[Martin Taylor 2017.10.01.16.01]
[From Rick Marken (2017.10.01.1220)]
MT. And just how does that fact relate to what you said, that " "claiming",
in itself, is all a theory has to do to be
revolutionary."
Yes, that is, and always
has been, obvious. It would be most unlikely that anyone, let
alone a larva, would control a perception of the power that
relates their speed around a curve to the radius of curvature. The
fact that usually, but not always, there is a power-law
relationship, must be a side-effect. Has anybody ever disputed it?
Except that it doesn't, as
has been proven.
It's not my criticism that they would publish. My letter was simply
to ask them to submit it to some uncommitted expert to check its,
and your, validity. But one of the other editors already had a
rebuttal to your paper in the reviewing process, and he said that he
would send it to me after review, which he hasn’t done. Another of
the three (not Goodale) said my letter should be published, which I
had not intended but which I accepted if they wanted to publish it,
so maybe it has gone out for review as well.
Actually it was. It completely changed, for half a century, the way
psychological researchers thought about psychology, and its effects
still linger, as the thread on “reinforcement learning” attests.
Anyway, selective quoting is not a pleasant debating tactic. I
presented five examples, not two, from widely different domains, and
could offer more if necessary. But of course, that’s only one of the
three legs on which the claim of “revolutionary” stands.
I guess some might call it
revolutionary, but I would call it a counter-revolution against
behaviourism, since it really went back to the 19th century.
As did the behaviourist revolution.
I think that what I said in the manifesto you so selectively quote
says some of the same. I quote: "* One could look at the effects
that might be expected if it was widely accepted. Would anything
change much? If a lot of things would change drastically, then
that would be a reason for calling it revolutionary. But if just
slipping it in “under the hood” as it were, in the way one can
change software modules without changing their interface to the
world, should it then be called “revolutionary”? I can’t prove it,
but my belief is that PCT is revolutionary in this sense* . "
That is the sense of your quote from Powers.
The sense of the Powers quote is also captured to some extent in my
second of four reasons for considering PCT revolutionary. Again I
quote: " * Another approach might be to consider whether acceptance
of PCT would change ways of looking at problems in different
domains that are usually considered unrelated. The “Behavioural
Illusion” might flag this possibility. If effects are first
examined as possibly being caused by people controlling certain
perceptions, then approaches to solutions for problems created by
those effects might be quite different from the approaches that
treat people as pawns in a greater game. The “Behavioural
illusion” is only one indicator of this possibility. Maybe PCT
could offer an approach to solutions for problems that seem to
have no solution. Then it would be revolutionary. I believe PCT is
indeed revolutionary in this second sense, but again I can’t prove
it other than by pointing to a few examples, which really is no
proof*. "
By the way, if what you mean by "* you have never been able (or,
perhaps, never wanted) to see the revolutionary nature of PCT in
these terms* " is that I don’t totally agree with Bill, you are
correct. But not in saying “perhaps wanted”, because I have no
particular reference value for the truth of a statement “PCT is
revolutionary”. I perceive that it is, but I would not be disturbed
if someone proved that it was actually invented by Aristothenes the
Mage in Carthage 2500 years ago.
Where I disagree is in that not all of experimental psychology uses
data from the control of perceptions. The actions that the subject
produces are indeed to control perceptions, but the detail of those
actions sometimes depends on a perception not being controlled. When
someone pushes a button to tell an experiment which light flashed
just now, the button push is an action controlling a perception of
the experimenter being satisfied. The selection of which button to
push depends on something else, possibly which light the
experimenter caused to flash – if the subject really is controlling
for the experimenter being satisfied. The subject has zero influence
on what light did flash, nor on what light will flash the next time
the question is asked. It’s not a controlled perception.
The fact that the behavioural illusion does not prevent analysis of
the properties of the control system also is a reason for modifying
Powers’s claim. If what he said was true, and it is, except for the
bold-faced part, then the bold-faced part cannot be true. If the
bold-faced part were true, then something must be wrong in the rest
of the quote, taken by itself out of context. But we remember that
Powers was writing this in a polemical paper intended to shake
people up, to disturb their controlled perceptions. Making
provocative statements like the bold-faced quote is a good technique
for doing that. Later is the time to think about what it really
means.
No, it's your misuse of mathematics that leads me to say that.
Let's suppose the first part of that syllogism is true. It leads to
the same kind of logical nonsense as your power law paper.
