[Avery Andrews 950511]
Our kids had a friend called Alex, who had a dog called Patch, who liked
to be near where Alex was. One day Alex was playing in our house,
so Patch was sitting out on the porch. At some point Alex went off,
but Patch didn't notice (we presume), and, as the day begin to end,
Patch was still sitting on our porch. So we thought that maybe he
thought that Alex was in the house, so we let him in; he did a quick
tour of all the rooms (small house), and then headed to and out the door,
and then across the park towards his home.
So my conjecture would be that while sitting on the porch, Patch had a
world-model wherein Alex was located inside our house, so he was
controlling his perception of being near model-Alex. One thing that
differentiates a model-X perception from a real X perception is that
you don't settle for model-X when you can get real-X, so when we opened the
door and invited him in, he tried to satisfy his reference for being
near real-Alex. Another property of model-X perceptions is that they are
defeasible, and when shown to be false, they cease to be controlled for,
so when his house-tour revealed the falsity of his model, off he went.
Some repeatable experiments on this theme would certainly be called for,
but it still doesn't seem too outlandish for creatures who hunt
socially, and deal with things, including each other, that go in and
out of holes and burrows.
Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au