CEV and RREV (was Re: Doing Research on Purpose...)

[MartinT]

Martin Taylor 2019.04.14.09.50]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-13_12:07:31]

  the concept of an RREV is unnecessary at

best and an impediment to the development of PCT as a science at
worst.

[Rick Marken 2019-04-13_18:26:37]

  RM: I think what you call an RREV is what I would call the

collection of physical variables that are the basis of a
perception.
Accuracy is not measured in terms of how
well the description of the controlled variable matches an
imagined RREV. So, again, the concept of an RREV is unnecessary at
best and an impediment to the development of PCT as a science at
worst.

I guess if you define and RREV as "*      the collection of physical

variables that are the basis of a perception* " and think of it
as “imagined”, I can easily see how you could say “* the concept of
an RREV is unnecessary at best and an impediment to the
development of PCT as a science at worst.”* And I would agree
with you whole-heartedly, But what you think I call an RREV is not
much like what I do call an RREV.

When I introduced the term (not the concept, which was already

there), I did not define it in that way, nor did I suggests that it
could be imagined. You can imagine anything you like, but nothing
you imagine will ever be an RREV. An RREV just is, an entity in the
Real Reality we presume to exist.

Let me see if an example might help explain what I meant by an RREV

(and at the same time suggest why evolution might have come up with
a perceptual control hierarchy rather than a flat, one-level set of
myriads of control systems that independently controlled their
perceptions of “* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a* [MT. higher than sensor-level] *perception”.

• -------example--------

Consider a wooden chair*.*     It has four wooden legs, a flat

square wooden seat and a back constructed of a set of wooden slats.
For the purposes of this example, I assume that we have basic
sensors for legs, seat, and back, as the example could work for any
one of the components, and for any one of their components. So for
the example, a leg is an elementary unit of perception.

I push one of the legs northward. To my surprise (because I know

there is no chair in Real Reality) each of the other legs starts
moving northward by itself, and so do the seat and back, which are
not legs at all. How can this be, I ask myself? What kind of magic
tells these other perceptions I call legs, seat and back to move all
by themselves? Do they really, or is it all an illusion. I know that
one leg moved because I pushed it and changes in my perception of
its location coincided with feelings of pressure on my hand as I
pushed it. But, since the other bits and pieces are just a
“collection of physical variables” that hang together only because I
have a perception of “chair”, why should they move along with the
one whose location perception I was controlling?

Aha! I say after some thought. Maybe it's not magic. Maybe there

really is something “out there in Real Reality” that functions so as
to make all these parts hang together. Maybe in Real Reality a band
of gnomes has been handed a set of instructions ordering them to
keep these “chair parts” in a constant spatial relationship to each
other as any one part is moved by an outside agency of which they
know nothing. The gnomes are simply collectively controlling a
configuration of these parts. That solves the problem. These gnomic
reference values create in Real Reality what I perceive as the chair
in the “Apparent World” of my perceptions.

A problem. I'm just imagining that there are gnomes. It's a possible

solution to my problem of why I perceive all the different chair
parts moving together when I push only one of them, but is it the
only possible solution? Probably not, so would it not be better to
think more generally and not ask at this point the mechanism that
holds all the chair parts together. We can leave that to other
people who can imagine abstractions such as forces and energies that
they could apply to many similar puzzles of perceptions that always
seem to change similarly in respect of their interactions. The
“forces” these other people imagine to exist in Real Reality can
take the place of the gnomes, and I would perceive no difference in
how I perceive the whole chair to move when I push one leg
northward.

The "chair" is a structure in RR, whether it is held together by

gnomes, forces, or some other magic. Whatever it is, I need not
imagine it, however much fun it is to do so. All I need is that
because these components always act the same way when I push one of
them, it is easiest to think of them as one object. I perceive that
I move the “chair” when I try to move one of the chair’s components.

Now I push one chair leg northward, the seat southward, another leg

westward, and so forth, which I assume I should easily be able to do
because, after all, I know that they are just the collection of
physical variables that are the basis of my “chair” perception. But
I get another surprise. The unit components all resist my pushes.
Maybe the chair trembles a little and moves erratically in a
direction I pushed none of them. What’s happening? Maybe the gnomes
are angry at being overworked trying to follow their instructions
and finding those instructions to be self-contradictory? Whatever is
happening in Real Reality, its effects on the perceptions of the
units are not what I am controlling for. The seat does not move
southward, the two legs do not move northward and westward, and so
on.

How can I solve this new puzzle? All I know is that my answer for

what might be happening in RR, that some properties of RR (gnomes of
forces, maybe) enforce a structure with a particular configuration
that allows no movement freedom of the individual components
independently of their places in the “chair” configuration I
perceive.

---------end example-------

In the example, the location of the "chair" configuration I perceive

is what I call the CEV when I control my perception of its position.
It is totally determined by the perceptual function that generates
“chair” from a collection of “legs”, “seat”, and “back” perceptions.
The configuration of instructions for the gnomes or the disposition
of forces (or something else) is a “structure” in Real Reality that
I call the RREV. The RREV is what is influenced by my actions and it
produces the effects in my sensor systems that allow me to perceive
at one level “legs”, “seat”, and “back”, and at a higher level
“chair”.

This does not mean that every time I perceive "chair" there is a

Real Reality chair affecting my sensors. I might be looking at a
drawing of a chair, I might be dreaming, I might be hallucinating.
If, then, I try to sit on the chair I perceive, I will not
experience what I expect to experience (though in a dream I probably
would). If, however, most of the time when I perceive “chair” its
components interact in the same way, whether there is a Real Reality
structure or a collection of components will affect me differently
only if I try to use the “chair” structure in controlling some other
variable such as a seating arrangement for my guests.

