[From Bill Powers (940217.1105 MST)]
Bill Leach (940217.1725) --
When I said "social" I did not mean in social in terms of any
particular behaviour but rather that "by design" humans will
deal in groups rather than alone BECAUSE it is their nature.
If this is a fact of the type we like to use in PCT, then ALL
human beings will ALWAYS prefer to deal in groups and will ALWAYS
attempt to do so given the opportunity. If there is any
significant number of human beings who EVER prefer to work alone
and do not take advantage of the opportunity to work with a group
instead, then this proposed fact is not a fact. It is merely an
impression. We are then left without an explanation for those who
often prefer to work alone.
PCT does not "have trouble" with the idea that most of us have
hands and arms and that these function generally within certain
ranges of operational ability.
That is quite different from proposing that there are built-in
control systems that use the arms and hands, and that there are
built-in goals for how we shall use the arms and hands to create
consequences in the rest of the perceptual world. To have a
preference for working in groups, a person would first of all
have to have a built-in perception of "a group," and of "working
with," and a host of other things. My own impression is that
babies must learn to perceive others as human beings just as they
learn to perceive teddy bears, balls, and rattles. They learn
slowly to treat living systems differently from nonliving ones.
It is hard for me to believe that when such basic perceptions
must be learned, there could be a built-in perception of an
abstraction called "a group," when even the elements of a group
are not initially recognizeable.
The problems of learning to control are such that some of them
can be solved more easily in concert with others than alone (for
example, learning how to play patty-cake). Interacting with other
control systems is very different from interacting with the
nonliving world. I don't see why it would be necessary to have
any built-in social properties for any organism to learn the
special methods required to control in the presence of other
control systems. It is not necessary to have any built-in
preferences for controlling arms and legs in order to learn how
to control them. They are, after all, the only manipulators of
that kind that we possess. Neither is it necessary to have any
built-in preferences for dealing with other control systems. The
problems will manifest themselves quickly enough, and will be
solved through normal reorganization.
If there are built-in preferences for certain perceptions, they
must be very, very simple perceptions. As you say, our internal
wiring must have an effect, if only that of making it easier to
learn certain simple control processes that are especially useful
for living. The "instinctive behaviors" of babies rapidly
disappear, being totally replaced by learned organizations
appropriate to the environment into which each baby chances to be
born. This is true even of rats, up to a point.
Simply observing that most people like to be in groups (if that
is true) by no means demonstrates that this preference is
inherited. It may simply show that being in groups is in fact a
way of controlling things that matter to individuals -- some
things. Those things that are important for an individual control
don't have to have anything to do with groupiness. Groupiness may
merely be a readily-available means to other ends that are
important to the individual.
The great power of a self-organizing, self-tuning system like the
human brain is that it needs very little by way of built-in
skills. That is also one of its weaknesses, as it makes the
infant helpless for a long time.
Best,
Bill P.