[From Bruce Nevin (2018.01.15.12:08 ET)]
I again recommend Bill’s correspondence with Phil Runkel, which Dag has published in facsimile as Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Approaches to a Science of Life. You can order this book (among others) from
http://www.livingcontrolsystems.com/files/books_videos.html#dia
A link there takes you to a rendition on Google Books.
The subject of this thread bears on two issues, difficulties modeling control of higher-level perceptions, and the relation of perceptions to their “exact counterparts” (Bill’s phrase) in the environment.
A quote from Dialogue re the first:
WTP: Dealing with high-level matters is confusing; I’ll be the first to admit confusion. The above is just my attempt to get the connections straight.
And a quote re the second:
WTP: Even though it is perceived internally through many stages of input transformation, we act to bring what appears to be the outside world into conformity with this principle [a principle referred to just prior]. Even though we understand that all perceptions exist inside, when we draw diagrams we are really modeling a hypothetical outside world and assuming that our perceptions have exact counterparts Out There. […S]ince we are also attempting to understand the nature of outside reality, we adopt the convenient fiction that these perceptions are actually outside us just as they appear to be. We don’t, in truth, know what is really out there, but this convention represents our attempt to model what is out there. We never deal with JUST control theory --we are always modeling reality at the same time. […] That physics tells us this external condition is really just a congregation of quarks is irrelevant – that’s a different model, though not inconsistent with this one."
I attach images of pages 90 and 91 of Dialogue from which this is quoted
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/Bruce