[From Kent McClelland (2012.11.08.1015 CST)]
Thanks, Bill, for your thoughtful reply to my last post. I appreciate the corrective on some things I wasn't thinking about carefully enough, but I don't think it negates the basic point that I wanted to make. It seems like we may be able to make some progress in coming to a compromise position that is somewhere between our two initial viewpoints and may be stronger than either.
The opportunity for this kind of exchange is why I've been airing some preliminary ideas in this thread for things I'd like to write. I'd like to iron out problems before I put something into print.
[From Bill Powers (2012.11.07.12915 MST)]
Kent McClelland (2012.11.07.1445 CST) --
KM: The hammer that you're talking about, Bill, is not just an object with physical properties. It is a manufactured artifact that has been designed with socially standardized physical properties. ... There's no law that says that hammers must be constructed with a given shape and weight, but a complex history of the traditional shaping of the tool to match its customary uses by craftsmen, followed by market competition between manufacturers of hammers to produce tools matching that customary design, has ultimately led to a product that is largely standardized.
This standardization of products like hammers has some important consequences from a PCT perspective. First, the person who has learned how to use a hammer (in precisely the trial-and-error-and-reorganization way that Bill describes in his post) can pick up another hammer and immediately be able to use it in much the same way as previously used hammers.
BP: I see the point you're making. What you've done is show that if you substitute one hammer for another of the same manufacture and stated purpose (like a ball-peen hammer), the person wielding it will experience a minimum of errors and may not notice the substitution. But I think you're carrying the point too far, essentially assuming that if a hammer with different characteristics is substituted, the user will have significant difficulties with using it. You assume that the person can't cope with disturbances and control well in spite of them. That is the conventional assumption.
One of the main features of a control system is that without any adaptation at all, the same control system can achieve good control of a result even if the feedback function changes substantially. Demo 5-1 in LCS3 was designed to show this, and much more, to John Flach, who cited a classical experiment in engineering psychology which purported to show that the human being doing a tracking task adapted -- changed dynamical parameters of a control system -- when the nature of the load changed. This demo shows that a simple two-level hierarchy, in which position is controlled by varying a reference level for velocity, reproduces the apparent adaptation without actually changing any of the control system's properties at all. Negative feedback control renders control quite insensitive to changes in characteristics of the external load, and even changes in its own output function.
It's possible, of course, that manufacturers of hammers do go through elaborate standardization processes, but that is only because they don't understand how control works. It's the same mind-set that says control requires perceiving the causes of disturbances and calculating how the output must be adjusted to compensate for them, or requires that the properties of the environment must be analyzed and the necessary command signals must be found through inverse kinematic and dynamic calculations. That is what normal intuition tells us, but it is wrong.
KM: Of course, the feel of the new hammer might be slightly different, but the muscular reorganization process necessary to use the hammer efficiently (to hammer in nails, of course) can proceed very rapidly, because the new hammer is so much like previous ones.
BP: This contains the assumption I'm talking about. It is not necessary for any reorganization to happen if the new hammer is slightly different from the old one. Control is not a matter of calculating the appropriate output and then executing it. Reorganization is needed if there is a very large change in properties of the feedback path, but smaller changes that would require reorganization of open-loop behavior are compensated for in a closed-loop system by automatic changes in the output action.
KM: OK. I take your point and it's a good one. The control systems for muscular actions are flexible, and there was no need for me to be talking about reorganization in this context.
It seems, however, that you may not have fully appreciated the point I was making: that for whatever reason (perhaps the ignorant mind-set of people in charge of tool-making companies, as you suggest), the hammer as a commercial product is almost always made to specifications that are stable across the industry, so that a carpenter who preferred an 18-ounce claw hammer to a 16-ounce hammer would be out of luck if he tried to find one at his local hardware store.
Hammer standardization may seem like a trivial and unimportant issue, but standardization of other products (and of lots of other social and political processes, as well) is a matter of interest to sociologists, because it happens so often in contemporary society. I can't imagine that you would really object to sociologists' noticing the phenomenon, asking why it occurs so often, and wondering what are the consequences of organizing society that way.
