[Fred Nickols (970911.2240 EST)]
Rick Marken (970910.0800)]
Fred Nickols (970909.2015 EST) --
I have a sense of what BruceA is trying to do and I am
sympathetic (BillP seems similarly inclined and RickM does not).I guess you hadn't read Bill Powers (970909.1748 MDT) and
(970910.0138 MDT) when you wrote this. In particular, take a
look at Bill Powers (970910.0138 MDT):What I am saying here, Bruce, is that the behaviorist account,
which you present as a simple factual description of observations,
is nothing of the sort. It is a biased account slanted toward
encouraging the listener to conclude that the environment is
controlling behavior -- that behavior is controlled by its
consequences, which is exactly the opposite of the truth.This doesn't sound like sympathy toward Bruce A's position to me.
It sounds more like it took Bill one day longer than it took me
to lose patience entirely. And you certainly don't have to take
Bill or my word for it; use the demos to see that the behaviorist
account is wrong and the PCT account is right.
My reference was to earlier posts of Bill's when it seemed to me
that he was sympathetic toward BruceA's effort to figure out how
to connect the two. Since I can't recall which specific posts and
because I have no intention of trying to dig them up, I'll retract
the assertion as unfounded. As for me trying to see that "the
behaviorist account is wrong," I'll pass on that invitation. I
wouldn't know whether to use your definition of the behaviorist
account, Skinner's, Fred Keller's, BruceA's, or any one of half a
dozen different accounts of that perspective.
it also seems to me that the perceived consequences of our
behavior have an effect on the reference structures against
which we attempt to control our perceptions.This is a poor way of describing it. In a hierarchical
control model, when a higher level system is not getting the
perceptual consequences it wants it will change the reference
for a lower level control system; this is the normal disturbance
resistance process of control. The way you stated it here it
sounds like perceived consequences can have an effect on the
very reference against which thery are compared; as though
food pellet input rate can have an effect on the reference for
what this rate should be. If this were true, there would be no
control. Since organisms do control, your statement of the model
must be wrong.
All that sounds like a nice theoretical explanation and I'll
certainly not take issue with it, but I will, as I do with all
theoretical explanations, take it with a grain of salt.
You also provide an example illustrating my remark that the
consequences of behavior affect the reference structures against
which we attempt to control our perceptions--and then denounce
it as untrue. Specifically, you said the notion that "food pellet
input rate can have an effect on the reference for what this rate
should be" cannot be true, I plainly disagree. In my experience,
actual conditions often lead to a revision of expectations and
standards. We lower and raise our sights, so to speak. So I
don't think your argument holds water.
Personally, I think that the behaviorists' view and the B:CP view
fit better than RickM will ever admitI don't understand why people want to believe this. What's to
fit? If PCT is right then (as Powers said in his Science article
in 1973) the behavioral sciences have been laboring under an
illusion for the last 100 years. The basic conclusion of
behaviorism is that behavior is output controlled by the
environment; the basic conclusion of PCT is that behavior is
input controlled by the organism. I can't see how these two
points of view can be made to "fit" together. And why try?
I'm a one-time behaviorist and I never--not once--viewed behavior
as output. I've known people who did, and I always thought their
thinking processes were impaired. To me, behavior was and is a
shorthand label for "the activity of the organism." Urine and
fecal matter are outputs, as are the sounds we make, and the heat
and perspiration we emit. But I don't view behavior as an output
and never did. If, as you say, "the basic conclusion of PCT is
that behavior is input controlled by the organism," I think that's
as wrong-headed a view as saying that behavior is output. To me,
behavior is neither input TO nor output FROM the organism; it is
the activity OF the organism. If I understand your statement, you
would have me separate myself from my behavior. No thanks.
I'll remind myself from time to time that we're dealing with
competing explanations of behavior and let it go at thatI think that it is a _very_ big mistake to look at it this way.
PCT and behaviorism are _not_ really competing explanations of
behavior. They are, first and foremost, competing explanations
of what behavior _is_. Behaviorism views behavior as a dependent
variable that is caused by independent variables inside or outside
of the organism. Behaviorism doesn't recognize the fact that some
of these variables are neither independent nor dependent variables
but are, rather, controlled variables.
I wouldn't know a dependent variable from an independent variable
if one of each walked up and bit me. I can't decode the paragraph
above and I'm not about to try--except for the part about what
behavior is. Presumably, you refer to your earlier comment that
EAB sees behavior as output and PCT sees it as input. I think
both those views are wrong, so, if EAB and PCT are competing on
that basis, it is to me a competition that I will ignore.
Behaviorism doesn't try to explain the behavior of controlled
variables because it doesn't even know they exist. PCT, on the
other hand, was developed specifically to explain the behavior of
controlled variables. A side benefit is that the PCT model also
explains why behaviorists have been able to see behavior (control),
incorrectly, as a cause-effect process for all these years.
In the last sentence above lies a clue, I think, as to why I think
the fit between EAB and PCT might be a little closer than some in
the PCT camp might find comfortable. It seems to me that if PCT
can explain what is wrong with EAB, there has to be a sufficient
commonality of terms and referents for those terms to communicate
the argument. If not, it's all harangue and hyperbole. If the
correspondence in terms does exist, or can be brought to light, it
ought to be possible to take the reverse angle of attack. Hence,
I believe, BruceA's notion of the possibility of a bridge between
the two.
Most people come to PCT thinking it is an alternative explanation
of behavior, where the "behavior" they want to explain is the kind
seen by behaviorists. These people will not "get" PCT until they
are willing to revise their notion of what behavior _is_. PCT was
developed, not as an alternative to behaviorism, but as an
explanation of a phenomenon that behaviorism never noticed (or
tried to imagine away): the phenomenon of purposeful behavior,
also known as control.
The assertions above might be true of some but they are not true of
me--if you mean "behavior" to mean output (or input, for that matter).
In that vein, help me out...If I substitute "input" for behavior in
the last sentence above, it reads "the phenomenon of purposeful input,
also known as control." Is that consistent with PCT?
Regards,
Fred Nickols
nickols@worldnet.att.net