The RR configuration that results in the "chair" perception may be a

structure maintained by gnomes, or it may be an adventitious
arrangement of independent components. either way, it is the RREV
that corresponds with the perceived CEV. The Real Reality structure,
if one exists, is likely to have many other properties besides the
NSEW locations of its components, but the sensors and the “chair”
perceptual function in the example are affected by changes in none
of them. In this sense, the RREV, like the CEV, is defined by the
Perceptual Function. However, the Perceptual Function itself is
evolved or reorganized to be what it is because when the components
are configured as what comes to be perceived as “chair”, they
usually change in a coordinated function – they usually act as a
unitary Real Reality Environmental Variable, a structure in RR, and
seldom as “* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a perception.*”

Martin

[rsmarken]

[

Rick Marken 2019-04-15_09:20:21]

Martin Taylor 2019.04.14.09.50]

  RM: the concept of an RREV is unnecessary at

best and an impediment to the development of PCT as a science at
worst.
RM: I think what you call an RREV is what I would call the
collection of physical variables that are the basis of a
perception.
MT: I guess if you define and RREV as "* the collection of physical
variables that are the basis of a perception* " and think of it
as “imagined”, I can easily see how you could say “* the concept of
an RREV is unnecessary at best and an impediment to the
development of PCT as a science at worst.”* And I would agree
with you whole-heartedly, But what you think I call an RREV is not
much like what I do call an RREV.

RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.Â

RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”. This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer “knows” they should be controlling. Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying. This is the approach taken by non-PCT applications of control theory to behavior. The PCT approach doesn’t assume knowledge of the variables an organism should be controlling. It is primarily aimed at discovering the perceptual variables they actually do control – variables that are often far more abstract than the ones of interest to those doing non-PCT-based research on control.Â

RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the development of PCT science.

BestÂ

RickÂ

···

When I introduced the term (not the concept, which was already

there), I did not define it in that way, nor did I suggests that it
could be imagined. You can imagine anything you like, but nothing
you imagine will ever be an RREV. An RREV just is, an entity in the
Real Reality we presume to exist.

Let me see if an example might help explain what I meant by an RREV

(and at the same time suggest why evolution might have come up with
a perceptual control hierarchy rather than a flat, one-level set of
myriads of control systems that independently controlled their
perceptions of “* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a* [MT. higher than sensor-level] *perception”.

• -------example--------

Consider a wooden chair*.*     It has four wooden legs, a flat

square wooden seat and a back constructed of a set of wooden slats.
For the purposes of this example, I assume that we have basic
sensors for legs, seat, and back, as the example could work for any
one of the components, and for any one of their components. So for
the example, a leg is an elementary unit of perception.

I push one of the legs northward. To my surprise (because I know

there is no chair in Real Reality) each of the other legs starts
moving northward by itself, and so do the seat and back, which are
not legs at all. How can this be, I ask myself? What kind of magic
tells these other perceptions I call legs, seat and back to move all
by themselves? Do they really, or is it all an illusion. I know that
one leg moved because I pushed it and changes in my perception of
its location coincided with feelings of pressure on my hand as I
pushed it. But, since the other bits and pieces are just a
“collection of physical variables” that hang together only because I
have a perception of “chair”, why should they move along with the
one whose location perception I was controlling?

Aha! I say after some thought. Maybe it's not magic. Maybe there

really is something “out there in Real Reality” that functions so as
to make all these parts hang together. Maybe in Real Reality a band
of gnomes has been handed a set of instructions ordering them to
keep these “chair parts” in a constant spatial relationship to each
other as any one part is moved by an outside agency of which they
know nothing. The gnomes are simply collectively controlling a
configuration of these parts. That solves the problem. These gnomic
reference values create in Real Reality what I perceive as the chair
in the “Apparent World” of my perceptions.

A problem. I'm just imagining that there are gnomes. It's a possible

solution to my problem of why I perceive all the different chair
parts moving together when I push only one of them, but is it the
only possible solution? Probably not, so would it not be better to
think more generally and not ask at this point the mechanism that
holds all the chair parts together. We can leave that to other
people who can imagine abstractions such as forces and energies that
they could apply to many similar puzzles of perceptions that always
seem to change similarly in respect of their interactions. The
“forces” these other people imagine to exist in Real Reality can
take the place of the gnomes, and I would perceive no difference in
how I perceive the whole chair to move when I push one leg
northward.

The "chair" is a structure in RR, whether it is held together by

gnomes, forces, or some other magic. Whatever it is, I need not
imagine it, however much fun it is to do so. All I need is that
because these components always act the same way when I push one of
them, it is easiest to think of them as one object. I perceive that
I move the “chair” when I try to move one of the chair’s components.

Now I push one chair leg northward, the seat southward, another leg

westward, and so forth, which I assume I should easily be able to do
because, after all, I know that they are just the collection of
physical variables that are the basis of my “chair” perception. But
I get another surprise. The unit components all resist my pushes.
Maybe the chair trembles a little and moves erratically in a
direction I pushed none of them. What’s happening? Maybe the gnomes
are angry at being overworked trying to follow their instructions
and finding those instructions to be self-contradictory? Whatever is
happening in Real Reality, its effects on the perceptions of the
units are not what I am controlling for. The seat does not move
southward, the two legs do not move northward and westward, and so
on.

How can I solve this new puzzle? All I know is that my answer for

what might be happening in RR, that some properties of RR (gnomes of
forces, maybe) enforce a structure with a particular configuration
that allows no movement freedom of the individual components
independently of their places in the “chair” configuration I
perceive.

---------end example-------

In the example, the location of the "chair" configuration I perceive

is what I call the CEV when I control my perception of its position.
It is totally determined by the perceptual function that generates
“chair” from a collection of “legs”, “seat”, and “back” perceptions.
The configuration of instructions for the gnomes or the disposition
of forces (or something else) is a “structure” in Real Reality that
I call the RREV. The RREV is what is influenced by my actions and it
produces the effects in my sensor systems that allow me to perceive
at one level “legs”, “seat”, and “back”, and at a higher level
“chair”.

This does not mean that every time I perceive "chair" there is a

Real Reality chair affecting my sensors. I might be looking at a
drawing of a chair, I might be dreaming, I might be hallucinating.
If, then, I try to sit on the chair I perceive, I will not
experience what I expect to experience (though in a dream I probably
would). If, however, most of the time when I perceive “chair” its
components interact in the same way, whether there is a Real Reality
structure or a collection of components will affect me differently
only if I try to use the “chair” structure in controlling some other
variable such as a seating arrangement for my guests.