All correct revolutionary ideas are seen as nonsense.
My idea is seen as nonsense.
Therefore my idea is correct and revolutionary.
Yeah, right!
Rah for the revolution. All cockamamie ideas are true if someone
calls them nonsense.
Martin
···
Martin Taylor (2017.09.29.17.28]
MT: Where on earth did you get that idea?
RM: From this:Â
RM: What I question is not what
is claimed but the idea that “claiming”, in
itself, is all a theory has to do to be
revolutionary.Â
MT:..a theory isrevolutionary if it simultaneously has a wider range of
claim than other theories that explain some of
the same data… [Emphasis mine]
Â
MT: I guess it must be stuck inyour head, like your nonsense idea about the power law,
RM: My nonsense idea about the power law is simply that
it is an obvious side-effect of control (obvious to anyone who
understands PCT).
The
mathematics in my (and Dennis Shaffer’s) paper on the
power law (Marken, R. and Shaffer, D. (2017)
The Power Law of Movement: An Example of a Behavioral
Illusion, Experimental Brain Research , 235,
1835–1842) explain why this power law is consistenttly
found using regression analysis.
By the way, I
have not heard back from anyone regarding the letter you
wrote to the editors of * Experimental
Brain Research* Â purporting
to explain why our analysis was wrong. So I will
apparently not get an opportunity to publicly rebut your
critique. If I don’t hear from the journal editors
before the end of the this month I’ll post my rebuttal
to CSGNet. But I’d rather publish my rebuttal in the
journal so I’d appreciate it if you could nudge the
editors about getting your criticism of our paper
published.
MT: (1) That tracking a cursor on a screen andsuccessful psychotherapy can have the same explanation.
RM: Behaviorists think that pressing a bar in a Skinner
box and psychotherapy (in the form of behavior
modification) have the same explanation. Doesn’t that make
behaviorism revolutionary in your book as well.
RM: But I thought you said that you find
PCT to be revolutionary. So what I would
like to know is what did you find PCT to
explain more parsimoniously than other
theories. What, in other words, convinced
you that PCT is revolutionary? Just one or
two examples will do.Â
Â
MT: (2) That this very sameexplanation deals with the intricacies of conversation,
the design of human-computer interfaces, and with the
reasons for formal rituals.
RM: Cognitive psychologists think that information
processing models of mind/behavior explain the intricacies
of conversation, the design of human/computer interfaces
(see Don Norman) and the reasons for formal rituals. By
your criteria, the cognitive revolution really was indeed
a revolution, contrary to my argument in the “Revolution”
paper I posted (Marken,
R. S. (2009) You Say You Had a Revolution:
Methodological Foundations of
Closed-Loop Psychology, * Review of General
Psychology,*13, 137-145).
RM: I think your reasons for seeing PCT as
revolutionary are just ways to keep it from being truly
revolutionary. I think PCT is revolutionary for the same
reason Powers thought it was; PCT is revolutionary
because, as Powers says in the following quote, it shows
that “…the very basis of experimental psychology breaks
down…”
Â
"The correlationbetween a controlled quantity and either its
associated disturbance or the handle position is
normally lower than .1; a
well-practiced subject will frequently produce a
correlation of zero to two
significant figures. At the same time, the correlation
between magnitude of
disturbance and handle position is normally higher than
.99 (I can often reach .998
in the simpler experiments). To appreciate the meaning
of these figures, one
has to remember that the subject cannot sense any of the
disturbances except
through their effects on the input quantities, the
cursor positions.
Â
If the controlledinput quantity shows a correlation of
essentially zero with the behavior, any standard
experimental design would
reject it as contributing nothing to the variance of
behavior. But the
disturbance that contributes essentially 100% of the
variance of the behavior
can act on the organism only via the variable that shows
no significant
correlation with behavior. ** Not only the old
cause-effect model breaks down when
one is dealing with an N system, the very basis of
experimental psychology
breaks down also."** [emphasis mine]Â (Powers, W.
T. (1978) Quantitative analysis of purposive systems:
Some spadework at the foundations of experimental
psychology, Psychological Review, 417-435).Â
RM: I think it is the fact that you have never been
able (or, perhaps, never wanted) to see the
revolutionary nature of PCT in these terms
that leads you to say things like my idea about the
power law is nonsense.
That's the way the establishment views all
revolutionary scientific ideas. As nonsense. Plate
tectonics anyone? You’re old road is rapidly fadin’. Get
out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand.