":" and what is perceived

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin (2017.12.20.16:08 ET)]

Boris Hartman (Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 2:32 PM) –

BH:Do I understand right that you wanted to say that internal environment is controlled by muscle tensions ?Â

No, you do not understand correctly.

You assume that muscular tensions are the only outputs of the behavioral hierarchy.

···

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 2:32 PM, Boris Hartman boris.hartman@masicom.net wrote:

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From: Bruce Nevin [mailto:bnhpct@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 2:58 PM
To: CSG
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

Â

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.12.06.08:45 ET)]

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Boris Hartman (Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 11:39 PM) –

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In response to Rick Marken (2015.11.09.1620), Boris asks “where is »controlled aspect« of enviroment ?” when the subject organism is sleeping.Â

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To repeat: The environment of the neurological control hierarchy includes sensed aspects of muscular, organ, and chemical systems within the body. These in turn have effects that evoke perceptual signals stored in memory. (Memory is reportedly local to synapses distributed through the nervous system.)

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HB : Well I don’t exactly understand what you wanted to say, so could you explain it to me through some physiological book. Do I understand right that you wanted to say that internal environment is controlled by muscle tensions ? That’s what the discussion was about. The existance of »controlled variable« in outer environment (outside body). And Rick correctly answered that nothing is controlled in outer environment. Only internal environment is controlled.  So I can tell you on first sight that Ricks’ explanation is much better.

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RM (earlier) : Sleeping is a tough one but I think it is controlling done by the autonomic nervous system that has the aim of keeping some intrinsic physiological variables in genetically determined reference states.

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HB : What exactly you wanted to say Bruce ? That during sleeping »external« environment is normally controlled as in any other activity which occurs in 24 hours day cycle ?

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Boris

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/Bruce

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On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 11:39 PM, Boris Hartman boris.hartman@masicom.net wrote:

Sorry Martin…

Â

From: Richard Marken [mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 12:20 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

Â

[From Rick Marken (2017.12.05.1520)]

[Martin Taylor 2017.12.05.14.0

RM: Virtually everyone (except me) who was involved in the discussion of controlling perceptions and controlling aspects of the environment accepted the idea that it was only perception that is controlled by a control system.

MT: We disagree on our perceptions of what people believed or said in that everlasting discussion. I don’t suppose it will make any difference, but here is my position (again).

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RM: Do you agree that when a control system controls a perceptual variable, p, it is controlling the aspect of the environment, q.i, to which that variable corresponds?Â

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HB : Again. Why didn’t you use this course of thinking in sleeping example ? It’s 6-10 hours how people control. How can you use it in sitting and thinking example ? Stop confussing people arround if even you don’t beleive in generality of your own thinking ?

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RM (earlier) : Sleeping is a tough one but I think it is controlling done by the autonomic nervous system that has the aim of keeping some intrinsic physiological variables in genetically determined reference states.

HB : So where is »controlled aspect« of enviroment ? PCT is general theory about how organisms function not just about two or three experimental examples of »controlled aspect« of environment.

Â

Boris

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What you know of the world is what you perceive. That is the only truth of which you can be sure (paraphrasing Bill Powers because I believe it to be true). Therefore all you can be sure of controlling is your perception of the world. How you control that is theory.

Whether you live happily or suffer damage and death depends on what happens in the real outer world that affects your body. If controlling what you perceive fails to control something in the real world that corresponds to that perception, it does not make any difference to your happy survival, except possibly because of the random side-effects generated by your actions. Therefore most of the perceptions you control must result in control of some aspect of the real world.

Evolution (including reorganization, both being theories about the real world) favours structures that enhance the likelihood that those structures will be reproduced, and perceptions that when controlled do not result in control of some aspect of the real world are more likely to reduce the likelihood of survival and reproduction. Such perceptions are unlikely to survive. Therefore the processes that produce the perceptions, which are the only aspects of the world of which we can be sure, will almost all produce perceptions that allow effective control of those aspects of the world that correspond to them.

Bottom line: because of evolutionary and reorganizational processes, control of aspects of the real world coexists with control of perception. That you control your perceptions is theory that I perceive because I perceive that you control aspects of the world. That I control something in the real world is also theory that I perceive because I perceive that I control some of my perceptions, as is the theory that what I perceive corresponds in some way to a real world in which you exist.

Given my theory that my perceptions correspond to aspects of a real world, then control of aspects of the real world is what matters. Control of your perceptions is how you do it, in my theory, though my control of my perceptions is basic and not theoretical.