The RR configuration that results in the "chair" perception may be a

structure maintained by gnomes, or it may be an adventitious
arrangement of independent components. either way, it is the RREV
that corresponds with the perceived CEV. The Real Reality structure,
if one exists, is likely to have many other properties besides the
NSEW locations of its components, but the sensors and the “chair”
perceptual function in the example are affected by changes in none
of them. In this sense, the RREV, like the CEV, is defined by the
Perceptual Function. However, the Perceptual Function itself is
evolved or reorganized to be what it is because when the components
are configured as what comes to be perceived as “chair”, they
usually change in a coordinated function – they usually act as a
unitary Real Reality Environmental Variable, a structure in RR, and
seldom as “* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a perception.*”

Martin

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[bleach]

Martin I think that I finally understand
why I also objected to adding the term to the PCT vocabulary. I
know if ‘felt wrong’ or ‘unnecessary’ for it to be within the
PCT vocabulary of defined terms. The chair example provided the
clue.

    Basically, as a theory, PCT doesn't give a

damn about the properties of the chair. Moving a chair leg and
having a perception of the entire chair moving means nothing to
the complex control loops involved in moving the chair leg (as
you described). What I am saying does not preclude other
perceptions that could also be under control such as maybe not
colliding a portion of the chair with another object.

    PCT as a theory, just as in engineering

control theory is not concerned with application of the theory.Â
This is particularly true for the current state of PCT. OTOH in
a particular application of PCT to a specific example (or many
general examples) the perceived relationship between aspects of
the environment not necessarily currently under control are
relevant. Those are primarily the domain of physics or
mechanics.

    CSGNet was formed to advance the theory

itself and not so much to promote its use. Purveyors of PCT in
applications such a therapy were indeed welcomed but again
primarily for two reasons. One is that case study examples were
themselves a validation of the theory (though not in the
rigorous nature of a proof) and such discussions could spawn
interest and suggest further research on the theory itself.

bill

···

On 4/15/19 10:23 AM, Richard Marken
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

rsmarken@gmail.com

[

Rick Marken 2019-04-15_09:20:21]

Martin Taylor 2019.04.14.09.50]

            RM: the concept of an RREV is

unnecessary at best and an impediment to the development
of PCT as a science at worst.
RM: I think what you call an RREV
is what I would call the collection of physical
variables that are the basis of a perception.
MT: I guess if you define and RREV as "* the collection
of physical variables that are the basis of a perception* "
and think of it as “imagined”, I can easily see how you
could say “* the concept of an RREV is unnecessary at
best and an impediment to the development of PCT as a
science at worst.”* And I would agree with you
whole-heartedly, But what you think I call an RREV is not
much like what I do call an RREV.

        RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for

practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables
around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV
is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of
research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it
would help me with my current project of explaining to
conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.Â

        RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the

development of PCT as a science because it implies that how
well organisms control depends on how accurately they
perceive what is known to be “out there”. This implies that
the observer knows what the behaving system should be
controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that
the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms
control what an observer “knows” they should be controlling.
Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know
how well a person controls a variable that the person should
be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do
instrument flying. This is the approach taken by non-PCT
applications of control theory to behavior. The PCT approach
doesn’t assume knowledge of the variables an organism should
be controlling. It is primarily aimed at discovering the
perceptual variables they actually do control – variables
that are often far more abstract than the ones of interest
to those doing non-PCT-based research on control.Â

        RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV

contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual
variables organisms are controlling when they are seen
carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to
consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the development of
PCT science.

BestÂ

RickÂ

          When I introduced the term (not the concept, which was

already there), I did not define it in that way, nor did I
suggests that it could be imagined. You can imagine
anything you like, but nothing you imagine will ever be an
RREV. An RREV just is, an entity in the Real Reality we
presume to exist.

          Let me see if an example might help explain what I meant

by an RREV (and at the same time suggest why evolution
might have come up with a perceptual control hierarchy
rather than a flat, one-level set of myriads of control
systems that independently controlled their perceptions of
“* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a* [MT. higher than sensor-level]*perception”.

         * -------example--------

          Consider a wooden chair*.*               It has four wooden legs,

a flat square wooden seat and a back constructed of a set
of wooden slats. For the purposes of this example, I
assume that we have basic sensors for legs, seat, and
back, as the example could work for any one of the
components, and for any one of their components. So for
the example, a leg is an elementary unit of perception.

          I push one of the legs northward. To my surprise (because

I know there is no chair in Real Reality) each of the
other legs starts moving northward by itself, and so do
the seat and back, which are not legs at all. How can this
be, I ask myself? What kind of magic tells these other
perceptions I call legs, seat and back to move all by
themselves? Do they really, or is it all an illusion. I
know that one leg moved because I pushed it and changes in
my perception of its location coincided with feelings of
pressure on my hand as I pushed it. But, since the other
bits and pieces are just a “collection of physical
variables” that hang together only because I have a
perception of “chair”, why should they move along with the
one whose location perception I was controlling?

          Aha! I say after some thought. Maybe it's not magic. Maybe

there really is something “out there in Real Reality” that
functions so as to make all these parts hang together.
Maybe in Real Reality a band of gnomes has been handed a
set of instructions ordering them to keep these “chair
parts” in a constant spatial relationship to each other as
any one part is moved by an outside agency of which they
know nothing. The gnomes are simply collectively
controlling a configuration of these parts. That solves
the problem. These gnomic reference values create in Real
Reality what I perceive as the chair in the “Apparent
World” of my perceptions.

          A problem. I'm just imagining that there are gnomes. It's

a possible solution to my problem of why I perceive all
the different chair parts moving together when I push only
one of them, but is it the only possible solution?
Probably not, so would it not be better to think more
generally and not ask at this point the mechanism that
holds all the chair parts together. We can leave that to
other people who can imagine abstractions such as forces
and energies that they could apply to many similar puzzles
of perceptions that always seem to change similarly in
respect of their interactions. The “forces” these other
people imagine to exist in Real Reality can take the place
of the gnomes, and I would perceive no difference in how I
perceive the whole chair to move when I push one leg
northward.

          The "chair" is a structure in RR, whether it is held

together by gnomes, forces, or some other magic. Whatever
it is, I need not imagine it, however much fun it is to do
so. All I need is that because these components always act
the same way when I push one of them, it is easiest to
think of them as one object. I perceive that I move the
“chair” when I try to move one of the chair’s components.