(The fact that many products are standardized to a variety of standards, like the bows with different weights that Bill describes in a Friday post [subject: "affordances -- some added thoughts"] doesn't really change the point I'm making. One sociologist describes this proliferation of standardized choices as "niche standardization," but although these products offer a great range of options, the range isn't infinite.]
I would argue that standardization processes can be profitably analyzed from a PCT point of view, because standardization is always a process of controlling perceptions--matching a product or service to a reference standard. Rick Marken in his post on Wednesday (2012.11.07.1740) argued that most social scientists have an incomplete and misleading notion of how control works ("like the blind men and the elephant" was the phrase he used). I would agree completely with him completely on that point, but I would argue that if sociologists and other social scientists understood better the process of control, their analyses of phenomena like standardization would improve. Social scientists need to understand control, because control processes are crucial to the societal issues that they are interested in studying.
KM: Second, while some users of hammers will find creative and unusual uses for the tool, as in the window-propping example Bill gives, a social scientific observer studying the uses of hammers would be likely to observe that most users most of the time use hammers in the conventionally expected way to pound in nails to fasten pieces of wood together. And because imitation is an important part of the human learning process, neophytes learning to use hammers are likely to imitate experienced users of hammer by using the tool (most of the time) in a way that is similar, if not precisely identical, to the way that the great majority of other users have traditionally used it. In other words, there is a lot of cultural predictability (if not total uniformity) in the ways that hammers are used.
BP: If control required analysis and inverse calculations, what you say here would follow quite logically. But it doesn't, and what you say doesn't follow. In a way, you're doing something quite similar to what economic theorists do: you assume a certain model as a premise, and on that basis choose examples that fit the way that model works. But that does not show that the real system works that way, or that the example would fit real behavior. What sounds like an example is really just a deduction from an assumed theory.
KM: Thus, relative uniformity in the physical environment--the standardized design of the hammer as an artifact--goes hand in hand (or hammer in hand?) with relative uniformities in behavioral patterns.
BP: I hope you're starting to read your own words with little stirrings of discontent by this point. Yes, of course, if the uniformity of results of behavior depended on being placed in a uniform environment, you would expect that to get uniform behavior you must have a uniform environment. But you know that isn't true, because you understand negative feedback control as only a successful modeler can understand it, and if you applied what you know you would see immediately that the premise is wrong. We see uniform consequences of behavior -- the nail is accurately struck and sinks in blow by blow. But we know that this happens in spite of numerous variations in the environment and the person's relationship to it, and that a negative feedback system comes close to erasing the potential effects of such variations. All those curves in the shaft of the scythe so lovingly carved in by the superb old craftsman represent superstitions and do not substantially alter how the user of the scythe handles it. The admiring user doesn't realize that his other scythe is just as easy to use even though the old craftsman who made it had different superstitions and made his shafts quite differently. Our control systems deal with most disturbances so easily and (apparently) effortlessly that we don't even realize there was a disturbance.
KM: Nice example. But I guess I'm not too disturbed by your criticisms here of my argument. (Another control process at work on my part, perhaps?) I still think that the relationship between apparent uniformities in the social environment and apparent uniformities in people's overt behavior is worth some careful consideration, and let me try to explain my point more fully.
A sociologist or other social scientist who accepts the PCT and HPCT with respect to individual psychological functioning is faced with a conundrum when he or she surveys the social environment. PCT tells us that the organization of each individual's brain is unique. Each individual builds up a unique hierarchy of perceptual control systems by a process of learning and reorganization based on the individual's unique genetic inheritance and the individual's unique experiences of attempting to control perceptions over time in a series of environmental settings that are also unique to a given individual. In short, every individual is different from every other.
However, when we observe people in social settings, we see considerable conformity--widespread patterns of behavior that appear to be highly uniform (though of course not completely so). How is it that a collection of individuals with absolutely unique perceptions and psychological makeups can produce the relatively high degree of behavioral conformity that social scientists observe? You might possibly argue that the apparent uniformity of behavior is simply an illusion, because each individual is controlling a subtly different perception that resembles the norm of other people's perceptions with regard to this pattern of action, but even if there are slight differences in the perceptions being controlled, the general resemblance is good enough for social interaction to proceed smoothly. For example, I implicitly rely on the (imperfect) prediction that, when traveling down a two-lane highway, most other drivers, most of the time, will be staying on the right side of the road.
