[From Oded Maler (980226)]
Rick Marken (980225.1030)]
As I said, I have been doing the test reasonably systematically
on Bruce, Martin and Jeff for the last several years. It's pretty
clear that these fellows only "correct" comments (from me, Bill
or anyone else) that specifically pit PCT against conventional
psychology in some way.
For a neutral observer like myself (with even a slight emotional
tendency to believe that most of psychology is junk) it looks the
other way around: it seems that you are controlling for the perception
that "conventional psychology" (a strange term btw, which is supposed
to denote everything which is not PCT) is completely uselss. While
trying to control this perception of yours, and the "collective"
perception of this group, you find yourself saying what others might
perceive as nonsense and react to it. I am not saying this is the only
"right" interpretation but it is not less plausible than yours (and it
looks more plausible to me).
I agree that it is very difficult to
determine _exactly_ what higher level perceptions are being
controlled by each of these fellows. Actually, one of the
interesting problems with doing the test for higher level controlled
variables like these is that the only system that can monitor
the state of these variables is a human brain. This, for me, is
the main difference between testing for control of variables like
"lateral velocity of ball on retina" and "merits of conventional
psychology". Machines (like computers) can be designed to monitor
the state of variables like lateral velocity while disturbances
are being applied. But no machine (yet) can monitor the state
^^^^
of a variable like "merits of conventional psychology" while
disturbances (like posts from Bill and myself) are being applied.
Such a machine would have to continuously transform collections
of verbal statements from both the tester (the disturbance
statements) and testee (the output statements) into a numerical
measure of "merits of conventional psychology". If such a
machine existed, I am sure that it would read a continuous
1 (on a 1 to 10 scale) for Bill and me and an 8 or 9 for Bruce,
Martin and Jeff
I think this reflects some philosophical laziness on your part and
refusal to think seriously about the implications of HPCT on questions
of meaning and existence of complex entities. You seem to think that
the passage from defining and measuring cursor position to defining
and measuring "behavior", "conventional psychology" and similar
concepts is smooth, just requiring some more MHz on machines, more
sophisticated sensors, or a modest amount of more research.
One of the interesting questions for PCT research is how one
tests for control of variables that can't be measured by machine.
This is the problem faced by those who want to study control of
what you call "human level" perceptions. The problem is not
that these perceptions are particularly difficult to study -- if
they are perceptions that one person (the testee) can have then
they are perceptions that the tester can have as well;
This seems to be one of the most non-PCT statements I have ever
encountered on this list (unless the meaning of "can" is some kind
of "possible world" stuff, which is irrelevant to experimental
settings here and now).
so the
tester can, in principle, monitor his own perceptions to see
if the testee is protecting these perceptions from disturbance.
This is what I am doing when I test to determine that Bruce et al
are controlling for a high level of "merit of conventional
psychology".Rather, the problem with the study of these "human level"
variables is making the study _objective_, in the sense that
all obervers would agree that some perception is, indeed,
under control. Having a machine measure the purported controlled
variable solves this objectivity problem for variables like
"lateral velocity".
I don't really know a good way to solve
this problem (to my satisfaction yet) for your "human level"
perceptions.
Well, in this case you are in a good company with most of
humanity and its philosophers.
It's easy to see that Bruce et al are controlling for a particular
perception of the merits of conventional psychology. When
statements critical of conventional psychology are made (by
Bill, Richard Kennaway, myself, etc) there is a big effort to
"correct" these statements. When statements that are not critical
or are supportive of conventional psychology are made there is no
effort to "correct" them (witness the mutual agreement between
Bruce and Martin on the "proof" that disturbances cause output).
As I mentioned at the beginning, it is very easy to see the things
the other way around (and in thoushands of other ways), and since
you agree that this is not an objective thing, maybe it will be
more productive (but less amusing) if you restrict your arguments
with them to the subject matter itself, rather than to unprovable
speculations concerning their motives (a recommendation I find hard
to implement myself, btw
Regards,
--Oded