          Now I push one chair leg northward, the seat southward,

another leg westward, and so forth, which I assume I
should easily be able to do because, after all, I know
that they are just the collection of physical variables
that are the basis of my “chair” perception. But I get
another surprise. The unit components all resist my
pushes. Maybe the chair trembles a little and moves
erratically in a direction I pushed none of them. What’s
happening? Maybe the gnomes are angry at being overworked
trying to follow their instructions and finding those
instructions to be self-contradictory? Whatever is
happening in Real Reality, its effects on the perceptions
of the units are not what I am controlling for. The seat
does not move southward, the two legs do not move
northward and westward, and so on.

          How can I solve this new puzzle? All I know is that my

answer for what might be happening in RR, that some
properties of RR (gnomes of forces, maybe) enforce a
structure with a particular configuration that allows no
movement freedom of the individual components
independently of their places in the “chair” configuration
I perceive.

          ---------end example-------

          In the example, the location of the "chair" configuration

I perceive is what I call the CEV when I control my
perception of its position. It is totally determined by
the perceptual function that generates “chair” from a
collection of “legs”, “seat”, and “back” perceptions. The
configuration of instructions for the gnomes or the
disposition of forces (or something else) is a “structure”
in Real Reality that I call the RREV. The RREV is what is
influenced by my actions and it produces the effects in my
sensor systems that allow me to perceive at one level
“legs”, “seat”, and “back”, and at a higher level “chair”.

          This does not mean that every time I perceive "chair"

there is a Real Reality chair affecting my sensors. I
might be looking at a drawing of a chair, I might be
dreaming, I might be hallucinating. If, then, I try to sit
on the chair I perceive, I will not experience what I
expect to experience (though in a dream I probably would).
If, however, most of the time when I perceive “chair” its
components interact in the same way, whether there is a
Real Reality structure or a collection of components will
affect me differently only if I try to use the “chair”
structure in controlling some other variable such as a
seating arrangement for my guests.

          The RR configuration that results in the "chair"

perception may be a structure maintained by gnomes, or it
may be an adventitious arrangement of independent
components. either way, it is the RREV that corresponds
with the perceived CEV. The Real Reality structure, if one
exists, is likely to have many other properties besides
the NSEW locations of its components, but the sensors and
the “chair” perceptual function in the example are
affected by changes in none of them. In this sense, the
RREV, like the CEV, is defined by the Perceptual Function.
However, the Perceptual Function itself is evolved or
reorganized to be what it is because when the components
are configured as what comes to be perceived as “chair”,
they usually change in a coordinated function – they
usually act as a unitary Real Reality Environmental
Variable, a structure in RR, and seldom as “* the
collection of physical variables that are the basis of a
perception.*”

          Martin

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

                                "Perfection

is achieved not when you have
nothing more to add, but when you
have
nothing left to take away.�
   Â
            --Antoine de
Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

One thing PCT does teach is that Real Reality is not where goals

reside. Goals, according to PC, are inside individual organisms.
There is no main “goal of PCT research” out there. For RM, the main
goal of PCT research, according to self-report, is “determining the
perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior
is organized”. That is not my main goal of research based on PCT.
My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the
many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the
same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may
sometimes have a supporting goal of “d”. But that is certainly not
my main goal of research based on PCT, any more than getting the
steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a
car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to
examine the interactions among the control systems of the
experimenter and the subject in a TCV, or at the other end of the
scale of importance, to study collective control by politically
related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the
processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work to
enhance the effective operation of an organism and its descendants
in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A
couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the
control loops involved in a simple barter imply that a stable
economy requires steady inflation, and to examine the initial
development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots
of possible goals of PCT-based research that The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal,
however, because you might like to explain to your students why the
hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or
something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the
fundamental “why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find
variable (which of many?) someone is controlling in a
particular situation. If that is all you want to do, the concept of
the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.
Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know
which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which
ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought
to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact, I never
actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR
does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception
when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that
circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller requires, in
order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.
I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know
whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of
control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside
observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should”
comes into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple
explanation.
Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I
understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value
in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific
situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to have
little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for
PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the
RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops
involved in situations like teaching.
I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have
shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research,
and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled
variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from the
CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of
many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance
from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of
cultures that can lead to war.
Martin

···

[

Rick Marken 2019-04-15_09:20:21]

Martin Taylor 2019.04.14.09.50]

            RM: the concept of an RREV is

unnecessary at best and an impediment to the development
of PCT as a science at worst.
RM: I think what you call an RREV
is what I would call the collection of physical
variables that are the basis of a perception.
MT: I guess if you define and RREV as "* the collection
of physical variables that are the basis of a perception* "
and think of it as “imagined”, I can easily see how you
could say “* the concept of an RREV is unnecessary at
best and an impediment to the development of PCT as a
science at worst.”* And I would agree with you
whole-heartedly, But what you think I call an RREV is not
much like what I do call an RREV.

        RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for

practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables
around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV
is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of
research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it
would help me with my current project of explaining to
conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.

•  oing research aimed at
  

determining the perceptual variables around which any particular
example of behavior is organized*
the

        RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the

development of PCT as a science because it implies that how
well organisms control depends on how accurately they
perceive what is known to be “out there”.

        This implies that the observer knows what the behaving

system should be controlling, which would lead researchers
to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how
well organisms control what an observer “knows” they should
be controlling.

        Of course there are circumstances where we do want to

know how well a person controls a variable that the person
should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do
instrument flying.

…

        RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV

contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual
variables organisms are controlling when they are seen
carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to
consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the development of
PCT science.

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

        RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for

practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables
around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV
is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of
research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it
would help me with my current project of explaining to
conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.Â

MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the

many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the
same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may
sometimes have a supporting goal of "d* oing research aimed at
determining the perceptual variables around which any particular
example of behavior is organized* ". But that is certainly not
my main goal of research based on PCT,

RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.Â

Best

Rick

Â

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[EetuP]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]

Rick, Martin, sorry to jump in, hopefully Martin will offer a better answer, but I want to personally stress two points:

···

1. RREV is a so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself. The
   duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain some data, for example the phenomenon that two observers get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions are caused by same RREV. (Note
   that (a) can be explained with (b).)

