From [Marc Abrams (2006.07.05.1625)]
I think I can better verbalize my frustration with myself and CSGnet at this time so I'm going to give it another shot.
I think perceptual control is important. From my perspective with economics I believe it is not only important but crucial for a proper understanding of economics.
Unfortunately I don't believe I can address the issues I need to from the perspective of the PCT hierarchy. Even if the hierarchy were 100% correct, the level of abstraction (micro) makes it practically impossible to look at and addres the issues that concern me at the level of the organism.
Sort of like trying to analyze the artistic quality of a movie by examining it frame by frame or a TV production, pixel by pixel. That is, it's theoretically possible but practically not.
System Dynamics was originally formulated by Forrester to model control processes. You might expect that from a servo-mechanism engineer and if I knew than, what I know now, I would have prepared Bill for that meeting with Forrester. I made the mistake of thinking that what I saw was obvious and plain to everyone and as things turned out they weren't and they aren't.
Yes, you can model PCT with SD, but again, trying to model the hierarchy in SD for even the most simplest of tasks would require an absolutely unwieldy, humongous SD model, and I'm afraid it would be of no practical use.
But this does _not_ mean that you can't model perceptual control effectively at A HIGHER LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION. That is by modeling perceptual control at the level of the organism rather than at some lower level of abstraction like PCT.
It was with this in mind that I started the Psychology Chapter in the System Dynamics Society. I thought it would be a natural fit for a number of reasons. First, SD models historically did not address "psychological issues" preferring to stay in the organizational realm and in doing so, dealing with individuals in the aggregate and as embedded entities in larger systems; and when they did address "psychological issues" it was always with either a behavioristic or cog sci slant. So I felt this would open up additional ways of utilizing SD. Second, with my experience in the field with SD models, because they dealt in the aggregate it was often very difficult to utilize a model to effectuate change because individuals had a difficult time "seeing" themselves in the models.
So in March, I posted a short request to the SD list asking if anyone would be interested in joining a psychology chapter that would focus on modeling psychological phenomenon in SD. Within 2 days I got 35 positive e-mail replies.
In my initial posts to the SD forum I laid out _my_ desire to look at perceptual control and I invited others to put their ideas on the table as well, and not limited to my view. I thought that by drawing out others and getting them to talk about their notions about psychology that I would be able to generate some meaningful discussion on perceptual control. Well the Chapter is still here and outside of a few sporadic postings nothing has really happened. Why? My best guess at this point is that the folks who joined, joined to learn how to model psychological issues in SD and so what we have currently are a bunch of folks waiting to hear how to model psych issues in SD and they are not prepared to talk about any of it because they don't know what it is they want.
Fortunately I was able to hook up with three SD modelers who do have some idea of what they want and are willing to explore the possibilities of perceptual control and SD, so I believe that once we come up with a viable SD model of perceptual control we will than present it to the Chapter and I think the ball will begin to roll. At least I hope so, and if not, I'll try to understand why I failed and give it another whack somewhere else. 
SD will also afford us the opportunity of integrating emotion and memory into the model. Of course this will not be at the micro level of the PCT model and does not address the same needs as the PCT model currently
I would like to think we are doing PCT even though the hierarchy as such will not be playing a part in our modeling, at least not initially, and I would hope that we are all concerned with the overriding objective of getting the word out about perceptual control.
As long as there are alternative ways of explaining the same phenomenon I think it's self defeating to denigrate others who believe in perceptual control but might differ on exactly how it all happens. If it's a science we are interested in starting than we should act like scientists and not priests.
I think an interesting by-product of our SD modeling efforts will indeed be a structure that emerges from it. But this structure is not to be confused with the hierarchy as postulated by Bill. It will represent an different level of abstraction completely. But it still may shed some light on what the structure looks like "down below".
So contrary to what Rick professes, I think discussion is _extremely_ important in trying to understand exactly what components might be involved; what relationships exist; and what those functions might actually look like.
Regards,
Marc
Regards,
Marc
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