Brain teaser

[From Bruce Abbott (2001.05.14.1035 EST)]

Here's a (minor) brain-teaser to start off the week:

What are the names of all the current levels of control defined in HPCT,
beginning with the lowest?

First person to answer gets to be our PCT-person of the week, with all the
rights and privileges thereof . . .

Bruce A.

[from Mary Powers 2001.05.14]

Bruce Abbott (2001.05.14.1035 EST) says:
"Here's a (minor) brain-teaser to start off the week:
What are the names of all the current levels of control defined in HPCT,
beginning with the lowest?
First person to answer gets to be our PCT-person of the week, with all the
rights and privileges thereof..."

I guess I'll never be the PCT-person of the week. I have never learned all
the levels, although I have known about them longer than anyone except Bill.

Bill has never expected anyone to memorize them, and in fact has
recommended not doing so, since he derived them from his own introspection
and he may not have gotten it right. If they are wrong for him they are
even more likely to be wrong for anyone else. People are welcome to use
them, however. It sure beats going through the process Bill did, in terms
of saving time and effort. Would have been nice, though, to have someone
else try.

Comment from Bill: "I'm pretty sure the first level is intensity."

Gosh, Bruce, it seems that all it takes to be the PCT person of the week is
to be the first to answer - nothing there about whether the answer is
correct. So did we win, huh? huh?

Mary P.

[From Bruce Abbott (2001.05.15.0730 EST)]

[from Mary Powers 2001.05.14] --

Bruce Abbott (2001.05.14.1035 EST) says:

"Here's a (minor) brain-teaser to start off the week:
What are the names of all the current levels of control defined in HPCT,
beginning with the lowest?
First person to answer gets to be our PCT-person of the week, with all the
rights and privileges thereof..."

I guess I'll never be the PCT-person of the week. I have never learned all
the levels, although I have known about them longer than anyone except Bill.

Bill has never expected anyone to memorize them, and in fact has
recommended not doing so, since he derived them from his own introspection
and he may not have gotten it right. If they are wrong for him they are
even more likely to be wrong for anyone else. People are welcome to use
them, however. It sure beats going through the process Bill did, in terms
of saving time and effort. Would have been nice, though, to have someone
else try.

Comment from Bill: "I'm pretty sure the first level is intensity."

My main reason for asking the question is that I didn't know. I had the 9
levels from B:CP but what were those two new guys on the block? Anyway, for
those who aren't sure themselves but are curious, the answer can be found
courtesy of Rick Marken at:

http://home.earthlink.net/~marken/hpb.html

Gosh, Bruce, it seems that all it takes to be the PCT person of the week is
to be the first to answer - nothing there about whether the answer is
correct. So did we win, huh? huh?

Mary, you've always been a winner in my book . . .

···

Mary P.

[From Bruce Nevin (2001.05.16 0739 PDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2001.05.15.0730 EST)--

I had the 9
levels from B:CP but what were those two new guys on the block?

I think there's an updated summary of Bill's proposals in MSOB. (I'm far

Bruce Abbott (2001.05.15.1745 EST)--

I would argue that there is _no_ perception of pure intensities under
ordinary circumstances, if by "perception" we mean conscious perception.

Well, those are two rather strong provisions, conscious awareness under ordinary circumstances. I don't think you can prove that we are incapable of being conscious of first- and second-order perceptions. And if you consider any given perception of yours through an hour, day, year, it is not at all an ordinary circumstance for you to be aware of it. So of what relevance are these restrictions for purposes of identifying levels in a perceptual hierarchy?

Mary Powers 2001.05.14--

It sure beats going through the process Bill did, in terms
of saving time and effort. Would have been nice, though, to have someone
else try.

Bill's old colleague who joined us for a short time on the net, who reported some observations about the workings of local government (forgive me, I can't remember his name), had somewhat divergent suggestions, but it was not easy (at least for me) to make a coherent whole of them. He was ill at the time, and perhaps did not present his ideas very effectively.

I have misgivings about a category level, but don't yet have anything useful to say about either my misgivings or an alternative account of the various matters ascribed to a category level.