2. Perhaps you do not accept that data could be explained with something from which you cannot get data. Then you can replace the
   word “explain� with the word “understand�. This is why I believe that it could be easier to carry your project of
   explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research by utilizing this understanding tool. At least I personally find it difficult to get interested in data which had no connection to some structures in the real world.

Eetu

From: Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 6:55 PM
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: CEV and RREV (was Re: Doing Research on Purpose…)

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists
how to do PCT research.

MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may sometimes
have a supporting goal of “doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized”. But that is certainly not my main goal of research based on PCT,

RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains
it.

Best

Rick

any more than getting the steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to examine the interactions among the control systems
of the experimenter and the subject in a TCV, or at the other end of the scale of importance, to study collective control by politically related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work
to enhance the effective operation of an organism and its descendants in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the control loops involved in a simple barter imply that
a stable economy requires steady inflation, and to examine the initial development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots of possible goals of PCT-based research that
The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal, however, because you might like to explain to your students why the hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the fundamental
“why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find the variable (which of many?) someone is controlling in a particular situation. If that is all you want to do, the concept of the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.

RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”.

Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact,
I never actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller
requires, in order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.

This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer
“knows” they should be controlling.

I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should” comes
into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple explanation.

Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying.

Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to
have little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops involved in situations like teaching.

…

RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid
I will continue to consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the development of PCT science.

I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research, and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from
the CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of cultures that can lead to war.

Martin

–

Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you

have nothing left to take away.�

                            --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Eetu
Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]

Â

        Rick, Martin, sorry to jump in, hopefully

Martin will offer a better answer, but I want to personally
stress two points:

Â

···

1.           RREV is a
   

so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get
any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself.
The duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain
some data, for example the phenomenon that two observers
get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their
perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions
are caused by same RREV. (Note that (a) can be explained
with (b).)

1.           Perhaps
   

you do not accept that data could be explained with
something from which you cannot get data. Then you can
replace the word “explain� with the word “understand�.
This is why I believe that it could be easier to carry
your project of
explaining to conventional
psychologists how to do PCT research by utilizing this
understanding tool. At least I personally find it
difficult to get interested in data which had no
connection to some structures in the real world.

Â

Eetu

Â

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.16.13.05]

That's a perfectly legitimate observation, one with which I agree.

It was exactly Shannon’s point when he said that he analysis of a
communication channel must not be concerned with what the
communicated information might be about. But is not a part of the theory the reason WHY PCT, as theory,
includes a hierarchy of control loops? Without invoking the concept
of an RREV can you think of why this aspect of the theory might be
required, or are you happy with PCT being YAWFT (Yet Another Way of
Fitting Data) that just happens to fit data using a hierarchic
structure?
Does PCT as a theory not concern itself with how control loops
interact, and are not real world observations data that can be
predicted and used to invalidate those aspects of the theory? Also,
Rick was talking about “PCT-based” research, not research into PCT,
and all the topics I mentioned are areas of research that is usually
not PCT-based.
You may think otherwise, but I think there is a real place for
applied research that takes advantage of basic research. Advancing
other fields is a good way of validating the basic results. Did not
the engineering development of effective steam engines lead to the
scientific theory of thermodynamics, which fed back to improving the
efficiency of engines of all kinds? It’s all feedback, and that
applies recursively to PCT. If MoL didn’t work at all, might that
not say something about the validity of PCT as a theory of what
might be going on? Since MoL does seem to work pretty well in lots
of cases, might not an closer examination of cases perhaps be able
to offer clues to the structure of the functioning of higher levels
of control and the interactions among control levels? Again, it’s
all feedback.
I often have made the opposite point, which I think is the one you
are making, that basic research is important in its own right. Basic
research is fundamentally the improvement in the ability to predict
unknown relationships or measurements and the explain known ones,
which might be widely but loosely, or narrowly but precisely
applicable. I think that the breadth of usability of the results of
basic research is as good a guide to its importance as is its
precision in a very narrow range of experiments on things that are
not done in everyday life. What makes the theory relevant is that
the same processes involved in the laboratory theory can be seen
operating in many real-life situations.
Personally, I have never understood CSGnet to be a propaganda arm to
promulgate PCT, as you suggest I do. That would be a political
purpose, unrelated to science. There was a time, long years ago,
when I did think CSGnet was intended to be a place where the theory
might be collaboratively developed, but that hope was crushed by
experience. Now I think it serves mainly as a tutorial area of the
Internet, in which innovative thought toward further development of
PCT beyond the stage at which Powers left it is actively and
strongly discouraged. That perception of what CSGnet is now is far
research question for PCT: How does PCT account for learned
helplessness, and how does learned helplessness in one area affect
ability to control perceptions in other domains?
Martin

···

On 2019/04/15 11:46 PM, Bill Leach
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

      Martin I think that I finally understand

why I also objected to adding the term to the PCT vocabulary.Â
I know if ‘felt wrong’ or ‘unnecessary’ for it to be within
the PCT vocabulary of defined terms. The chair example
provided the clue.

      Basically, as a theory, PCT doesn't give

a damn about the properties of the chair. Moving a chair leg
and having a perception of the entire chair moving means
nothing to the complex control loops involved in moving the
chair leg (as you described).

    True, but what have the

properties of the chair got to do with the point at issue, which
is whether the fact that the other parts of the chair move when
you exert force o one part might suggest that in Real Reality
there exists some kind of entity that enforces the perception
of the chair moving when the action is to move a chair leg – In
other words, that a hierarchy of controlled perceptions is
required to accommodate constraints that RR imposes on our
abilities to control different perceptions?

What I am saying does not preclude other
perceptions that could also be under control such as maybe not
colliding a portion of the chair with another object.

    No. That's just another

constraint imposed by RR. I can easily imagine one chair being
slid over the floor through another chair an emerging the other
side, but if I tried that with a chair that I perceive to be in
my environment, it wouldn’t work very well. RR imposes a
constraint on the relationship between the two chairs. That
relationship is an RREV, just as the chair is, but it’s at a
higher level in a hierarchy of RREVs. We can’t know how those
constraints are imposed in RR. I use my “gnomes” to emphasize
that point, but the constraints do determine how we can control.

