When your theory's "explanation" of a phenomenon is simply a restatement of the phenomenon, and when your "model" doesn't actually specify the moving parts that help constrain your expectation, when your model implicitly assumes a separate solution to the problem, you don't have a theory; you have cleverly-disguised ignorance.
For example, when you say something like this:
when you seek a mate, the [control] reference [being tracked] is, of course, having a mate. You perceive that you do not have one, and take such steps as you think appropriate to find one.
You're asking RichardKennaway to recapitulate a very complex physical description in a short comment. But "Behavior: The Control Of Perception" actually describes almost a dozen different modeling layers to get from simple intensity perception all the way up to high-level concepts and long-term goals, each building on the last, and taking 18 chapters to do it. The inferential gap between non-PCT thinking and PCT-thinking is way too big for condensing to a comment. Try arguing evolution to a group of creationists, and see how far you can get in...
See this great little rationalist video here.