Rick,
You suggested that I go see how your model works rather than worrying
about underlying assumptions of your model or PCT theory. But this is
the sort of instrumentalist bias which I cannot abide by. When you make
a model that is supposed to represent some aspect of the world, the
making of the model itself in no way assures that the model is somehow
isomorphic with the empirical social world. In order to judge the
extent to which some working model can be said to represent some aspect
of the empirical social world, your axiological, ontological, and
epistemological assumptions about the nature of values, knowledge, and
reality have to be analyzed to see what you're assuming about the way
the world works. Only in that way can researchers be assured of being
on the same page, so to speak. So yes, analysis of working assumptions
is crucial before the real work of looking at the working of a model can
even begin to make sense.
For example, say I build a bowling machine which averages 280 a game.
(It would bowl a perfect 300 every time except for the fact that I have
not yet perfected correction mechanisms. That is, every time it spits
out the ball it knocks itself out of alignment just so slightly.) I
have replicated, to some extent, the goals of the human system with
regard to the activity of bowling. But that thing, that machine, is in
no way isomorphic with human beings; it is just metal and steel and
rubber and wires and belts and pulleys. It has no arms, no legs, etc.
The model is performing some instrumental task, and models can only be
built to replicate very narrow areas of concern which the builder
considers are worth pursuing . If you build a model with a comparator,
for example, show me the corresponding comparator in the human being.
Give me your underlying assumptions about why you think that model is
isomorphic to some empirical reality. Then we can begin to make some
progress.
Dr. James J. Chriss
Kansas Newman College
Sociology Department