hocus-pocus, God's Truth, and grammar with a "G"

[Brian MacWhinney]

Syd and FunkNet,
  It is my impression that the earlier contrast between hocus-pocus and
God's Truth theories had to do with whether the theorist actually
believed in the reality of the constructs of the theory.  God's Truth
people had the chutzpah to belief in the stuff they stipulated.
Hocus-pocus people were more realistic.
  The current contrast between emergentism and stipulationism is
somewhat different.  Emergentists with their self-organizing models are
like biologists playing around with the building blocks of life.  In
both cases, the results are seldom fully known at the outset and
researchers are forced to stand back and watch what the models can do.
If the models end up acquiring grammar, it was not by specific
stipulation of the outcome representations.  So, we might say that
emergentists believe in the God's Truth of hocus-pocus.

--Brian MacWhinney