[Martin Taylor 2010.02.05.16.35]
[From Bill Powers (2010.02.05.0930 M<ST]
…it’s really futile to try to teach PCT using common
language alone. You never know what a person is going to hear when you
say a word. Just look at the discussions of belief, which are being
conducted mainly in common language. When Martin sees me referring to a
belief, he sees me writing about something that is given, not under
control, hard to change, very important and basic. When he uses the
same
word, I hear him (literally, I tend to imagine sketchy spoken words
flitting by as I read) describing things that are easily manipulated,
optional, tentative, and matters of convenience – not to be taken too
seriously.
When I describe here what I imagine as I hear the word belief, and when
I
describe what I guess that Martin imagines when he hears it, it’s
obvious
that we are talking at cross-purposes. We’re not talking about the same
phenomena, even if we’re using the same word.
This confusion and conflict would cease if we could simply burrow under
the words and describe the phenomena we’re talking about. Then, since
we
all understand PCT, we could offer whatever intepretations or analysis
of
the phenomena we wish, in PCT terms, our shared technical language in
which each important term has one and only one meaning.
I agree that we seem to be talking about quite different things when we
use the word “belief”, which I had not previously thought to be at all
problematic. I base this judgment on [From Bill Powers (2010.02.04.1625
MST)]: “I suggest that what we call “a belief” is simply a reference
condition”. There is absolutely no way that what I would call a
“belief” could possibly a reference condition. So we are clearly
talking at cross purpse, talking about different concepts. I’ll try to
clarify what I am talking about.
In my language, a “belief” is about what IS the case, not about what
one wants to be the case. Rick [From Rick Marken (2010.02.04.1510)]
says that while he reads “Pride and Prejudice” he believes that if he
stepped out of his front door, he would see horse-drawn carriages and
ladies wearing floor-length hoop skirts (“While the story is
happening it is true for me (if it’s a great story, like anything
written by Jane Austen). When I read, say, “Pride and Prejudice”, I
believe, I really do believe. (and I worry about the fact that I’m so
find of Mr. Darcy;-)”
If Rick is using the word “believe” to refer to the real world, the
absurd inference I drew is inevitable. But perhaps my inference is not
so absurd, given the following interchange:
[MT] In other words, when you "suspend disbelief", do you truly believe that what is in the story is about the real world?
[RM] Just as much as I believe that what is happening in the real world (the world of my perceptual experience) is about the real world (real reality, the existence of which is, of course, just a hypothesis).
Now unless what Rick means by “Just as much” is actually that he has no
belief in anything, and discounting his actual words, what I could
reasonably interpret Rick as believing (assuming he isn’t a
hallucinating schizophrenic) is some proposition along the lines of
“The real world could have been like that, even if it was not in fact
ever like that.” I had an experience of that kind when I read “The Lord
of the Rings” when it first came out, it was written in such a vivid
and internally consistent way. My housemate Frank once came to me
asking to re-borrow the book so that he could “see the plains of Rohan”
again. “See”, not “read about”. But I don’t believe the proposition
that Frank actually believed the Plains of Rohan to exist in the real
world.
I have been for several message iterations discussing the question of
whether it is actually possible for one to control a belief perception.
But Rick answered this way:
[MT] Can you control your belief to make it so?
[RM] I don't know what you're asking about here.
<small>
Given the preceding discussion, this is a strange answer. but nevertheless I will try to clarify the question. Given the value of a perception that we assume to be based on sensory data derived from the real world, can we generate output that would, without influencing the value of that perception, vary our level of belief as to how well the real world corresponds to that perception. I have been arguing that we can't, but I'm coming around to the other view, without (yet) accepting that we can control our level of belief about any particular perception, control being to influence in the direction that reduces error in a controlled perception.
The reason I'm coming around to the other view is as follows. Call the original perception P, and the belief perception B(P,X) -- the level of belief that perception P corresponds to state X in the outer world. In unknowable fact, P may represent X very exactly, moderately closely, or be far from true. As an example, let's say P is "That chair is red". I perceive the chair to be red, so the perception is solid. It is what it is. But does the (assumed to exist) chair have the properties ordinarily associate with red things -- notably reflecting longer wavelengths of visible light more than shorter ones. In other words, although I perceive the chair as red, do I believe it to be red? Perhaps not. Maybe in the last few seconds I have perceived what I believed to be the same chair as green and blue, so B(perceive chair as red, Chair is red) may not be very high. B(perceive chair as red, Someone is fiddling with the lighting colour) might be higher. "Chair is red" and "Someone is fiddling with the lighting colour" are two imagined states of the world, not mutually exclusive. One could believe or disbelieve either or both, but we could act to alter either degree of belief, though we might not be able to act to alter either in a pre-selected direction (in other words, we could alter the level of belief, but we could not control it). We could gather data, by, for example, going to the chair and placing on it a piece of paper we believe to be white. If the paper looks the same colour as the chair, we are likely to reduce B(perceive chair as red, Chair is red), and increase B(perceive chair as red, Someone is fiddling with the lighting colour). But if the paper continues to look white, we would increase B(perceive chair as red, Chair is red), while not reducing B(perceive chair is red, someone is fiddling with the lighting). But you can't choose which result is going to happen when you do the experiment of putting the paper o
n the chair.
The point of this example is to suggest that we can influence B(P,X) for any particular P and X by acting on the world to influence other related perceptions (colloquially "gathering data"). What we can't do is to control B(P,X), at least not easily. If we believe that some kinds of data would be likely to increase B(P,X), whereas other kinds would be likely to decrease it, we might choose to observe one or the other, and I guess that does happen (in science, it's called cheating or fraud, but when a big company funds research to show their product is useful and safe, that's sometimes what they do). So to some extent we can control B(P,X) sometimes. But more often, the real world provides us with perceptions that reflect X rather than P, and if P is actually far from correctly representing X, then it is unlikely that we can intentionally increase B(P,X); conversely, if P represents X very well, it is unlikely that we will be able to make observations that decrease B(P,X).
My original view (that I now think was misguided) was that a belief is what it is, not something that you can choose to alter simply because you can control in imagination and one of the components of the "belief" relationship is an imaginary representation of a possible state of the world. What I had ignored is that belief is itself a perception that can be influenced by action. However, I still don't think that control of perception is often possible, though it is possible to influence one's own belief about a particular perception's relationship to reality in a random direction (random because of the uncertain relationship between the imagined and the actual state of the real world).
</small>
We can’t control our own belief about anything, but we may, however, be
able to control our perception of someone else’s belief that a
particular proposition represents the real world. That’s the whole
point of advertising and propaganda (and seduction :-)).
Martin