That’s not quite what you said. I don’t know to what degree what you said applies to others in the discussion, but my perception is that it applies to not many, if any, other than Boris.

I’m not going to touch the various definitions of “behaviour” other than to note that most words in most natural languages mean whatever they imply to the reader-listener at the time. Definitions may help the reader-listener determine the effect the writer-talker intended, but not much more.

Martin

Â

–

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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[_Boris_Hartman]

Well Rick. It’s still your naive view of the world…

···

From: Richard Marken [mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2017 12:47 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

[From Rick Marken (2017.12.18.1545)]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Boris Hartman boris.hartman@masicom.net wrote:

RM: No contradiction. The taste of lemonade exists as an aspect (function) of the environment (the “environment” being the variables in the world according to physics).

HB : Ha,ha, ha…. Do I undertand right thaat »The taste already exist in environment as being the variables in the world according to physics» ???

RM: No.

HB : So we can understand that Martin was right. The »taste of lemonade« does nor exist in environment. It’s the property of sensors and nervous system.

MT: You do contradict yourself quite nicely, don’t you? The taste of lemonade, which I (and I imagine you) perceive as surely as I perceive any other property of the environment, does not exist in the environment, but the hallucination of a schizophrenic does. That’s very interesting. Which answer should I use, today’s “Yes” or your much argued “No”?

HB : Schizophrenic will perceive environmental variables in his own way as the same environmental variables will be perceived by colour blind man or autist or anybody else in his own way. So the question is which perception is »noisless« or which perception gives the »right« picture of the world or as Bill call it »perceptual hierarchy model« ?

RM: In the PCT model, p is a noiseless function of environmental variables.

HB : That’s how you think you see it. And where did Bill specify that p is »noiseless« function ???

There are at lesat two sources of noise in any transformation of environmental variables into perceptual signal (transduction).

First noise was described by Bruce Nevin :

BN ealier : They cannot have the same p because p represents a neural signal within each. Their genetic and personal histories will have endowed them differently. It is vanishingly unlikely that their respective perceptual organs and nervous systems are constructed so as to generate the same rate of firing. Each will have developed appropriate rates of firing for reference values r corresponding to their perceptual signals p so that they control satisfactorily and get along in life. One may be wearing sunglasses so a different quantity of photons reaches a different retina

HB : Every LCS has unique genetical structure and thus transformation of environmental variables will be unique. So environment is not determining the nature of perceptual signal, organisms structure does.

This is also the main finding in Maturanas’ »autopoiesis« who was quite convincing in experiments with colors.

Maturana/Varela (1987) :

We tend to live in the world of certainty, of undoubted, rock-ribbed perceptions : our convictions prove that things are the way we see them…//… Now this whole be book is a sort invitation to refrain from the habit of falling into the temptation of certainty….//…. Experience of certanty is an indindividual phenomen…//…There is no way we can trace a corresponpondance between the great color consitency of the objects we see and the light that comes from them…//…. The instrument that measures wa wavelenghts were the ultimate answer. Actually this simple experiment does not reveal an isolated situation that could be called (as is often the case) marginal or illusionary. Our experience with a world of colored objects is litterary independent of the wavelenght composition of the light coming from any scene we look…//… Rather we must concentrate on underderstanding that the experience of a color coresponds to a specific pattern of states of activity in the nervous system ehich its structure determines…//… we can demonstrate that we can correlate our naming of coolors with states of neuronal activity but not with wavelengts. What states of neuronal activity are triggered by the different perturbations is determined in each person by his or her individual structure and not by the features of the perturbing agent. The forgoing is valid for all the dimenssions of visual experience (movement, texture, form, etc.)…//…. We do noot see the space of the world, we live our fields of vision. We do not see the »colors« of the world we live our chromatic space.

HB : So the simple experiment with colors showed that the wavelenghts of light which were present in experimental space were reported differently by experimental persons. Experimental persons saw also colors which were not present in experimental space. Or the same frequences of light were reported differently by expeirtmnetal persons. So it’s obviously that Bruce nevin is right. The same light frequences will not cause the same »p« frequences as represented in neural signal within each experimental persons . And that also means that environmetal variables are never perceived as they are but as individual LCS perceive them.

And second noise was described by Ashby who thought that from endless variables in environment, we can perceive only little amount and construct some »abstract system«.

There are probably more »noises«.

So we can really ask ourself what exactly every individual is perceiving from endless variables which constitute world arround us ?

Sensors are quite limited in their possible transfomation of endless physical variables in environment into perceptual signal and structures of individuals can be so different.

