The Devil, You Say!

CSGnet Archive CSG1994
1

Tom Bourbon [941117.1617]

I have surfaced momentarily from a new study (on perceptual control by
patients in a clinical setting) and I am catching up on some of the mail,
which includes:

[From Bruce Abbott (941117.1115 EST)]

. . .

Apparently I have been playing Devil's advocate all too well--people are
starting to suspect that I am in fact the Devil. Let me assure you that I am
not. I do not consider reinforcement theory to be viable, nor do I have any
faith in it.

Whew! That's a relief. Now, the question we all want to ask: are you an
alien? Suspicions are running high. You seem to get just a little bit too
much pleasure out of zinging photon torpedoes at the Enterprise :wink:

. . . What I do believe is that the Law of Effect as a summary
DESCRIPTION captures something essential about learning of the type
exemplified by Thorndike's cats in their puzzleboxes. Thorndike called it
"selecting and connecting" or "trial and success learning;" Skinner and others
have called it "selection by consequences." It is a powerful principle,
supported by over 100 years of observation.

Let's see, now. "Law of Effect" = "a summary description" = a "powerful
principle," which is "supported by observation."

The Devil, you say! :wink:

What DID you say, Bruce? Is the LE a description, a principle, or something
else?
. . .

The problem with your e. coli demonstration is that it attempts to attack
traditional reinforcement theory an area where it has the relationships right
(although clumsily described in the language of discrete events).

For the sake of clarity in the record, _which_ relationships does TRT have
right in this instance? This is a serious question, with not even a smidgen
of hostility or criticism implied.

In
attempting to demonstrate this fact, I am not defending traditional
reinforcement theory as the correct account. Wrong models can give correct
results, and this is especially true when the results in question are
precisely those that the model was developed to explain. As you have
correctly surmised, the challenge is no longer to show how TRT can explain the
learning of human participants in the e. coli simulation, but rather to
construct a PCT model that does the same. Rather than asserting that the
empirical Law of Effect does not work (under many circumstances it does), we
need to be forcefully demonstrating how PCT provides a superior explanation
for why, under those circumstances, it does and why, under other
circumstances, it does not.

The Devil, you say!

What did you say? TRT = an account = a model that gives results = an
explanation = The Law of Effect, which works under many circumstances.

All together, I believe you said:

"Law of Effect," which works under many circumstances = "a summary
description" = a "powerful principle," which is "supported by observation =
Traditional Reinforcement Theory = an account = a model that gives results =
an explanation.

Will the real TRT, aka Law of Effect, please stand up?

Hey, I think we're making progress.

The Devil, you say! :wink:

(Even though I was reading in catch-up mode the past several days, I enjoyed
watching the evolution of electronic E. coli, which has the mission to
boldly go where no bacterium has gone before.)

Live long and prosper,

Tom

2

[From Bruce Abbott (941117.1115 EST)]

Bill Powers (941116.0610 MST)]

Rick Marken (941114.1630) --

Let's try this again:

1) reinforcement theory is NOT the same as control theory.

2) reinforcement theory is NOT about what control theory is about --
control.

3) reinforcement theory is a completely and utterly incorrect
explanation of the behavior of organisms.

This is what we're trying to prove, isn't it? Bruce is offering
explanations in terms of reinforcement theory, trying to prove that
reinforcement theory works to explain the E. coli model of Ecoli4a. His
thesis is that yes, the PCT explanation works, but the reinforcement
approach works, too. So it does us no good to keep showing that the PCT
model works -- that has already been accepted.

Bill-- Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is what my Ptolemy-versus-
Copernicus "play" was all about: you have two models competing to explain the
same observables. Did you know that the Ptolemaic account, with all its
epicycles upon epicycles, does a BETTER job of predicting the observed motions
of the planets than does the Copernican model? (The reason is that the
epicycles introduce as many degrees of freedom as necessary to produce a
perfect fit to the data.) Question for thought: Why did I represent TRT as
Ptolemy and PCT as Copernicus and not vice versa? (Think about it before
continuing. Answer appears below.)

I think that's a pretty insulting thing to say to a person who honestly
considers reinforcement theory to be viable and has not yet agreed that
it is not. If we have to use emotional pressure (fear of being the only
one who doesn't get the joke) to make our point, then we're on shaky
ground. And we would be doing exactly the same thing that we complain
about: dismissing someone else's model without understanding it simply
because it seems to do something we consider impossible.

I'm not impressed by Bruce's faith in reinforcement theory. Neither
should he be swayed by the intensity of our belief in control theory.
This controversy has to be settled on scientific grounds, not on grounds
of who can defend his faith the most vehemently.

Apparently I have been playing Devil's advocate all too well--people are
starting to suspect that I am in fact the Devil. Let me assure you that I am
not. I do not consider reinforcement theory to be viable, nor do I have any
faith in it. What I do believe is that the Law of Effect as a summary
DESCRIPTION captures something essential about learning of the type
exemplified by Thorndike's cats in their puzzleboxes. Thorndike called it
"selecting and connecting" or "trial and success learning;" Skinner and others
have called it "selection by consequences." It is a powerful principle,
supported by over 100 years of observation.

Yet traditional reinforcement theory has the all important details wrong, and
this has led to 100 years of confusion and to several recent attempts at
correction (added epicycles?) by theorists such as Meehl, Premack, Allison,
Timberlake, Staddon, and several others. In failing to see the organism as a
perceptual control system governed by negative feedback, theorists have
committed serious blunders, including an analysis wedded to discrete events
rather than to relationships among continuous variables, a misunderstanding of
the role of "reinforcement" or "punishment" as feedback (with its attendant
confusion of the meanings of "positive" and "negative" feedback), and a
failure to distinguish the roles of these changes in variable-states in
learning versus the maintenance of behavior.

The problem with the Ptolemaic system was not that it failed utterly to
account for the apparent motions of the planets--in fact it did an excellent
job. The problem was that its assumptions were ad hoc and fundamentally
wrong. The same is true of traditional reinforcement theory.

The problem with your e. coli demonstration is that it attempts to attack
traditional reinforcement theory an area where it has the relationships right
(although clumsily described in the language of discrete events). In
attempting to demonstrate this fact, I am not defending traditional
reinforcement theory as the correct account. Wrong models can give correct
results, and this is especially true when the results in question are
precisely those that the model was developed to explain. As you have
correctly surmised, the challenge is no longer to show how TRT can explain the
learning of human participants in the e. coli simulation, but rather to
construct a PCT model that does the same. Rather than asserting that the
empirical Law of Effect does not work (under many circumstances it does), we
need to be forcefully demonstrating how PCT provides a superior explanation
for why, under those circumstances, it does and why, under other
circumstances, it does not.

Hey, I think we're making progress.

Regards,

Bruce