I can’t match any of that up to Conant and Ashby’s paper, though.
As you say, the engineers designing a thermostat have a model of the system. But the thermostat does not. It simply compares the temperature with that set on the dial and turns a switch on and off. There is no trace of any model, prediction, expectation, knowledge of what its actions do, and so on. The engineers do have these things, the proof of which is that you can elicit their knowledge. The thermostat does not, the proof of which is that nowhere in the thermostat can any of these things be found.
The hunter is an obscure example, because no-one knows how humans accomplish such things, and instead we mostly make up stories based on what the process feels like from within. This method has a poor track record. More illuminating would be to look at a similar but man-made system: an automatic anti-aircraft gun shooting at a plane. Whether the control systems inside this device contain models is an empirical question, to be answered by looking at how it works. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. There is such a thing as model-based control, and there is such a thing as PID controllers (which do not contain models).
I can’t match any of that up to Conant and Ashby’s paper, though.
As you say, the engineers designing a thermostat have a model of the system. But the thermostat does not. It simply compares the temperature with that set on the dial and turns a switch on and off. There is no trace of any model, prediction, expectation, knowledge of what its actions do, and so on. The engineers do have these things, the proof of which is that you can elicit their knowledge. The thermostat does not, the proof of which is that nowhere in the thermostat can any of these things be found.
The hunter is an obscure example, because no-one knows how humans accomplish such things, and instead we mostly make up stories based on what the process feels like from within. This method has a poor track record. More illuminating would be to look at a similar but man-made system: an automatic anti-aircraft gun shooting at a plane. Whether the control systems inside this device contain models is an empirical question, to be answered by looking at how it works. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. There is such a thing as model-based control, and there is such a thing as PID controllers (which do not contain models).