Please send me the information so I can receive the article on "Wild
Minds", sounds like some reading and documentation for my research and
understanding of PCT. Thanks for your post.
[From Paul Stokes (971230.1341 GMT)]
Its never too late! Two contributions:
1. Is not the the MoL a version of the Theory of Logical Types as
propounded by Russell and Whitehead and revitalised by Gregory
Bateson and Paul Watzlawick and others? If not, it is important to me
to know why not. I hope someone can oblige.
2. Has anyone seen the article by John McCrone in New Scientist, 13
December 1997 on "Wild Minds - the dynamics of the neural code". In
this articles McCrone describes the new moves by some cognitive
scientists away from an input-output/bottom-up (reductionist) model
of the brain towards the realisation that the brain is a
hierarchically-organized control system (my interpretation). However,
the new models are not being derived from HPCT (surprise!) but from
the area of complex dynamical systems. However, as I see and read it
there is no need to get too upset as these models, althought very
suggestive, do not actually explain anything so therfore leaving a
gap for a more encompassing role for HPCT.
I have the full text of this article and the URL for McCrone's
website if anyone's interested. The article 'blew me away' when I
read it (as some of you guys are wont to say). Bill is right: systems
of thought do not change incrementally but old paradigms do fall.
Perhaps we are about to witness the kind of paradigm shift that
pct'ers have hoped for for so long. Perhaps I am being premature but:
Congrats PCT, your time has come. What are your waiting for. Go for
it!
Your responses to this email will tell me a lot about my
understanding of brain organization and pct in particular.
However, its my contribution to ending the old year and beginning the
new on a high note. Best wishes for 1998. I hope its a good one.
Paul
Paul A. STOKES
Department of Sociology
University College Dublin
IRELAND
···
___________________________________________________
paul.stokes@ucd.ie
+353-1-7067002
[From Rupert Young (971239.1500 UT)]
(Paul Stokes (971230.1341 GMT)
Hi Paul, glad to see you are still on the list.
2. Has anyone seen the article by John McCrone in New Scientist, 13
December 1997 on "Wild Minds - the dynamics of the neural code".
Yes. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago on CSGnet (see Rupert Young
(971220.1400 UT)) though it was in a thread called "Input Functions" so it may
not have been noticed. I would be interested in McCrone's URL, though.
···
--
Regards,
Rupert
[From Paul Stokes (971230.1632 GMT)]
I have had a number of requests for the McCrone URL. Here it is:
http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/
You will find a link on that page to the full text of the New
Scientist article that I referred to.
All the best.
P.
Paul A. STOKES
Department of Sociology
University College Dublin
IRELAND
···
___________________________________________________
paul.stokes@ucd.ie
+353-1-7067002
[From Bill Powers (971230.0954 MST)]
[From Paul Stokes (971230.1341 GMT)]
1. Is not the the MoL a version of the Theory of Logical Types as
propounded by Russell and Whitehead and revitalised by Gregory
Bateson and Paul Watzlawick and others? If not, it is important to me
to know why not. I hope someone can oblige.
I know that I've referred to the Theory of Types in discussing the
hierarchy, but I can't put my hand on the reference. I don't talk about it
much because I can't pretend to grasp Russell and Whitehead's mathematics.
All I know is that there's some resemblance between what they said and my
concept of the hierarchy of perceptions.
2. Has anyone seen the article by John McCrone in New Scientist, 13
December 1997 on "Wild Minds - the dynamics of the neural code". In
this articles McCrone describes the new moves by some cognitive
scientists away from an input-output/bottom-up (reductionist) model
of the brain towards the realisation that the brain is a
hierarchically-organized control system (my interpretation). However,
the new models are not being derived from HPCT (surprise!) but from
the area of complex dynamical systems. However, as I see and read it
there is no need to get too upset as these models, althought very
suggestive, do not actually explain anything so therfore leaving a
gap for a more encompassing role for HPCT.
I'll get hold of the article. Also, I'd like to have the URL of McCrone's
web page.
One thing to keep in mind. My first paper was published in 1960, and picked
up to be reprinted in the journal General Systems and in a book on
communication. Somewhere between five and seven thousand copies of B:CP
have been sold in the US since 1973. It was also published in England. I've
published in quite a number of mainstream journals, including Science and
Psych Review. I've also published an article in System Dynamics Review.
There isn't really much excuse for someone to publish a theory about
hierarchical control without at least giving me a parenthetical citation.
Does McCrone cite me? Very few people do when they write on this subject.
Maybe they think I must be dead by now and won't object.
Good wishes for the coming year to you, too.
Best,
Bill P.
[From Bruce Nevin (971230.1143 EST)]
Paul Stokes (971230.1341 GMT) --
1. Is not the the MoL a version of the Theory of Logical Types
I expect you're thinking that the resolution of conflicts in PCT
corresponds to the resolution of paradoxes in the Theory of Types. Example:
on one side of a card is printed "The sentence on the other side of this
card is true." On the other side of the card is printed "The sentence on
the other side of this card is false." A verbal equivalent of Necker's cube.
Taking Jourdain's card paradox (above) as an example, the usual resolution
recognizes a hierarchy of metalanguage reference. A reference to a sentence
is metalinguistic. Starting with either sentence, the sentence on the other
side (sentence 2) is in a metalanguage relative to that of the first. Flip
the card, and the reference back to sentence 1 puts sentence 2 in a
metalanguage relative to sentence 1; but it is already in the object
language relative to sentence 1, so it cannot be in a metalanguage. The
recognition of metalanguage relations is "up a level" from the sentences
themselves. This recognition is represented in metadiscourse about the card
and its paradox. The hierarchy of metalanguage reference is purely
linguistic, however, not correlated with levels of perceptual control. I
believe this is as far as Whithead and Russell go.
It appears to me that extensions beginning with Bateson's double bind
hypothesis, through Watzlawick, Pierce (construction of social meaning),
family systems theorists, and so on, are metaphorical. That is, I believe
they use Logical Type metaphorically to describe conflict as we know it in
PCT. They recognized a pattern but lacked a theory properly to account for
it. Bateson's discussion of deutero-learning and the role of paradox in
learning and in evolution should be compared with PCT accounts.
Logical types concern relations among predicates in a language-like
representation of logic. A class is of a higher type than its members.
Russell projected a hierarchy of individuals, properties of individuals,
properties of properties, etc. This was enough to resolve most of the stock
logical paradoxes, such as the liar paradox. For vicious circle paradoxes,
Whithead and Russell extended this hierarchy of classes to a hierarchy of
predicates or logical functions, each order of functions quantifying over
functions of lower order.
The relation of logical types to the perceptual hierarchy is not
established. Russell's classes are somehow "in the world," and Russell and
Whithead's logical predicates refer to the classes. All of this derives
from the denotative capacity of natural language without in any way
explicating it. To be sure, there is every reason to expect that words are
of kinds corresponding to levels of the perceptual hierarchy. Bateson, et
al. assume something like this, but so far as I know the assumption is
without warrant from fundamental research.
If I'm wrong about that, I'd love to have pointers to the relevant research.
I have the full text of this article and the URL for McCrone's
website if anyone's interested.
I don't have access to _New Scientist_. Do you have the article on line? In
any case, please post the URL.
Bruce Nevin