Because perception is all that we can rely on, we can say only what we perceive not what is really out there. We can imagine what we want that it is out there : God, natural events, all kind of –ism, and so on….
:p>

But what we can only rely on are our actual perceptions.

Bill P : Our only view of the real world is our view of the neural signals the represent it inside our own brains. When we act to make a perception change to our more desireble state – when we make perception of the glass change from “on the table” to " near the mouth" – we have no direct knowledge of whatt we are doing to the reality that is the origin of our neural signal; we know only the final result, how the result looks, feels, smells, sounds, tastes, and so forth.

Maybe with combining perception of many people we could eventually come very close to what could be really in environment. But it’s probably a long journey if will want to know the whole Universe.

Boris

Best

Rick

And if this is true for »one sense« it is valid for all senses. So the colors, smell, skin sensibility … etc already exist in environmennt. This is the biggest nonsense I ever heard. If I understood it right it is the biggest joke of millennium. I doubt that even in Ancient Greece they would beleive this.

So every LCS (from bacteria to human) has the same taste of lemonade and they see the same colors and smell the same for ex. shit. So fly and human has the same smell of shit because it’s already in environment ???

And that probably inlcudes spiders, ants, crocodiles and so on… because any sensitivity for environmental variables alreeady exist in environent. So they will all perceive all sensibilities the same …. Because they are already in environment.

/p>

Is this what you are saying ?

Boris

–

Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[_Boris_Hartman]

Bruce…

···

From: Bruce Nevin [mailto:bnhpct@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2017 10:12 PM
To: CSG
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

[Bruce Nevin (2017.12.20.16:08 ET)]

Boris Hartman (Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 2:32 PM) –

BH: Do I understand right that you wanted to say that internal environment is controlled by muscle tensions ?

BN : No, you do not understand correctly.

You assume that muscular tensions are the only outputs of the behavioral hierarchy.

HB : I explained at least 20x how many outputs (effectors) are means of internal control. I use all the time Bills’ definition control which is directing to intenal control and thus internal effectors. When did you use anything to show how orgsnism control.

Look in the archives. And »by the way« you also overlooked internal ouptus and I corrected you when you were obviously using only external effectors for showing control. See archives.

Boris

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 2:32 PM, Boris Hartman boris.hartman@masicom.net wrote:

From: Bruce Nevin [mailto:bnhpct@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 2:58 PM
To: CSG
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.12.06.08:45 ET)]

Boris Hartman (Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 11:39 PM) –

In response to Rick Marken (2015.11.09.1620), Boris asks “where is »controlled aspect« of enviroment ?” when the subject organism is sleeping.

To repeat: The environment of the neurological control hierarchy includes sensed aspects of muscular, organ, and chemical systems within the body. These in turn have effects that evoke perceptual signals stored in memory. (Memory is reportedly local to synapses distributed through the nervous system.)

HB : Well I don’t exactly understand what you wanted to say, so could you explain it to me through some physiological book. Do I understand right that you wanted to say that internal environment is controlled by muscle tensions ? That’s what the discussion was about. The existance of »controlled variable« in outer environment (outside body). And Rick correctly answered that nothing is controlled in outer environment. Only internal environment is controlled. So I can tell you on first sight that Ricks’ explanation is much better.

RM (earlier) : Sleeping is a tough one but I think it is controlling done by the autonomic nervous system that has the aim of keeping some intrinsic physiological variables in genetically determined reference states.

HB : What exactly you wanted to say Bruce ? That during sleeping »external« environment is normally controlled as in any other activity which occurs in 24 hours day cycle ?

Boris

/Bruce

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 11:39 PM, Boris Hartman boris.hartman@masicom.net wrote:

Sorry Martin…

From: Richard Marken [mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 12:20 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: “:” and what is perceived

[From Rick Marken (2017.12.05.1520)]

[Martin Taylor 2017.12.05.14.0

RM: Virtually everyone (except me) who was involved in the discussion of controlling perceptions and controlling aspects of the environment accepted the idea that it was only perception that is controlled by a control system.

MT: We disagree on our perceptions of what people believed or said in that everlasting discussion. I don’t suppose it will make any difference, but here is my position (again).

RM: Do you agree that when a control system controls a perceptual variable, p, it is controlling the aspect of the environment, q.i, to which that variable corresponds?

HB : Again. Why didn’t you use this course of thinking in sleeping example ? It’s 6-10 hours how people control. How can you use it in sitting and thinking example ? Stop confussing people arround if even you don’t beleive in generality of your own thinking ?

