[from Tracy Harms 2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]
I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html
–
Tracy
[from Tracy Harms
2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend
to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now
you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/
review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html–
Tracy
[From Dag Forssell 2015;08,26.22:30 PDT]
Interesting review. Note that Powers dismissed Gibson as a
lightweight.
See [From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)] at
[
www.pctresources.com
](PCT Resources)The author should cite Powers, methinketh.
Best, Dag
[From: Richard Pfau 2015.08.27 09:30 EST]
Barrett in Beyond the Brain does cite Powers (1973) and perceptual control theory (PCT) and contains statements such as “ultimately, behavior is about controlling one’s perceptions” (p. 99); and that “From the perspective that we are developing here, PCT is also an attractive theory of behavior because, like Gibson’s theory of ecological perception, it links well to the idea of the umwelt. A controlling organism can know only its own sensory signals or perceptions… As with the unwelt, then, PCT forces us to remain aware that our observations of an animal’s behavior from the outside will necessarily be very different from the behavior as seen from the inside…” (p.100).
I haven’t read the whole book, but don’t see other references to Powers or PCT in it.
-----Original Message-----
From: “Dag Forssell” (csgarchive@pctresources.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:27 am
Subject: Re: Beyond the Brain, Louise Barrett
[From Dag Forssell 2015;08,26.22:30 PDT]
Interesting review. Note that Powers dismissed Gibson as a lightweight.
See [From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)] at [ www.pctresources.com
](PCT Resources)The author should cite Powers, methinketh.
Best, Dag
[from Tracy Harms 2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]
I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/ review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html
–
Tracy
Hi guys, Louise is lovely - I met her in Newcastle at an ethology conference. She knows what we are all up to with PCT and is pretty supportive of it, helping with the review of Sergio Pellis’s chapter in LCS-IV, and the examination of Heather Bell’s thesis.
Warren
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 2:35 PM, richardpfau4153@aol.com csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:
[From: Richard Pfau 2015.08.27 09:30 EST]
Barrett in Beyond the Brain does cite Powers (1973) and perceptual control theory (PCT) and contains statements such as “ultimately, behavior is about controlling one’s perceptions” (p. 99); and that “From the perspective that we are developing here, PCT is also an attractive theory of behavior because, like Gibson’s theory of ecological perception, it links well to the idea of the umwelt. A controlling organism can know only its own sensory signals or perceptions… As with the unwelt, then, PCT forces us to remain aware that our observations of an animal’s behavior from the outside will necessarily be very different from the behavior as seen from the inside…” (p.100).
I haven’t read the whole book, but don’t see other references to Powers or PCT in it.
-----Original Message-----
From: “Dag Forssell” (csgarchive@pctresources.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:27 am
Subject: Re: Beyond the Brain, Louise Barrett
[From Dag Forssell 2015;08,26.22:30 PDT]
Interesting review. Note that Powers dismissed Gibson as a lightweight.
See [From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)] at [ www.pctresources.com
](PCT Resources)The author should cite Powers, methinketh.
Best, Dag
[from Tracy Harms 2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]
I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/ review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html
–
Tracy
–
Dr Warren Mansell
Reader in Clinical Psychology
School of Psychological Sciences
2nd Floor Zochonis Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Email: warren.mansell@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 8589
Website: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/131406
Advanced notice of a new transdiagnostic therapy manual, authored by Carey, Mansell & Tai - Principles-Based Counselling and Psychotherapy: A Method of Levels Approach
Available Now
Check www.pctweb.org for further information on Perceptual Control Theory
[From Rick Marken (2015.08.27.0815)]
Dag Forssell (2015;08,26.22:30 PDT)_-
Interesting review. Note that Powers dismissed Gibson as a
lightweight.See [From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)] at
www.pctresources.com
RM: Here’s the post. I didn’t want to take the time to remove the html tags but I think it’s still somewhat legible:
[From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)]
At 11:34 PM 11/3/2012 -0400, Bruce Nevin wrote:Last February, I gave a talk to a colloquium at Stanford, called the "Stanford Psychology and Language Tea", a.k.a. SPLaT. Dag has given a lot of support to my work and to my currently in-process career change back to linguistics. On this occasion he was videographer and provided copies of a bunch of books for the attending faculty and students to see, some of which they could take and keep.
The presentation aims to introduce this audience of psychologists and linguists to PCT. It focuses on the solution to a puzzle that emerged in some recent experimental work in which speakers' auditory perception of what they said was disturbed in real time. A proposed PCT model indicates a solution to the puzzle. We discussed this on CSGnet some years ago. A working simulation has not yet been built. (Assistance with this would be welcome.)
