ON PHYSICAL MODEL EXPLANATIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract

MUCH current theoretical work in psychology takes the form of looking for appropriate physical models with which to describe, by analogy, the findings of experiment and observation. The ' problem of consciousness' is shelved, or regarded as a logically different sort of question from those the experimentalist can hope to answer with his techniques. The experimentalist asks instead what sort of mechanism could perform the tasks undertaken by the central nervous system. He considers the ordered activity of the organism in performing a skill, and the changes in performances during the learning of skills, and he considers perception and learning and nervous organisation in terms of practical or theoretically possible machines. Perhaps the best-known examples of this way of thinking in psychology are the computer and the servo-mechanism analogies. The former was suggested by the feats of the large electronic calculating machines capable of producing numerical solutions to problems requiring perhaps years of work by a mathematician unaided by machines. The latter analogy was suggested during the war, when for example, automatic gun-aiming devices were developed which caused guns to follow moving targets in a manner which seemed similar to eye-hand co-ordination. The servo-mechanism analogy has proved useful both in interpreting the physiological mechanisms responsible for controlled movement, and for the design of machines such as aeroplanes which must be accurately controlled by men. The man is himself regarded as part of the total servo-loop, his parameters are determined (for example the phase angle of the error for various input frequencies), and these are accepted as part of the data to be considered when designing the control systems of aircraft.