[From: Bruce Nevin (Thu 920716 08:19:31)]
(Rick Marken (920715.1300) ) --
Hooray! At last one of my analogies didn't sound too far fetched!
Actually, if the neuron analogy is carried through, then aura is equivalent
to cell potential -- and this should be perceiveable by the system itself;
people should be able to perceive (possibly with instruments) the aura just
as the neuron (if it had any brains) could perceive its cell potential. The
We don't have to stick with auras, of course, there's lots that passes us
right by. Odors, pheromones produced and perceived by other species and
those produced and perceived by humans, modulation of electromagnetic
fields, demonstrated and postulated particles, etc.
But In fact, many people do perceive auras (sight is not the only
modality). And my wife, for example, teaches people how who initially
don't. There is good intersubjective agreement among them as to what
they perceive. And there has been some instrumental research
(elsewhere, not with Sarah), though if you think funding for PCT is
precarious you should look at the history of parapsychology (interesting
summary in _Margins of Reality_, a recent book concerning issues of
consciousness).
But most of the time most people don't perceive auras consciously,
though my informal and subjective impression is that people integrate
subliminal glimmerings into their perceptions of mood, "vibes," etc.
Highly subjective stuff. This would fit, because there could be
selective "pressure" for subliminal perception (early warning of error,
for example--hunches, intuitions about social situations) even in the
presence of much stronger selective "pressure" against any perception.
(If the neuron started perceiving spikes or rather spike rates as such
and there was a correlation between intracellular error and spike rate,
it might reorganize to control those perceptions, and that would create
error at the higher order, which would adversely affect the would-be
controller through its environment--what goes around comes around?
Analogies to cancer, the immune system, AIDS, epidemiology in general,
all invite speculation. It could get pretty woolly fast, but there
might be some tufts of solid ground in the swamp.)
A different point: if order n are neurological CSs, then order n+1
organisms need not be constrained to humans, or even to being
constituted of living control systems all of the same species.
As Martin says, most of our talk about social control systems has to
reorganize itself to accomodate the *necessary* disparities between
control systems of one order (e.g. cells) and control systems of another
(ECSs and neurological control systems constituted of them). A final
point (reiterated): perhaps the postulated supra-animal CSs can provide
some explanation for why people perennially try so hard to (re)create
and make to work various social institutions that (often crudely) mimic
living control systems. And it might perhaps be fruitful to reconsider
histories of social change from the point of view of cells carrying out
higher-order reorganization. (Kurt Vonnegut's wry imaginings of
unexpectable interdependencies spring to mind, too, of course--_Sirens
of Titan_ perhaps.)
So I think the kind of "meta control" that Bruce is talking about here is
a bit deeper (and more impenetrable) then "social control". Meta control
would involve control of variables that we (humans) will never know about--
placing them outside the realm of science. Social control, to me, implies
a system that controls social variables -- like relationships between
people, programs of action involving several people, etc --and these
variables are easy to perceive.
First, I have proposed that there is more connection than that between
two orders, by way of learning and reorganization (and maturation and
evolution).
Secondly, I think we humans have more resources to bring to bear for a
scientific investigation of a higher order of control than cells have.
(I don't know that, of course, but from a human perspective it sure
seems that way . . . the impenetrability works both ways, we don't
really have a solid grasp of even all the external variables (those of
which a cell is controlling its perceptions), and much less
understanding of the internal variables in the cellular CS and of the
structure of the cellular CS. Is it hierarchical? Hell, can we even
describe the non-neurological CS of a plant? That would be a useful
exercise--such "vegetative" perceptual control mechanisms probably exist
in animals alongside the neurological mechanisms.)
Such an investigation would have to proceed with care and tact.
It has been argued that much of our current troubles arise from
increased human control of variables whose "transmission" through the
ecosphere (partly) by way of humans was hitherto unconscious. Bateson
on purposive action, for instance. But it could well be that the
processes of learning, or maturation, or evolution (whichever analogy
turns out to be appropriate) for a higher-order organism are carried out
in part by organisms of the animal order taking on control of variables
that previously had been available to be functional elements in the
higher-order control system itself. Note that such functional elements
are normally not diddled with by either the higher or lower order. (We
don't normally intervene and change the spike rate of a neuron
instrumentally, though we have the equipment now to do so I think,
crudely.)
A "perceptual" neuron would never
be able to tell that its firing rate was proportional to the degree of
"squareness", say, of an image on the retina ("what the hell is a retina?",
says the neuron).
The observer's perception of squareness of the observer's perception of
an image on the observers perception of a retina, where "of" and "on"
are the observer's perceptions of relationships. Somehow I think these
things matter only to a psychologist, probably a PCT psychologist at
that. They don't matter to the a normal human any more than they do to
the neuron. (Just twitting you about problems of perspective--don't
take it seriously.)
Bruce
bn@bbn.com
PS--Sarah is off on a lecture tour Friday, her first, for two weeks,
going to Chicago, Kansas City, Boulder, someplace in Texas I think, San
Francisco, Seattle, with former clients or students organizing things in
each place. I hope she breaks even, otherwise the mortgage company will
be enquiring again. Emmanuel has for some time been ready whenever she
is, and says not to worry. By all conventional ways of reckoning we
should have gone into personal bankruptcy a dozen times in the past five
years, and he has always said not to worry. You'd think I'd eventually
catch on to the habit of not worrying.