So how come this level of behavioral conformity occurs? The usual answer offered by sociologists (the majority of whom are happy to agree that individuals are purposive agents with free will, as they would put it) is that there exists something called social structure, and that social structure puts constraints on the behavioral freedom of individuals. This answer doesn't go far enough, because it doesn't tell us what kinds of constraints or provide a mechanism for how these constraints might operate. Some sociologists have pointed to "sanctions" like incentives and punishments, others to internalized norms and expectations, but neither explanation for conformity is very satisfactory. As Rick says in a recent post (2012.11.07.1740), such explanations provide more "understandingness" than real understanding.
The conundrum of how unique individuals can produce widespread patterns of behavioral conformity strikes me as somewhat similar to another question faced by PCT thinkers. If each individual's hierarchy is differently organized, how can we talk about hierarchical "orders of perception" that are predictably similar from individual to individual? My memory of the answer that emerged, when this question was hashed out on CSGnet 20 years ago or so, was that the physical environment provides a kind of "boss reality," which means that every individual encounters the same kinds of physical forces in attempting to navigate the physical environment, and, given the kinds of perceptual and skeleto-muscular inheritances that we all have, there have to be strong similarities between individuals in the ways that the lower levels of perception, which pertain to physical phenomena, get organized. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this discussion. Your memory may be better than mine.)
My proposal about how uniform social patterns can get established is that something similar happens with social phenomena. The social worlds that we are born into provide each of us when growing up with a kind of "boss social reality," with which we must cope. Certain messages and physical artifacts occur with massive redundancy in our social environments. Those social phenomena, I would argue, typically set before us pre-packaged feedback paths for controlling perceptions that we might want to control. Hungry? Have a Big Mac. Thirsty? Have a Coke. Want entertainment? Here's a TV program to watch. Want to communicate with someone? Here's how you say it. Don't say mummummum, say Mommy. Don't say dadadada, say Daddy. And you should call that animal a horse, not a doggie.
Now nothing compels people to follow the feedback paths that are proffered to them by others instead of inventing their own unique ways of doing things, but controlling perceptions by the handiest available path is likely to be easy and quick, so that the individual can go on to controlling other things that he or she also wants to control. Thus, people often take the "feedback path of least resistance," and when an individual has used a certain feedback path often enough it becomes habitual, firmly implanted in the individual's perceptual hierarchy, and thus more likely to be utilized the next time the situation arises.
Hence, I would argue, standardization of the environments in which we live can have profound social effects, whether or not all individuals use the standardized artifacts in the same way for the same purposes.
KM: Third, and most importantly, the hammer exemplifies an important fact about the living environments of people in economically developed countries. We are surrounded by manufactured artifacts that have been designed, produced, and marketed with culturally conventional uses in mind. Virtually everything that we see or touch in our homes and workplaces is some kind of manufactured artifact that has been carefully designed to help us control one perception or another. Purposes, in the form of the intended uses of manufactured objects, have in some sense been built into the myriad objects that surround us.
BP: That's the current wisdom, I agree. But all those careful designs are mostly wasted because they're mostly unnecessary, though it's easy to imagine that they are helpful. Design isn't a complete waste of time, of course -- very bad designs become quite noticeable, but one can learn to get the wanted results in spite of them.
KM: Objects like hammers can be seen as controlled environmental variables that result from an extremely complex collective control process in which "a multitude of people," to use Bob Hintz's words, (the miners, mine owners, foremen, transport workers, transport company owners and executives, manufacturing executives and owners and stockholders, factory workers, engineers, designers, sales workers, accountants, OSHA regulators, more transport workers, wholesale distributors, yet more transport workers, advertisers, retail store sales and management workers, and probably many more people that I've overlooked) have cooperated in setting up and maintaining the complicated supply, manufacturing, and distribution chains that bring hammers to market and put them into the hands of the end users.
BP: Nope, I don't buy it. Your descriptions are theoretical. That's how things would be if design, supply, manufacturing, and distribution were critical to making something at all usable. But I don't see that they're critical. They have some effect, of course, but it's not a big effect and people can find something to use to achieve almost any purpose without any great amount of standardization. Standardization probably benefits the manufacturer more than the user. I exaggerate, but only in an attempt to counterbalance the exaggerated complexity and finesse that is being assumed.