         Bruce Nevin

···

At 07:31 05/15/2001 -0400, Abbott_Bruce wrote:
from my copy so I can't check.)
At 17:47 05/15/2001 -0400, Abbott_Bruce wrote:
At 21:48 05/14/2001 -0600, Mary Powers wrote:

[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1056)]

Bruce Nevin (2001.05.16 0739 PDT)

Well, those are two rather strong provisions, conscious awareness under
ordinary circumstances. I don't think you can prove that we are incapable
of being conscious of first- and second-order perceptions. And if you
consider any given perception of yours through an hour, day, year, it is
not at all an ordinary circumstance for you to be aware of it. So of what
relevance are these restrictions for purposes of identifying levels in a
perceptual hierarchy?

The safest course of action is to adopt Richard Kennaway's approach and
completely disassociate the model from the world of introspection. I think
we know enough about the organization of the brain to know that anything
inferred from introspection is highly suspect, if not totally useless.

BG

[From Richard Kennaway (2001.05.16.1754 BST)]

Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1056):

The safest course of action is to adopt Richard Kennaway's approach and
completely disassociate the model from the world of introspection.

I really don't know what you mean by this. Introspection is not a part of
the model (unless incidentally, if one attempts to think up a way that the
phenomenon of introspection might arise in a hierarchical arrangement of
control loops). It is, historically, a part of how the model came to be,
together with observation and reasoning. The thing to do is to do research
to see how well the model does, or does not, apply to the things it is
intended to apply to.

This whole thread about "introspection" strikes me as a quite footling quibble.

-- Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/
   School of Information Systems, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.

[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1308)]

[From Richard Kennaway (2001.05.16.1754 BST)]

This whole thread about "introspection" strikes me as a quite footling
quibble.

Then why did you start it? Be that as it may, I'm glad you've dropped it.

BG

[From Bill Powers (2001.05.16.1938 MDT)]

Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1056)--

The safest course of action is to adopt Richard Kennaway's approach and
completely disassociate the model from the world of introspection. I think
we know enough about the organization of the brain to know that anything
inferred from introspection is highly suspect, if not totally useless.

Perhaps you have some way of knowing about the world by some means that
bypasses your own perceptual apparatus. Since I have no such way, I have
had to rely on examining how the world appears to me. The names I gave to
the levels reflect what I found in looking fairly carefully at the world I
experience, without assuming that anything was "just there." That is, if I
could see relationships among things, then I assumed that some part of my
perceptual system is designed to report the existence of relationships, and
that if it were not for this sort of perceptual function, my world would
not contain any relationships. For "relationships" you can substitute the
name of any other level I have proposed, from intensities to system concepts.

In many cases, I found what seem to be non-physical dependencies of one
kind of perception on another kind, or other kinds. Objects (visual
configurations), for example, seem to be composed of what I call
sensations: remove the sensations, and the objects also disappear. However,
the same kinds of sensations many be present even if they don't appear as
parts of objects. So this suggested to me some kind of hierarchical system,
in which higher perceptions are functions of lower ones. I know of no
physical principle that makes such dependencies necessary.

By the same token, I think I have found that in order to control a given
perception at some level, it's necessary to vary perceptions of lower
levels. Again, there seems to be no physical principle from which these
requirements could be derived. These are primarily properties of my
perceptual system, and only secondarily aspects of the physical world, or
so I have concluded.

"Introspection" isn't really the best word for this process of skeptically
and analytically examining one's own experiences -- the experiences that
others perhaps prefer to label "the real world." But I don't know of a more
appropriate one.

Of course this view is anathema to anyone who believes it possible to
observe the world "objectively" -- as it "really is."

Best,

Bill P.

[From Richard Kennaway (2001.05.17.1842 BST)]

Exhibit A:

Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1308):

This whole thread about "introspection" strikes me as a quite footling
quibble.

Then why did you start it? Be that as it may, I'm glad you've dropped it.

BG

Exhibit B:

Introspection is mentioned in the following recent messages, from the
beginning of this discussion up to the one just quoted, listed in order of
date:

[from Mary Powers 2001.05.14]
[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1005)]
[From Richard Kennaway (2001.05.16.1517 BST)]
[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1030)]
[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1056)]
[From Bruce Nevin (2001.0516.0758 PDT)]
[From Richard Kennaway (2001.05.16.1754 BST)]

The last is the message of mine that you quote above.

Spot the difference between these two pictures.

-- Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/
   School of Information Systems, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.

[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0517.1413)]

Richard Kennaway (2001.05.17.1842 BST)

Spot the difference between these two pictures.

I'll let you have the last word.

BG