# understanding doesn't necessarily imply agreement

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/understanding-doesnt-necessarily-imply-agreement/15319>\
**Category:** CSG1996\
**Created:** [October 17, 1996, 1:05am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/understanding-doesnt-necessarily-imply-agreement/15319 "1996-10-17T01:05:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bill\_Benzon](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@Bill\_Benzon](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bill_Benzon)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 1996, 1:05am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/understanding-doesnt-necessarily-imply-agreement/15319/1 "1996-10-17T01:05:32Z")

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Rick Marken (961016.1330) sez:

> Bill Benzon (961016) --
> 
> > HPCT seems to have as its central problem, that of visually guided  
> > movement.
> 
> No. HPCT has as its central problem the explanation of purposeful behavior.  
> Purposeful movement is one kind of purposeful behavior. One thing PCT does  
> show is that purposeful movement is not "visually guided"; if anything,  
> purposeful movement guides controlled visual variables.

You got me there. A major mis-statement on my part. Let's go again.

Whatever your largest claims, what you seem to investigate most closely is  
the motoric control of visual variables (e.g. tracking). The control  
systems which interest you have sensory input (vision) and motoric output.  
Still, one needs to recognize a refrigerator before one can take an action  
which will present you with the percption of an open refrigerator door,  
etc.

> > I want a model where the inputs and outputs are sensory.
> 
> I think that would be at the next theory store on your left: the one selling  
> "perceptual output theory"😉

Sounds like a good label. And I don't see why PCTer's couldn't give some  
attention to the problem. When you look at brain anatomy, you find  
reciprocal connections between neurofunctional areas which are entirely  
within, e.g. (one of) the visual channel(s). You might want to consider the  
possibibility that the afferent connections are perceptual or input signals  
and the efferent connections are reference signals or output signals. Of  
course, they might also be that old neuropsychological favorite,  
feed-forward.

> Bill Benzon (961016b) --
> 
> > I adopted PCT around 20 years ago for certain limited purposes
> 
> I know that you have adopted PCT for "certain limited purposes". I just  
> wonder whether you \_understand\_ what you have adopted.
> 
> > I don't need to be convinced that the hierarchy is a real good  
> > thing and so is reorganization;
> 
> That's up to you. But I prefer to subject my beliefs to continuous scrutiny.  
> I am continuously convincing myself that HPCT is "a real good thing" by  
> testing the HPCT model against evidence (data).

But do you distinguish between using HPCT to investigate behavior and using  
behavior to investigate HPCT?

> > Verbal reformulations and 3-level demos aren't going to convince me that  
> > Hays and I have gathered a lot of unnecessary intellectual machinery.
> 
> Knowing that should save you quite a bit of time.

Get real. There's little in HPCT as it currently exists which says much in  
detail about how, for example, language works. If you can't (or won't)  
make HPCT work in that domain, what makes you think I have half a chance?  
It is easy to imagine how an individual might have as a conversational  
goal, "Get person X to understand idea Y." But I have to work real hard to  
even begin imagining some kind of explicit model that can do such a thing  
and the model I begin to imagine has more than a stack of servos and some  
switch-gear & memory boxes to get it operating.

> I'm not asking you to give HPCT "a chance". I'm suggesting ways to sharpen  
> your understanding of the HPCT model.

No doubt my understanding of HPCT can be sharpened. But, you seem to  
assume that a person who disagrees with you does so because they don't  
understand your explanation. You seem rather blind to the possiblity that  
someone could (more or less) understand your explanation and find it  
inadequate.

> So, yes, at the moment I think what you think I think;-)

I don't think you understood what I asked.

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