I’m sorry, but I’m still utterly baffled by your comments, since your proposed “purely neuronal” model is more analogous to the Turing machine.
So? I agree that the “purely neuronal” model would be really complex (though not as complex as the Turing machine would be). I just brought it up in order to show how a model doesn’t “need to have a sexiness comparator anyway”, so you do have to justify the simplicity gained when you posit that there is one.
It sounds a bit like the part you’re missing is the PCT experimental design philosophy, aka the Test—a way of formulating and testing control hypotheses at arbitrary levels of the hierarchy. To test “sexiness” or some other high-level value, it is not necessary to completely specify all its lower-level components, unless of course the goal of your experiment is to identify those components.
But if you don’t specify all of the lower level components, then your controls explanation is just a restating of the problem, not a simplifying of it. The insight you claim you are getting from it is actually from your commonsense reasoning. Indeed, virtually every insight you “explain” by PCT, you got some other way.
We don’t need, for example, to break down how object invariance happens to be able to do an experiment where a rat presses a bar!
Sure, but that’s because you don’t need to account for the rat’s ability to identify the bar in a wide variety of contexts and transformations, which is the entire point of looking for invariants.
But if you don’t specify all of the lower level components, then your controls explanation is just a restating of the problem, not a simplifying of it. The insight you claim you are getting from it is actually from your commonsense reasoning.
Kindly explain what “commonsense reasoning” explains the “symptom substitution” phenomenon in hypnosis, and in particular, explains why the duration of effect varies, using any model but PCT.
While I can look up “symptom substitution”, I’ll to know more specifically what you mean by this. But I’d have to be convinced that PCT explains it first in a way that doesn’t smuggle in your commonsense reasoning.
Now, if you want examples of how commonsense reasoning leads to the same conclusions that are provided as examples of the success of PCT, that I already have by the boatload. This whole top-level post is an example of using commonsense reasoning but attributing it to PCT. For example, long before I was aware of the concept of a control system, or even feedback (as such) I handled my fears (as does virtually everyone else) by thinking through what exactly it is about the feared thing that worries me.
Furthermore, it is obvious to most people that if you believe obstacles X, Y, and Z are keeping you from pursuing goal G, you should think up ways to overcome X, Y, and Z, and yet Kaj here presents that as something derived from PCT.
While I can look up “symptom substitution”, I’ll to know more specifically what you mean by this.
Specifically, find a “commonsense” explanation that explains why symptom substitution takes time to occur, without reference to PCT’s notion of a perception averaged over time.
Googling “symptom substitution” lead me to a journal article that argued that people have tried and failed to find evidence that it happens...
That’s Freudian symptom substitution, and in any case, the article is splitting hairs: it says that if you stop a child sucking its thumb, and it finds some other way to get its needs met, then that doesn’t count as “symptom substitution”. (IOW, the authors of the paper more or less defined it into nonexistence, such that if it exists and makes sense, it’s not symptom substitution!)
Also, the paper raises the same objection to the Freudian model of symptom substitution that I do: namely, that there is no explanation of the time frame factor.
In contrast, PCT unifies the cases both ruled-in and ruled out by this paper, and offers a better explanation for the varying time frame issue, in that the time frame is governed by the perceptual decay of the controlled variable.
So? I agree that the “purely neuronal” model would be really complex (though not as complex as the Turing machine would be). I just brought it up in order to show how a model doesn’t “need to have a sexiness comparator anyway”, so you do have to justify the simplicity gained when you posit that there is one.
But if you don’t specify all of the lower level components, then your controls explanation is just a restating of the problem, not a simplifying of it. The insight you claim you are getting from it is actually from your commonsense reasoning. Indeed, virtually every insight you “explain” by PCT, you got some other way.
Sure, but that’s because you don’t need to account for the rat’s ability to identify the bar in a wide variety of contexts and transformations, which is the entire point of looking for invariants.
Kindly explain what “commonsense reasoning” explains the “symptom substitution” phenomenon in hypnosis, and in particular, explains why the duration of effect varies, using any model but PCT.
While I can look up “symptom substitution”, I’ll to know more specifically what you mean by this. But I’d have to be convinced that PCT explains it first in a way that doesn’t smuggle in your commonsense reasoning.
Now, if you want examples of how commonsense reasoning leads to the same conclusions that are provided as examples of the success of PCT, that I already have by the boatload. This whole top-level post is an example of using commonsense reasoning but attributing it to PCT. For example, long before I was aware of the concept of a control system, or even feedback (as such) I handled my fears (as does virtually everyone else) by thinking through what exactly it is about the feared thing that worries me.
Furthermore, it is obvious to most people that if you believe obstacles X, Y, and Z are keeping you from pursuing goal G, you should think up ways to overcome X, Y, and Z, and yet Kaj here presents that as something derived from PCT.
Specifically, find a “commonsense” explanation that explains why symptom substitution takes time to occur, without reference to PCT’s notion of a perception averaged over time.
Googling “symptom substitution” lead me to a journal article that argued that people have tried and failed to find evidence that it happens...
That’s Freudian symptom substitution, and in any case, the article is splitting hairs: it says that if you stop a child sucking its thumb, and it finds some other way to get its needs met, then that doesn’t count as “symptom substitution”. (IOW, the authors of the paper more or less defined it into nonexistence, such that if it exists and makes sense, it’s not symptom substitution!)
Also, the paper raises the same objection to the Freudian model of symptom substitution that I do: namely, that there is no explanation of the time frame factor.
In contrast, PCT unifies the cases both ruled-in and ruled out by this paper, and offers a better explanation for the varying time frame issue, in that the time frame is governed by the perceptual decay of the controlled variable.