[From Bruce Nevin (2000.10.06.1428 EDT)]
Bill Powers (2000.10.06.0739 MDT)--
With this belt-and-suspenders approach to explanation, it
might seem that you're doubly secure, but in fact two explanations are
worse than none, especially if each makes the other redundant. The problem
with having two explanations is that if one happens to fail in a given test
you can always fall back on the other -- which means that no test is valid
because the combination of theories is unfalsifiable. When there is no way
you can be proven wrong, you know you have committed a scientific boo-boo.
What I suggested (2000.10.05.1138 EDT) was not a second explanation of the same phenomena, rather a separate mechanism with a different scope, whose effects intersect with or impinge upon the control hierarchy. Possibly this is a more primitive mechanism, that which predominates in organisms lacking or having only a very rudimentary nervous system.
I've changed the subject heading to distinguish this from the point that you are defending.
One could test this by seeing if a person quitting smoking could substitute sucking on something else when the craving to suck on a cigarette arises. I spoke with someone recently who successfully substituted mint-flavored toothpicks. Another person might dislike mint, so this couldn't easily be standardized across a population.
These things also get tricky to test because of non-obvious loops through various metabolic cycles. For example, a person who has become accustomed to a high intake of sugar or alcohol has thereby modified the response of the pancreas, driving the mechanism for homeostasis of blood sugar into oscillation (hypoglycemia). Over a much longer term, the isles of Langerhans in the pancreas break down (the diabetes that typifies long-term alcoholism). Folks in AA I understand often substitute candy and coffee, doing nothing for the underlying metabolic disequilibrium. On the other hand, of 100 alcoholics cured of hypoglycemia in the late 1940s or early 1950s, almost all ceased being alcoholics (_Body, Mind and Sugar_, A.M. Abrahamson & A.W. Pezet, 1951).
Bruce Nevin
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At 09:07 AM 10/06/2000 -0600, Bill Powers wrote: