thirdly, I get the impression that you are strongly inclined to
reject the idea that the chick's brain houses a mechanism whose function is
to identify a particular complex of perceptions to serve as a target from
which to compute references for a number of innately-organized
survival-critical perceptual control systems. Do you see the possible
existence of such systems as incompatible with PCT, or are you simply
disposed to believe that the control systems whose actions are observed in
attachment behavior emerge through reorganization?
Regards,
Bruce