      PCT as a theory, just as in engineering

control theory is not concerned with application of the
theory.

…

      CSGNet was formed to advance the theory

itself and not so much to promote its use. Purveyors of PCT
in applications such a therapy were indeed welcomed but again
primarily for two reasons. One is that case study examples
were themselves a validation of the theory (though not in the
rigorous nature of a proof) and such discussions could spawn
interest and suggest further research on the theory itself.

bill

    On 4/15/19 10:23 AM, Richard Marken (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

rsmarken@gmail.com

[

Rick Marken 2019-04-15_09:20:21]

Martin Taylor 2019.04.14.09.50]

              RM: the concept of an RREV is

unnecessary at best and an impediment to the
development of PCT as a science at worst.
RM: I think what you call an
RREV is what I would call the collection of physical
variables that are the basis of a perception.
MT: I guess if you define and RREV as "* the collection
of physical variables that are the basis of a
perception* " and think of it as “imagined”, I can
easily see how you could say “* the concept of an RREV
is unnecessary at best and an impediment to the
development of PCT as a science at worst.”* And I
would agree with you whole-heartedly, But what you think
I call an RREV is not much like what I do call an RREV.

          RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for

practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables
around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of
RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main
goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how
it is; it would help me with my current project of
explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT
research.Â

          RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the

development of PCT as a science because it implies that
how well organisms control depends on how accurately they
perceive what is known to be “out there”. This implies
that the observer knows what the behaving system should be
controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that
the goal of PCT research is to determine how well
organisms control what an observer “knows” they should be
controlling. Of course there are circumstances where we do
want to know how well a person controls a variable that
the person should be controlling, for example, in training
pilots to do instrument flying. This is the approach taken
by non-PCT applications of control theory to behavior. The
PCT approach doesn’t assume knowledge of the variables an
organism should be controlling. It is primarily aimed at
discovering the perceptual variables they actually do
control – variables that are often far more abstract than
the ones of interest to those doing non-PCT-based research
on control.Â

          RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an

RREV contributes to our ability to understand what
perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they
are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will
continue to consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the
development of PCT science.

BestÂ

RickÂ

            When I introduced the term (not the concept, which was

already there), I did not define it in that way, nor did
I suggests that it could be imagined. You can imagine
anything you like, but nothing you imagine will ever be
an RREV. An RREV just is, an entity in the Real Reality
we presume to exist.

            Let me see if an example might help explain what I meant

by an RREV (and at the same time suggest why evolution
might have come up with a perceptual control hierarchy
rather than a flat, one-level set of myriads of control
systems that independently controlled their perceptions
of “* the collection of physical variables that are the
basis of a* [MT. higher than sensor-level]*perception”.

           * -------example--------

            Consider a wooden chair*.*                 It has four wooden

legs, a flat square wooden seat and a back constructed
of a set of wooden slats. For the purposes of this
example, I assume that we have basic sensors for legs,
seat, and back, as the example could work for any one of
the components, and for any one of their components. So
for the example, a leg is an elementary unit of
perception.

            I push one of the legs northward. To my surprise

(because I know there is no chair in Real Reality) each
of the other legs starts moving northward by itself, and
so do the seat and back, which are not legs at all. How
can this be, I ask myself? What kind of magic tells
these other perceptions I call legs, seat and back to
move all by themselves? Do they really, or is it all an
illusion. I know that one leg moved because I pushed it
and changes in my perception of its location coincided
with feelings of pressure on my hand as I pushed it.
But, since the other bits and pieces are just a
“collection of physical variables” that hang together
only because I have a perception of “chair”, why should
they move along with the one whose location perception I
was controlling?

            Aha! I say after some thought. Maybe it's not magic.

Maybe there really is something “out there in Real
Reality” that functions so as to make all these parts
hang together. Maybe in Real Reality a band of gnomes
has been handed a set of instructions ordering them to
keep these “chair parts” in a constant spatial
relationship to each other as any one part is moved by
an outside agency of which they know nothing. The gnomes
are simply collectively controlling a configuration of
these parts. That solves the problem. These gnomic
reference values create in Real Reality what I perceive
as the chair in the “Apparent World” of my perceptions.

            A problem. I'm just imagining that there are gnomes.

It’s a possible solution to my problem of why I perceive
all the different chair parts moving together when I
push only one of them, but is it the only possible
solution? Probably not, so would it not be better to
think more generally and not ask at this point the
mechanism that holds all the chair parts together. We
can leave that to other people who can imagine
abstractions such as forces and energies that they could
apply to many similar puzzles of perceptions that always
seem to change similarly in respect of their
interactions. The “forces” these other people imagine to
exist in Real Reality can take the place of the gnomes,
and I would perceive no difference in how I perceive the
whole chair to move when I push one leg northward.

            The "chair" is a structure in RR, whether it is held

together by gnomes, forces, or some other magic.
Whatever it is, I need not imagine it, however much fun
it is to do so. All I need is that because these
components always act the same way when I push one of
them, it is easiest to think of them as one object. I
perceive that I move the “chair” when I try to move one
of the chair’s components.

            Now I push one chair leg northward, the seat southward,

another leg westward, and so forth, which I assume I
should easily be able to do because, after all, I know
that they are just the collection of physical variables
that are the basis of my “chair” perception. But I get
another surprise. The unit components all resist my
pushes. Maybe the chair trembles a little and moves
erratically in a direction I pushed none of them. What’s
happening? Maybe the gnomes are angry at being
overworked trying to follow their instructions and
finding those instructions to be self-contradictory?
Whatever is happening in Real Reality, its effects on
the perceptions of the units are not what I am
controlling for. The seat does not move southward, the
two legs do not move northward and westward, and so on.

            How can I solve this new puzzle? All I know is that my

answer for what might be happening in RR, that some
properties of RR (gnomes of forces, maybe) enforce a
structure with a particular configuration that allows no
movement freedom of the individual components
independently of their places in the “chair”
configuration I perceive.

