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- Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 14:25:54 -0500
- Sender: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <CSG-L@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
- From: psy_delprato@EMUNIX.EMICH.EDU
- Subject: Where are the Goals
- Lines: 34
-
- [FROM: Dennis Delprato (921215)]
-
- Only skimmed over reviewer's comments on Rick's most
- recent clash with tradition. Two quick points:
-
- 1. On goals: One impediment to people like the reviewers
- grasping PCT is the tendency to treat PCT as saying something
- about what they know as goals (fine). BUT the problem is that
- they do not get away from the conventional notion that the
- goals are "out there." I suggest that this one important factor
- in many not grasping what the likes of Rick are saying.
-
- 2. On feedback control: The crude reactions to feedback control
- especially frustrate me. Mainstreamers seem to take one or more
- of the following positions:
-
- a. Feedback control is not important in psychological behavior.
- b. It is important but we know all there is to know about what's
- going on here. Let's get on with the important stuff.
- c. Feedback? Oh, you mean reinforcement. This has been beaten
- to death. Or--I am quite up on reinforcement, am continuing
- the work of the great learning theorists.
- d. Feedback control -- I agree it is important for motor skills,
- but we are not interested in this area.
- e. Feedback? -- Too mechanical, OK for machines but not for....
- f. Feedback? That's information on how well one is approximating
- a goal that is out there in one's external environment.
- g. Feedback? Control? I don't know what your are talking about
- and that ain't all 'cause I don't give a damn either.
-
- This is not a very sophisticated classification of reactions to
- feedback control, but it does begin to give some idea of how
- it is that K. U. Smith's and now Powers's work tends to be met
- with wide yawns.
-