NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/698

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Posted-Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 21:32:07 PDT
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Date:         Fri, 14 Aug 1992 21:32:07 PDT
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Subject:      PCT vs cognitivism
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[From Rick Marken (920814.2200)]

Well, thanks to penni for giving me something to do this evening
that's more fun than watching "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"
(actually, I've never watched it for fear that one of my old high
school buddies would be on).

Ok. That's the header. Now to business.

penni sibun (920814) says:

>sorry.  i was just at the cognitive science conference with several
>hundred psychologists, and they didn't strike me as s-r modelers;

They've got new words for it. Let's just say they are cause-effect
modellers. Actually, lets not even say they are modellers.

>one
>of the keynote addresses was by turvey, who is a gibsonian (that is,
>has an interactionist model of organism/environment)

I won't say a thing.

Well. OK I will refer you to the two papers in chapter 6 of my "Mind
Readings" book. They are dedicated to Turvey and his bunch. I don't
think he's ever read them, though, unless he was a reviewer. I don't
think he would like them.

I must also mention that Turvey has the honor of having published the
longest, most systematic and most incorrect critique of PCT to date.
If you want to see ignorance posturing with pompous authority, check out
the first chapter (pp 1-39) in G. Stelmach (Ed.) Information
processing in motor control and learning. New York: Academic Press
(1979) -- the article is by Fowler and Turvey. A must read for PCTers.

>i think it would be a lot more
>constructive for me to understand your position if, instead of
>distinguishing your view from behaviorism, you distinguished it from
>cognitivism.  care to give it a shot?

Sure. Though I think we've done it before.

There are many incarnations of cognitivism. But what is common to all
of them (and what is commonly wrong) is that they view behavior as the
end result of mental processing. PCT says that it is perception that is
the result of "mental events" (reference signals). This apparently small
distinction is as big as the distinction between behaviorism (which
sees external events as the cause of behavior) and PCT. There are
several cognitive "models" that illustrate my point. One I particularly
like is a "hierarchical control" model of movement sequence generation
proposed by Rosenbaum.  This model assumes that the results of cognitive
plans (the little demons moving around the hierarchy) will be exactly
as expected. There is no notion that these results are also influenced
by external disturbances and that it is, thus, highly unlikely that
repeating the "plan" will repeat the result. What is probably happening
is that the subjects are controlling (among other things) perceptions
of transitions, sequences and configurations and maintaining these
perceptions at intended levels.

There are many other examples of cognitive "models" (I use quotes
because they never really try to make these models work in real
environments; if they did, they would learn a lot, FAST) but they
all have one thing in common -- once all the processing
has occurred, behavior just "pops out" as the end result. Sorry,
but behavior CANNOT happen that way. So, no matter how clever the
processing carried out by these "models", they cannot behave; so they
cannot be correct.

There are some cognitive models that have some closed loop character-
istics; and probably qualify as control system models of the control
of higher level variables. An example is Simon's theorm prover (and
current models that are similar, like the prolog language itself).
These models try to satisfy certain logical conditions (the reference
condition) by trying to satisfy other logical conditions in their
database. These are control models that work in a logical (not a
real) environment (the database).  These are interesting models and
they may eventually become useful as models of what Powers calls
"program level" control. I have no beef with these models -- I think
they are very clever. They are just not yet connected in a realistic
way to behavior.

>  in order to convince me, and other people
>(characterized as above) who loosely consider themselves to be
>interactionists, or situated activity theorists, or whatever, you need
>to step back from the pro-/anti-behaviorism debate.

I'm game.

>if you think it's too weird to consider that organism and environment
>are fundamentally inseparable, why not consider a slightly different
>take on it:  action and perception are inseparable; there is no way
>you can draw a line and say that on one side is the organism's action
>and on the other is the organism's perception.  on this view, what
>could it mean to locate control in the head of the organism?

In Bill Powers' "Living control systems" page 251-252, precisely
this question is answered, simply and quantitatively. The short
answer is "because the organism amplifies, the environment dampens".
(my quotes, not Bill's).

>on the interactionist view, control is neither in the head not in the
>environment.

Sounds fine; but it turns out to be wrong -- a common problem when
trying to understand the world with words instead of models.

I would like to learn about interactionism. But I
didn't really learn much from the quotes you provided. Perhaps
you could describe an interactionist model of some very
simple phenomenon. Matter of fact, perhaps you might start by
explaining the nature of the phenomenon that interactionism
explains. Does it explain the phenomenon of control? If so, how?

Best regards

Rick

     **************************************************************

Richard S. Marken                   USMail: 10459 Holman Ave
The Aerospace Corporation                   Los Angeles, CA 90024
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