[from Gary Cziko 970224.2010 GMT}
Bruce Abbott (970221.0850 EST) responding to
Gary Cziko 970221.0330 GMT
Note that whether or not others like my four levels of selection, thinking
of evolution in this way and this entire interesting discussion would be
impossible without HPCT.I appreciate the sentiment, but have to disagree. The recognition of
purpose and goals in behavior predates HPCT by a long, long time.
I agree with your second sentence here, but I am not sure what you are
disagreeing with in your first sentence.
Are you saying that the equivalent of HPCT (HIERARCHICAL Perceptual Control
System) existed long before Bill Powers's development of HPCT? If so, I'd
would find names and references very helpful for a book that I am working
on which includes a historical discussion of the notion of purposeful
behavior.
The first explicit model of purposeful animate behavior that I have found
is the cybernetic model of Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow of the middle of
this century. But I have found no one before Powers who proposed an
explicit model of a hierarchy of control systems by which higher-level
perceptions are controlled by varying lower-level reference levels.
Have I missed someone?
--Gary