Boris,
I am not the best equipped to carry such a discussion with you, though I will be glad to participate as I can once you get it going. You should be corresponding with Martin Taylor and reading Martin’s multi-volume book in progress. I have no idea what preparation you may have for the mathematical aspects of his work, but he is also deeply grounded in the physiological aspects and the perceived behavioral and social consequences. I suggest you write to him directly if he doesn’t respond here. He recently posted an excerpt in a discussion of robotics.
We all come to PCT with our particular prior experience and training, and synecdoche is the inevitable rule of our conduct: like the fabled blind men and the elephant, we each assume that the aspect that we grasp is the whole. The breadth and scope of PCT forces change on us all, and that process of change does not stop. The Babel-sundered specializations of the life sciences implicate one another, so changes in some other field are liable to come 'round and affect my own ‘home base’ even after I thought the ramifications of the PCT revolution there were clear.
Just assume good will, be civil, maintain awareness that everyone’s comprehension of PCT is incomplete, and you can get a hearing for your views–and you might learn something too.
I started looking at your youtube video this morning. I have a number of obligations intervening. I will return to it as soon as I can. It would be helpful for you to post the slides or a PDF rendition of the slides. I heard Warren’s voice giving some help about how to advance the slides. Introducing you, the convener said you were educated in sports and health, had a university degree in pedagogical informatics, and an MD (medical doctor?) in social pedagogics using Maturana and Powers, and 40 years’ work in education in schools. Now this is my rendition of his rendition of (presumably) your notes, so probably I’ve got something wrong. So please write a brief introduction of yourself and post it in the member introduction subcategory.
You note that Maturana published about e. choli chemotaxis in 1989. That is the same year that Bill Powers and Rick Marken jointly published on the same topic:
Marken, R. S., & Powers, W. T. (1989). Random-walk chemotaxis: Trial and error as a control process. Behavioral Neuroscience, 103(6), 1348–1355. APA PsycNet [Repr. in R.S. Marken (1992) Mind readings: Experimental studies of purpose pp. 87-105.]
They cite
Koshland, D.E. (1980) Behavioral chemotaxis as a model behavioral system. New York: Raven Press.
Presumably, Maturana makes the same citation and his observation is also derived from Koshland’s published work.
My impression over the years has been that Ashby and Maturana and Powers are in agreement about the primacy of intrinsic homeostasis, but that where Bill saw that as the ultimate arbiter of reference values and of learned organization of the behavioral hierarchy, which in turn governs behavior within tolerable error, they saw homeostasis of intrinsic variables as more directly governing the behavioral feedback loops with the environment. In simpler organisms it can certainly seem so.
I don’t want to comment in any detail on your explanation of Ashby’s diagrams without having more time to do so with care. As I said, I would prefer to be a secondary contributor to your conversation with someone more well prepared than myself. In any case, I have to interrupt any further look at this to deal with some more immediately vital issues.
/Bruce