[From Bill Powers (980402.-0850 MST)]
Bruce Gregory (980402.1003 EST)--
1. Will the action be the greatest when the perception is zero or when it
matches the reference signal?
When the perception is zero.
So when the perception is zero, it calls forth the action?
2. Suppose the perception is caused by a positive direction of action:
a. If the reference signal increases, will the action increase or
decrease?
Increase. (If I understand the question.)
Correct. An increase in the reference signal calls forth an action.
b. If the perceptual signal increases, will the action increase or
decrease?
I really don't understand the question!
Suppose that because of your actions (for example, moving as close as you
can to to a bird in a tree 100 yards away), you are seeing a thrush. Now, a
whole flock of thrushes appears, and roosts on a fence five feet away from
you. Will you now try to move even closer to the thrushes? If the
perception of a thrush calls forth the actions that bring you toward the
thrush, then the perception of many thrushes much closer to you should call
forth even more action, shouldn't it?
An increase in the perceptual signal produces a _decrease_ in the action.
After you've thought about those questions a while, consider these:
If a birdwatcher is looking for a thrush, what is the state of the
perception of the thrush at that point? Is the birdwatcher perceiving a
thrush? Is the reference signal zero or nonzero? Is the error signal large
or small? What is the state of the action directed toward finding a thrush?
Low. No. Nonzero. Large. Large.
All correct. Again, would you say that zero perception of a thrush calls
forth the action that allows you to see one?
After the birdwatcher has spotted a thrush, what is the state of the
perception relative to the reference setting? What is the value of the
error signal? What is the state of the action directed toward finding a
thrush?
Equal to. Zero. Zero.
Correct again. Now we do have a perception of a thrush, yet the result is
zero action directed toward finding a thrush. Does this say that the
perception is calling forth the action, or turning it off?
When you've pondered these questions enough, you may want to re-examine
your image of the perception "calling forth" an action, and draw some
conclusions about the compatibility of that image with PCT.
No change. "Calling forth" is _not_ a term in PCT. It is a way
of describing the experience of an LCS.
But it makes no sense. The _lack_ of the desired perception is what really
turns on the action, not the presence of the perception. I think that a
person who says the opposite is confusing his reference signals with his
perceptions. You don't need PCT to see that your proposed description is
wrong. Does the perception of food in your stomach call forth eating, or is
it the _lack_ of that perception, in comparison with what you want to
perceive? Does seeing a good movie you haven't seen before call forth
buying a ticket and some popcorn and sitting in the theater for a couple of
hours? Does the perception of the car in the middle of its lane call forth
steering efforts? What you're proposing is the exact reverse of what really
happens -- from anyone's point of view who troubles to observe what is
really happening. You're describing what happens as a poor observer would
describe it.
Here is an example. You
are playing tennis. The ball comes over the net heading toward
you. Your attention is focused on the ball. You swing your
racket without diverting your attention from the ball.
From your point of view, the ball has "called forth" your
action.
What you've forgotten to mention is that you want your racket to hit the
ball, to send it back across the net. Why don't you just let the ball sail
on past you? If you see that the ball is going to land outside the court,
that's exactly what you will do, and suddenly the ball has lost the power
to call forth your swing of the racket. If you think that the ball is
causing you to swing your racket, you're just misinterpreting what's
happening, theory or no theory. It's not necesssary to think in terms of
PCT to see that this description is simply incorrect.
I am on the sidelines, watching you play. I want to
model your action. "Bill is controlling for hitting the ball. He
wants to perceive his racket encountering the ball when the ball
is on the rise following its first bounce. When the ball reaches
a certain point, there is an error signal generated by the
difference between his perception of the ball and his reference
level for seeing his racket encounter the ball. He acts by
swinging his racket. This action closes the gap between his
perception (racket not encountering the ball) and his preferred
state (racket encountering the ball)."
Are these two descriptions at odds?
Yes, completely. The first one presents the ball as the cause of the
behavior and ignores the player's intention or goal. It is precisely the
view that leads to what the PCT analyst calls "the behavioral illusion" --
the mistaken attribution of causation to the disturbance rather than to the
driving intention of the player. Without the intention, the action will
never occur; without the ball approaching you over the net, you can still
swing the racket to hit it (the serve). This is even clearer in other
circumstances. In general, actions are produced as a way of producing and
controlling what is perceived. If there are disturbances, actions will
change even further to counteract their effects. This is not theory; it is
a description of what can be observed.
Only if they lead to different predictions.
They do. Suppose the ball is already heading toward the racket, which is
moving toward the ball at the proper speed. Will the ball call forth even
more movement of the racket (sending the ball into the stands)? If a little
perception calls forth a little action, will more perception call forth
even more action, leading to a positive feedback situation? If the player
does not intend to hit the ball, will the perception of the approaching
ball still call forth a swing of the racket at it?
I maintain that both are valid. One
describes what is happening from the viewpoint of a modeler. The
other describes what is happening from the viewpoint of a tennis
coach. "Keep your eye on the ball, Bill. Don't worry about
swinging. You'll swing when the time is right." This is what it
_feels_ like to be a LCS who happens to be playing tennis.
This is what it feels like to be unconscious of how you really work, while
a coach who doesn't understand much more than you do gives you unhelpful
advice. If I take your advice literally, I will just stand there while
serve after serve zips past me. You'll then have to modify your advice,
which probably means you will have to learn something about how people work
that you didn't know. OF COURSE you have to intend to swing the racket. But
swinging _at the right time_ is not what you have to pay attention to. You
have to attend to the _relationship between the racket head and the ball_,
which extends over a period of time as the ball is approaching. You can see
both perfectly well -- your field of view is slightly more than 180
degrees. You maintain a certain velocity and position relationship up to
the point of contact, after which it doesn't matter what you do. If someone
had explained that to me 60 years ago or so, I might have become a
competent tennis player. As it was, all the people who coached me said
useless things like "don't worry about swinging." When I did learn how to
hit a ball, it was a ping-pong ball, and my advisor showed me the right
relationship to maintain between paddle and ball. He told me the right
thing to worry about, concerning my swing. That, as it turned out, made me
a vastly better tennis player, too, which means poor but no longer hopeless.
Most people on CSGnet adopt the modeler's perspective. I not
only have no objections to this, I laud it!
The next thing to do after that is to re-examine the non-modelers's
perspective, the one that you cobbled together in the years before you
learned PCT. Now that you understand what's probably really happening, you
will find that many of your common-sense understandings don't hold water
any more.
The advance of PCT
requires experiments and modeling. I am trying to approach the
PCT from the perspective of how I can make this wonderful new
understanding of how human beings work accessible to some
fraction of the great majority of the world who have great
difficulty thinking in terms of models and who will not be able
to devote two years of concentrated effort to understanding PCT.
Quixotic? Indeed. Hopelessly misleading? I hope not.
Depends on whether you just want to give the great majority the warm
fuzzies, or if you want to teach them to understand themselves better. Most
people have very wierd concepts of how they and other people work. For
example, think how many of them still believe that by punishing people you
can teach them a lesson about right and wrong and that they will reform
themselves as a consequence. Think how many of them believe that they can
actually feel another person's emotions, and that other people are the
cause of their own emotions. How many people believe that if you swing a
weight on a string around your head, and the string breaks, the weight will
fly away along an expanding spiral? That misconception is no worse than
most people's ideas about human nature.
Best,
Bill P.