            ---------end example-------

            In the example, the location of the "chair"

configuration I perceive is what I call the CEV when I
control my perception of its position. It is totally
determined by the perceptual function that generates
“chair” from a collection of “legs”, “seat”, and “back”
perceptions. The configuration of instructions for the
gnomes or the disposition of forces (or something else)
is a “structure” in Real Reality that I call the RREV.
The RREV is what is influenced by my actions and it
produces the effects in my sensor systems that allow me
to perceive at one level “legs”, “seat”, and “back”, and
at a higher level “chair”.

            This does not mean that every time I perceive "chair"

there is a Real Reality chair affecting my sensors. I
might be looking at a drawing of a chair, I might be
dreaming, I might be hallucinating. If, then, I try to
sit on the chair I perceive, I will not experience what
I expect to experience (though in a dream I probably
would). If, however, most of the time when I perceive
“chair” its components interact in the same way, whether
there is a Real Reality structure or a collection of
components will affect me differently only if I try to
use the “chair” structure in controlling some other
variable such as a seating arrangement for my guests.

            The RR configuration that results in the "chair"

perception may be a structure maintained by gnomes, or
it may be an adventitious arrangement of independent
components. either way, it is the RREV that corresponds
with the perceived CEV. The Real Reality structure, if
one exists, is likely to have many other properties
besides the NSEW locations of its components, but the
sensors and the “chair” perceptual function in the
example are affected by changes in none of them. In this
sense, the RREV, like the CEV, is defined by the
Perceptual Function. However, the Perceptual Function
itself is evolved or reorganized to be what it is
because when the components are configured as what comes
to be perceived as “chair”, they usually change in a
coordinated function – they usually act as a unitary
Real Reality Environmental Variable, a structure in RR,
and seldom as “* the collection of physical variables
that are the basis of a perception.*”

            Martin

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

                                  "Perfection

is achieved not when you have
nothing more to add, but when you
have
nothing left to take away.�
  Â
            Â
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[bleach]

Damn you Martin! LOL You virtually aways
post things that have to be read carefully and thought about!

···

On 4/17/19 9:42 AM, Martin Taylor
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.16.13.05]

  What you said above is true.  Only the fact

that there has to some kind of learning capacity to deal with
restraints imposed by the ‘real world’ is required in the theory.
I don’t see anything else from that truth that has to be in the
theory.

What I am saying does not preclude
other perceptions that could also be under control such as
maybe not colliding a portion of the chair with another
object.

            No. That's just

another constraint imposed by RR. I can easily imagine one
chair being slid over the floor through another chair an
emerging the other side, but if I tried that with a chair that
I perceive to be in my environment, it wouldn’t work very
well. RR imposes a constraint on the relationship between the
two chairs. That relationship is an RREV, just as the chair
is, but it’s at a higher level in a hierarchy of RREVs. We
can’t know how those constraints are imposed in RR. I use my
“gnomes” to emphasize that point, but the constraints do
determine how we can control.

    I'm not seeing how a hierarchy in the real

world necessitates a change in the theory. To me only if one
can demonstrate that the theory can not handle behavior
associated with this real world hierarchy does the theory
warrant consideration for revision. Frankly I don’t think the
theory as it stands today has sufficient proof to even be able
to make the claim that there is something that it can’t handle.

    The fact that there are some levels of

hierarchy in PCT is a proven fact, but unfortunately very few of
the levels have anything more than suggestive support.

        PCT as a theory, just as in engineering

control theory is not concerned with application of the
theory.

  That's a perfectly legitimate observation, one with which I agree.

It was exactly Shannon’s point when he said that he analysis of a
communication channel must not be concerned with what the
communicated information might be about.

  But is not a part of the theory the reason WHY PCT, as theory,

includes a hierarchy of control loops? Without invoking the
concept of an RREV can you think of why this aspect of the theory
might be required, or are you happy with PCT being YAWFT (Yet
Another Way of Fitting Data) that just happens to fit data using a
hierarchic structure?
Constraints can result in failure to control.
Failure to control, per the theory results in some sort of
reorganization (which could possibly be just attempting to use a
different previously learned program). So again, I assert that no
RREV could useful for purposes of discussions relating to ‘how the
real world’ works but is still not necessary to be in PCT.

  Does PCT as a theory not concern itself with how control loops

interact, and are not real world observations data that can be
predicted and used to invalidate those aspects of the theory?
Also, Rick was talking about “PCT-based” research, not research
into PCT, and all the topics I mentioned are areas of research
that is usually not PCT-based.
Yes, real world perceptions can invalidate
the theory or portions of the theory as it exists. I believe
(arrogantly?) that I can claim that be “PCT-based research” Rick
is referring the research into PCT that is performed using the
methods of PCT to extend the proofs of PCT as a valid theory.
Something that PCT desperately needs.

    So far most of the research results from

other areas is only suggestive of the correctness of the theory.
None of it, other than some work in biology or human physiology,
provides actual proof. I suspect that more will be coming and
that some biochemistry results that are now suggestive may well
prove to be proofs when we are able to better describe the
hierarchies at the higher levels.

…

        CSGNet was formed to advance the theory

itself and not so much to promote its use. Purveyors of PCT
in applications such a therapy were indeed welcomed but
again primarily for two reasons. One is that case study
examples were themselves a validation of the theory (though
not in the rigorous nature of a proof) and such discussions
could spawn interest and suggest further research on the
theory itself.

  You may think otherwise, but I think there is a real place for

applied research that takes advantage of basic research. Advancing
other fields is a good way of validating the basic results. Did
not the engineering development of effective steam engines lead to
the scientific theory of thermodynamics, which fed back to
improving the efficiency of engines of all kinds? It’s all
feedback, and that applies recursively to PCT. If MoL didn’t work
at all, might that not say something about the validity of PCT as
a theory of what might be going on? Since MoL does seem to work
pretty well in lots of cases, might not an closer examination of
cases perhaps be able to offer clues to the structure of the
functioning of higher levels of control and the interactions among
control levels? Again, it’s all feedback.
I don’t have any disagreement with the above
at all. That is all of what you say there is true. I believe
that application of PCT can lead to improvements in understanding
the areas of the theory that are currently somewhat vague. That
is exactly what I was saying when I mentioned the use of PCT in
therapy. I certainly did not intend to imply that I thought
therapy was the only discipline when application of PCT would not
benefit both PCT and the area of application. If the way that I
expressed what I was trying to say then mea culpa as I did a
disservice.