RM (earlier) : Sleeping is a tough one but I think it is controlling done by the autonomic nervous system that has the aim of keeping some intrinsic physiological variables in genetically determined reference states.

HB : So where is »controlled aspect« of enviroment ? PCT is general theory about how organisms function not just about two or three experimental examples of »controlled aspect« of environment.

Boris

What you know of the world is what you perceive. That is the only truth of which you can be sure (paraphrasing Bill Powers because I believe it to be true). Therefore all you can be sure of controlling is your perception of the world. How you control that is theory.

Whether you live happily or suffer damage and death depends on what happens in the real outer world that affects your body. If controlling what you perceive fails to control something in the real world that corresponds to that perception, it does not make any difference to your happy survival, except possibly because of the random side-effects generated by your actions. Therefore most of the perceptions you control must result in control of some aspect of the real world.

Evolution (including reorganization, both being theories about the real world) favours structures that enhance the likelihood that those structures will be reproduced, and perceptions that when controlled do not result in control of some aspect of the real world are more likely to reduce the likelihood of survival and reproduction. Such perceptions are unlikely to survive. Therefore the processes that produce the perceptions, which are the only aspects of the world of which we can be sure, will almost all produce perceptions that allow effective control of those aspects of the world that correspond to them.

Bottom line: because of evolutionary and reorganizational processes, control of aspects of the real world coexists with control of perception. That you control your perceptions is theory that I perceive because I perceive that you control aspects of the world. That I control something in the real world is also theory that I perceive because I perceive that I control some of my perceptions, as is the theory that what I perceive corresponds in some way to a real world in which you exist.

Given my theory that my perceptions correspond to aspects of a real world, then control of aspects of the real world is what matters. Control of your perceptions is how you do it, in my theory, though my control of my perceptions is basic and not theoretical.

That’s not quite what you said. I don’t know to what degree what you said applies to others in the discussion, but my perception is that it applies to not many, if any, other than Boris.

I’m not going to touch the various definitions of “behaviour” other than to note that most words in most natural languages mean whatever they imply to the reader-listener at the time. Definitions may help the reader-listener determine the effect the writer-talker intended, but not much more.

Martin

–

Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2017.12.06.11.00]

Yesterday, in [Martin Taylor 2017.12.05.23.48] I described

conditions that would help me to answer this for “real life”
situations. This message is from the other (theoretical) direction
and complements the earlier message.

Imagine a canonical control loop

<img moz-do-not-send="false" src="cid:part1.E45C5F5E.B2C684A4@mmtaylor.net" alt="" width="450" height="474">

In this simplified loop of theory, to control p is to control q.i.

The question therefore has to be reworded to ask whether I agree

that this loop must represent organic reality, to which my answer is
“No”. There are other considerations, among which are context,
including dynamic effects, and the point Rick so often brings up, as
to whether “p” exists as a unitary variable within the organism as
opposed to existing as a unitary variable in the perception of the
theorist. If “p” does not exist, that does not mean it cannot be
controlled. It may (and probably does, as Bill proposed) exist as an
aggregation of a whole lot of mini-near-p variables (neural
firings). In that case q.i would be the only real unitary variable
that exists in the whole loop.

As Rick often says, without defining "control", we can see that q.i

is controlled. We theorize that there is a “p” in the organism and
that controlling “p” is the means whereby we see what we see about
q.i, though q.i is only in our perception, not necessarily in the
perception of the organism we are studying. When the q.i we perceive
as being “controlled”, so, to some extent, is every variable
correlated with our q.i. Or are they? That depends on the
definition of “control”.

If we see "X" being held against disturbances by forces produced by

an entity that can sense the value of X, and we apply the TCV
properly, to show that X is controlled, have we shown that X²
is not controlled? No, because every test we apply that shows X to
be controlled will also show that X² , log(X), 1/X, …,
X+Y (while Y doesn’t change much compared to changes in X) is
controlled. What, then, is “p”. Other variables must be considered
in order to answer that question.

When we consider the relationship between the organism and the real

world, such as n control, it’s what happens in the real world that
matters to the organism, and to its probability of having
descendants somewhat like itself.

So I can answer Rick's question very easily for the purely

theoretical canonical control loop, but not for real organisms in
their natural environment.

Martin

(Attachment PowersBasicControlLoop1.jpg is missing)

···

[From Rick Marken (2017.12.05.1520)]

…

          RM: Do you agree that when a control system controls a

perceptual variable, p, it is controlling the aspect of
the environment, q.i, to which that variable corresponds?