KM: I'm not quite clear here about what it is about my argument that you don't buy. Are you arguing that the supply chains that bring products to us aren't long and complicated, with lots of people cooperating by control their own perceptions, but perceptions that in combination are necessary to control in order to make the final product possible? Take a look at the "made in ____ " labels on the products that you buy if you have any doubt about this.
Now, I'll grant you that for the miners and the transport workers and many of the other actors contributing to this collective control process, the objective of making a standardized hammer available for purchase at the hardware store in the local strip mall is not their foremost priority. They are just trying to make some money. (And the standardization of money as an indicator of abstract value is a fascinating topic for another time.)
And I'll grant you that standardization of the hammer as a product does more to serve the purposes of the manufacturers and purveyors of the product than it does for the end users. For the manufacturers and sellers, the standardization helps them to make big profits, which is their primary objective. For the end users, the standardization may help by removing possible disturbances from the individual's environment and so making things a little more predictable, so that their physical actions that make use of the hammer can proceed habitually without a concern for adjusting to unexpected disturbances (like the head of the hammer flying off). But standardization also restricts the range of options for end users, in essence restricting their degrees of freedom.
I'm about done, but there's one more point to make.
KM: From the perspective of the user, the hammer is not in itself a controlled environmental variable, except as its motions are controlled by the user to achieve control of the perception of using nails to fasten pieces of wood together. (Notice that 2-by-4's and the nails used to fasten them together are also standardized products with their intended uses also in some sense built in.) The hammer, nails, and pieces of wood are simply the means chosen by the user to control the perception of building a planned wooden structure, and not ends in themselves. In the PCT analysis that I am trying to develop, they serve as segments of a feedback path to link the user's physical actions with the perception that the user is seeking to control of successfully building the planned structure.
BP: The biggest problem I see at this point is that you're doing a one-level analysis. The hammer, nails, and pieces of wood exist at many levels, from objects with color and weight, to objects with shapes, to objects moving in certain manners, to objects in relationship to other objects, and so on. And they are controlled by a hierarchy in which each level of perception of objects is also a level of control -- the means of achieving a goal at one level is not an object at the bottom level, but a control system dealing with objects as seen and acted upon at the next lower level.
What I'm trying to do here is to take hold of that structure you're building and give it a shake, so it no longer feels secure enough to stand on. As I see it, it has already been shaped by the sociology that preceded PCT, and you'e putting yourself in the position of having to defend ideas that you no longer actually believe, if you stop to think of them a little further.
KM: Ah, but I haven't forgotten for a moment that we need to talk about multiple levels of control of perceptions (and multiple individuals) here. I've been focusing my arguments on one simple physical artifact, the hammer, because that is the example you originally introduced, and I needed to simplify my argument to get essential points across. But the argument could be reiterated almost indefinitely with regard to almost every part of our socially produced physical environment, and then could be "taken up a level" by talking about things like widely reproduced narratives, slogans, images, ideas and other sorts of immaterial culture. For the individual these serve as ready-made feedback paths for controlling abstract, high-level perceptions like a sense of identity or a sense of superiority.
The feedback paths are controlled, for sure, but not necessarily by the individual himself or herself. Instead they are controlled by collections of other individuals, often organized to cooperate with each other as formal organizations or corporations, and whose high-level purposes typically do not match those of the individuals to which they are selling the ready-made feedback paths. They are in effect manipulating the end user to gain their own objectives. I'm thinking of groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads, just for one example.
BP: My intent is not destructive. In fact, in fields where I have a history of any length, I look forward to shaking the structure up a bit, because finding anything truly wrong in it is a wonderful experience that we have all too seldom: the experience of discovering something new, outside the boxes where we ordinarily think. Any truly revolutionary idea in science is like a view through an unexpected knothole into a new universe which we didn't even suspect to exist. When I think of changing sociology to be consistent with PCT, I am filled with anticipation -- what wonders will Kent come up with?
Enough, too many words. But maybe they contain the seeds of some interesting experiments.
KM: Thank you again. I think our high-level objectives match, and I really appreciate your critical analysis and attempts to shake things up. If I can come up with arguments that withstand that kind of scrutiny, I'll feel like I've really made progress.
My best,
Kent
