[Hans Blom, 960423c]
(Mary Powers 960422)
A great many people think they are the "victim" of their
inherited reference levels rather than their proud owners.
I am well aware that psychotherapy emphasizes the autonomy
of the client ... but let's not equate scientific
discussions in PCT with therapy, shall we?
A great many people may be misinformed. Some may find it convenient
to be a victim - jerked around by inherited reference levels, genes,
or what have you. It can be a way of avoiding responsibility.
"Owners", proud or otherwise, may have a similar problem - of
divorcing part of themselves from themselves.
Both are habits of thought informed by a culture that believes that
what one does is caused by external agents (including agents inside
oneself that are somehow not-self, perhaps because not conscious?).
Very thoughtful. Aren't ALL habits of thought products of the culture
that we grew up in, except maybe for those very, very few original
thoughts that we've generated ourselves? Even scientists often build
their whole lifes around one original idea...
There have been lots of scientific discussions that take that point
of view. This does not mean that it is unscientific to propose that
living systems are autonomous.
I consider no proposition unscientific. But what matters in science
is that we use words that have as much the same meaning for the
participants in a conversation as possible. Hence science's insist-
ence on definitions. That is much harder when we use a non-scientific
word like autonomy. One result of this discussion has been, for me,
the undefinedness of the word. This makes that we talk past each
other a lot. But only through the feedback of the discussions here
can we come to an agreement, if only it is that we use one and the
same word with very different individual (or cultural?) connotations.
PCT proposes exactly that, a kind of organization of living systems
that by its nature is autonomous - that is, with a basic set of
reference signals that have evolved through blind variation and
selective retention, and are not subject to alterations from
outside.
Well said. But see the (apparent) contradiction?
1) The reference signals have come about through the forces of the
environment (variation and selection).
2) The reference signals are not subject to alterations by the forces
of the environment.
How can BOTH be true? My explanation is that 1) is such a slow
process that, temporarily, 2) can be approximately true within short
time scales.
And that forces another thought. If it was so desirable, somehow, to
have the environment set the basic reference levels -- i.e. to have
an adaptation of the organism to its environment -- wouldn't it also
be desirable to have a similar process DURING AN ORGANISM'S LIFETIME?
I think we do; where 1) is "evolutionary learning", 2) is the learn-
ing that is done by each individual.
And then the next step, at an even faster time scale, would be to
change the lower level goals EVEN WHILE CONTROL GOES ON. This
happens, as I showed through some math, and it is even a logical
consequence of hierarchical PCT. Even though the effect may be small
(in high loop gain systems).
Let me speculate a little about effect size: Changes occur in time.
Large changes can only occur in evolutionary time. Smaller changes
can occur in an individual's lifetime, where it is not desirable for
a human to attempt to change into a wolf (even though some wolf
children have shown moderate success). Allowing such large changes in
a single lifetime would destroy much of the adaptive "wisdom" that
was accumulated during the species' evolution. And even smaller
changes are desirable during the time of individual actions, where
ingrained action patterns ought not be destroyed by a single action.
These are just some wild speculations at this moment, which seem
intuitively correct but require more time for me to ponder about. The
basic contradiction remains: goals, as "higher" constructs, ought to
be relatively fixed yet flexible.
Engineers, who build control systems and are able to set or reset
reference signals in them, sometimes seem to have difficulty with
this.
Not only engineers routinely manipulate the goals of control systems
-- everyone does. Have you ever considered how many control systems
you have within your home? You may be surprised... Yet you manipulate
the goals of all those devices (heating system, coffee maker, washing
machine, just to name a few, maybe even your husband 
routinely,
without a thought about their "autonomous" nature...
You seem to be saying that the idea of autonomy is a comforting
illusion that psychotherapists encourage to improve their clients'
morale.
No. Or yes. Or both. On the one hand, everything is an illusion; all
we have is a model that we shouldn't confuse with reality, however
difficult that is because we don't have a different, "real" reality.
On the other hand, the idea of autonomy in therapy is a powerful tool
in the accomplishment of important (pre-existing or new) goals, and
as such I don't take it lightly.
I'm inclined to think that psychotherapy clients are people who feel
more extremely and painfully than others that they are victims or
owners. They become autonomous as they become conscious of and
resolve conflicts between opposing reference levels, instead of
denying one side of the conflict as a "not me" that is forcing them
to produce undesired consequences or preventing them from achieving
the consequences they desire.
Helping clients to achieve the consequences they desire is one, very
important part of therapy. Helping clients accept the reality of
reality, even where they are not able to control but are "controlled"
-- or powerless -- is, I think, just as important. Religion approach-
es this side of the coin much better than science; the conviction
that "all is in God's hand", in whatever way you might want to formu-
late it, indicates a basic trust in an impersonal "higher level",
that, whether we are in control or not, may be as healing as, or more
than, the conviction that one is autonomous.
Thanks, Mary, for a thoughtful contribution.
Greetings,
Hans
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Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Medical Engineering Group
email: j.a.blom@ele.tue.nl
Great man achieves harmony by maintaining differences; small man
achieves harmony by maintaining the commonality. Confucius
routinely,