[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Michael Hamilton]

Craig,

> If I am an Elvis impersonator, I can compare my "Elvis" to the original Elvis (as preserved in motion pictures, sound recordings, etc.).  But if I am trying to copy the patterns of my elders in training, language acquisition, etc., I don't have access to both patterns to compare/contrast them.  If I don't have access to BOTH, what good is having access to ONE of them?  So what I do is imitate their behavior, speech, etc.  And when this is successful (as you noted, after an inter-active process), we say my elders & I have the same patterns.  The patterns are a result of the imitation (i.e., successful learning), not a pre-condition to it.

Okay. I would say that it's a lot _easier_ to notice a pattern when it
is present in multiple instances (Elvid and the impersonator have the
same greasy hair, etc). However, I'm arguing that the impersonator
must have spotted the "greasy hair" pattern in Elvis in the first
place, in order to imitate it. So access to one example is enough. As
you said: "So what I do is imitate their behavior, speech, etc" - i.e.
you pick out patterns of behavior and speech to copy. But yes, the
pattern is a lot clearer when there are several examples to compare.

Have I missed something?