It's interesting how the people involved in "ecological psychology" (Gibsonians) assume that ecological psychology appeared before PCT did. Gibson's The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception was published in 1979, 6 years after BCP and 19 years after the original Powers-Clark-MacFarland paper. The dynamical-systems kind of modeling was well established in the PCT world shortly after 1985 when the CSG was formed, and was actually part of my activities at the VA Research Hospital using an analog computer from around 1953 to 1954 onward.
Gibson's concept of "affordances" ("the opportunities for action provided by a particular object or environment") is exceedingly naive, "Opportunities" is a qualitative notion, with the number of different opportunities provided by any single affordance, when expressed quantitatively, being for all practical purposes infinite. Furthermore, since organisms control not actions but consequences of actions, an affordance can actually relate to any number of different controlled variables which are affected via similar feedback functions. Gibson simply wanted to believe that we experience the real world directly, and would accept any line of reasoning, spurious or not, that led to that conclusion. **As a theoretician, in my view, Gibson qualifies as a lightweight**.(RM- emphasis mine)
RM Clearly Dag is right; Bill did say he considered Gibson a lightweight , but specifically as a theoretician. Gibson was actually a rather brilliant observer/ researcher. In my early days in PCT when I was trying to make believe that it somehow fit into conventional psychology, I saw Gibson’s “ecological” approach to perception as being comfortably compatible with the PCT approach. Of course, that turned out to be wrong.
RM: I was familiar with Gibson because my graduate advisers were both partial to (if not dyed in the wool fans of) Gibson. And when J. J came to speak at the U. of M. when I was teaching at Augsburg College in Mpls. I had the great man (he was very prominent and influential at that time) over for a reception at my house. So perhaps it was not a coincidence that when I got into PCT I was hoping to find a connection to Gibson. I even used Gibson’s “The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems” as a textbook in a course in Perception that I gave at that time (probably around 1980 or so). Of course, I eventually realized that Gibson’s “theory” (in quotes because it was only a verbal theory) of perception was at best only superficially similar to the PCT model of perception. And the Gibsonians (especially in their modern instantiations as dynamic attractor or embodied cognition types) turned out to be (and remain) the bete noir of PCT.
DF: The author should cite Powers, methinketh.
RM: I see that Richard Pfau has pointed out that Powers is cited in Barrett’s book. That’s nice but I don’t think these “embodied cognition” types (the new "embodiment, if you will, of Gibsonians) see anything other than a quaint similarity of PCT to some of their ideas. I think the fundamental problem for the embodied cognition types is that they don’t know what control is and they don’t understand that behavior – all behavior, including the kind we think of as cognitive – is control. You have to know what phenomenon you are studying before you can start making up good theories to explain it.
Best
Rick
[from Tracy Harms
2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend
to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now
you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/
review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html–
Tracy
–
Richard S. Marken
www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble
[From: Ted Cloak 2015.08.27 0832 MST]
If you got the Kindle version, you could search it for “Powers” and “PCT”.
From: richardpfau4153@aol.com [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 7:36 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Beyond the Brain, Louise Barrett
[From: Richard Pfau 2015.08.27 09:30 EST]
Barrett in
Beyond the Brain does cite Powers (1973) and perceptual control theory (PCT) and contains statements such as “ultimately, behavior is about controlling one’s perceptions” (p. 99); and that “From
the perspective that we are developing here, PCT is also an attractive theory of behavior because, like Gibson’s theory of ecological perception, it links well to the idea of the umwelt. A controlling organism can know only its own sensory signals or perceptions…
As with the unwelt, then, PCT forces us to remain aware that our observations of an animal’s behavior from the outside will necessarily be very different from the behavior as seen from the inside…” (p.100).
I haven’t read the whole book, but don’t see other references to Powers or PCT in it.
-----Original Message-----
From: “Dag Forssell” (csgarchive@pctresources.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2015 1:27 am
Subject: Re: Beyond the Brain, Louise Barrett
[From Dag Forssell 2015;08,26.22:30 PDT]
Interesting review. Note that Powers dismissed Gibson as a lightweight.
See [From Bill Powers (2012.11.04.1255 MST)] at [
www.pctresources.com
](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.pctresources.com_&d=AwMBAg&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=-dJBNItYEMOLt6aj_KjGi2LMO_Q8QB-ZzxIZIF8DGyQ&m=KF5_O7wVtS44GO2VLt48wJnOstu2bOI3JfuHDGJjDuI&s=kyxUMxubifwWr_wzt3MSdnptLfMYqEKcYeXqfZ7PHNc&e=)The author should cite Powers, methinketh.
Best, Dag
[from Tracy Harms 2015;08,26.19:50 Eastern]
I have just become aware of BEYOND THE BRAIN by Louise Barrett. I intend to read it but don’t want to delay mentioning the work to CSGnet. So, now you have heard of it, too.
http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/
review-louise-barretts-beyond-brain.html
–
Tracy