[Martin Taylor 2012.11.28.23.11]
[From Rick Marken (2012.11.25.0940)]
Martin Taylor (2012.11.25.00.23)--
RM: I don't see what changing minds has to do with it. It's just a
logic problem, as far as I can tell. Martin says X is true. Bill and I
say X is false.MT: Could you point to the place where this happened?
Let X = *ffordance. My overall impression has been that Bill and I
have been saying things that show that X is either wrong, misleading
or useless, ie. false.
Have you actually read anything I have written about effordances? If you answer "yes", can you explain how "effordance" can in itself be wrong? To quote the most succinct description of an effordance from previous messages, an effordance "is just a condition in a person's environment through which a person can control a perception." To call such a thing "wrong" is a categorical error. A condition in a person's environment is neither right nor wrong. It just is.
I grant that Bill has been going to some length to show that "affordances" may mislead people into thinking that external conditions induce people to perform some actions. It was in agreement with Bill on this that I disagreed with Kent, and it is why I coined the word "effordance" as a substitute for "environmental affordance". I cannot help it if people are misled by the use of a neologism, any more than Bill can help it if people learning PCT are misled by thinking a "perception" must be consciously experienced. At least I am using a new word, rather than using an old word in a new sense.
As for whether the concept is useless, all effordances are useless if nobody uses them to control a perception. For you, the concept of "effordance" is useless because you are not controlling a perception for which the concept might be useful. That doesn't mean it is useless for others who are interested in how the control behaviour of one person may affect the possibilities for control by another person -- which was Kent's original issue.
I'm not sure how "i.e." (= "id est", which means "that is") follows from "wrong, misleading, or useless", nor do I follow how "a condition in a person's environment through which a person can control a perception" can be false, unless by trying to use it the person fails to influence the perception in question.
MT: So far as I can see...You were apparently agreeing with me.
Quote [From Rick Marken (2012.11.1710)]:
What is
being insisted, I think, is that what an environmental object "makes
available" (affords) depends on the purposes of the person using that
object. What is being insisted, in other words, is that you have to
take_controlled variables_ into account before you can have any idea
what any particular "object" in the environment "makes available."MT: That is, and has been, my position.
RM: Then you agree with Bill and I that the concept of *ffordance is
unnecessary because it refers to things that are already included in
PCT as disturbances or feedback functions.
You truly haven't read anything I have written about effordances. That being the case, I see little point in writing more about them in dispute with you. However, before moving on to using the concept in controlling scientific perceptions I am trying to control, I will point out that a feedback function is not an effordance, though the feedback function for a specific control loop is influenced by what effordance(s) is/are used in the environmental feedback path.
Please note for future reference that the concept of effordance is unrelated to the concept of disturbance apart from the fact that both belong to the set of concepts that relate to environmental effects in control.
If I thought you were trying to understand rather than simply trying to oppose for opposition's sake, I would pursue the argument further. But what's the point?
Martin