  I often have made the opposite point, which I think is the one you

are making, that basic research is important in its own right.
Basic research is fundamentally the improvement in the ability to
predict unknown relationships or measurements and the explain
known ones, which might be widely but loosely, or narrowly but
precisely applicable. I think that the breadth of usability of the
results of basic research is as good a guide to its importance as
is its precision in a very narrow range of experiments on things
that are not done in everyday life. What makes the theory relevant
is that the same processes involved in the laboratory theory can
be seen operating in many real-life situations.
Again, agreed.

  Personally, I have never understood CSGnet to be a propaganda arm

to promulgate PCT, as you suggest I do. That would be a political
purpose, unrelated to science. There was a time, long years ago,
when I did think CSGnet was intended to be a place where the
theory might be collaboratively developed, but that hope was
crushed by experience. Now I think it serves mainly as a tutorial
area of the Internet, in which innovative thought toward further
development of PCT beyond the stage at which Powers left it is
actively and strongly discouraged. That perception of what CSGnet
is now is far from my own reference value for it, but that error
raises another research question for PCT: How does PCT account for
learned helplessness, and how does learned helplessness in one
area affect ability to control perceptions in other domains?
Humm, I did not intend to accuse you of
taking that position. You are unfortunately quite correct your
3rd sentence expresses a perception that I believe a great man
of have! I would like to think that your 4th sentence is not
correct. I am convinced that the uncivil behavior of some
active members is driving people away. I know that if I was new
to PCT and had only recently joined CSGNet and read some of
those posts I would never have posted and just unsubscribed.

    While I'm confident that PCT can probably

account for learned helplessness it certainly is not developed
to the state where rigorous analysis can be proposed. And I
will add that input from the biochemists is needed for that as
well.

bill

    On 2019/04/15 11:46 PM, Bill Leach (

via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wrleach@cableone.net

        Martin I think that I finally

understand why I also objected to adding the term to the PCT
vocabulary. I know if ‘felt wrong’ or ‘unnecessary’ for it
to be within the PCT vocabulary of defined terms. The chair
example provided the clue.

        Basically, as a theory, PCT doesn't

give a damn about the properties of the chair. Moving a
chair leg and having a perception of the entire chair moving
means nothing to the complex control loops involved in
moving the chair leg (as you described).

      True, but what have

the properties of the chair got to do with the point at issue,
which is whether the fact that the other parts of the chair
move when you exert force o one part might suggest that in
Real Reality there exists some kind of entity that enforces
the perception of the chair moving when the action is to move
a chair leg – In other words, that a hierarchy of controlled
perceptions is required to accommodate constraints that RR
imposes on our abilities to control different perceptions?

[Kent]

[Kent McClelland 2019.04.17.15:40]
Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49
Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18
Since my name has come up in this thread, let me add some thoughts about how I see the issues under discussion.
In Behavior: The Control of Perception, Bill Powers makes the point that our inborn perceptual equipment capitalizes on “invariances� in the physical environment in reorganizing to form controllable perceptions at different perceptual levels.
For instance, on p. 202 of the chapter on “Learning� in the 1973 edition , Bill says, with regard to a principle of organization of the brain suggested by John Platt,
[By the way, I just found out that the entire text of Bill’s 1973 book is available in the Internet Archive library at <https://archive.org/details/BehaviorTheControlOfPerception&gt;https://archive.org/details/BehaviorTheControlOfPerception\]
BP: "This principle can be generalized in such a way that invariances can be discovered without relying on any prior geometric concepts, or indeed on any a priori concept at all except the principle itself. If a perception or group of perceptions can be found that is invariant with respect to some behavioral (control) action, that perception or set of perceptions can form the basis for a new perceptual category. We do not know if straight lines are ‘really' straight, but we can discover that the act of scanning the eye along them leaves them unchanged, and that can be our fundamental definition of straightness. …
BP: "If we suppose that the brain is initially structured to favorite nine types of perceptual transformation (which defines nine classes of invariance), the search for invariances is less taxing than it would be if perceptual levels were formed from a random network.�
Some of the invariances that we encounter in our physical environments, as we build up our hierarchies of controllable perceptions, are physical in origin: the fact that straight lines are straight, that gravity always pulls our bodies in one direction, that the relationship between the Earth and the Sun results in daily periods of alternating light and darkness, etc. etc.
But many of the invariances we meet in our physical environments are humanly constructed: the fact that our daily lives take place in an environment of buildings, tools, clothing, roads, vehicles, mechanical devices of all kinds, etc., etc.--all the myriad products of our economic infrastructure. Our hierarchies of perceptions as we grow up come to incorporate these manufactured physical invariances just as much as they do “natural� invariances of the Earth on which we live.
This world of artificial invariances has been constructed by the collective actions of billions of humans over the centuries each trying to control his or her own perceptions. And it takes continual collective action for us to keep this physical environment of our lives in place. The world witnessed this week a dramatic fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. This building has stood there for at least 850 years because of the work that people have done over the centuries to build it in the first place and then rebuild it and maintain it in the face of fires, vandalism, ordinary wear and tear, and the many other disturbances inflicted upon it. Again, after this fire, many people will have to work for years to repair and rebuild the structure, if it is to continue as a stable part of our human environment.
The manufactured invariances in our living environments are not just physical, however. At the Notre Dame Cathedral, the patterns of the religious rituals, the style of vestments of the priests, the language used by priests in services, the sacred texts, and the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church itself have all continued in a more or less stable form over the centuries since the cathedral was first built. The reasons for all these other kinds of stability have, again, been the collective work done by generations of people who have found that maintaining these patterns helps them to control their own individual perceptions.
As someone interested in studying social behavior, I think that what really matters for my discipline is the fact that, when people attempt to control their own perceptions, their actions have effects on the physical environment that other people can perceive. These perceptible changes in the physical environment, made for the purpose of controlling a person’s own perceptions, are the basis for our social interaction with others. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment, we would be socially isolated (not to mention the fact that it would be impossible for us to control our own perceptions).
In my view, the physical variables most important for understanding human behavior are generally not the variables of physics and chemistry that Rick Marken likes to talk about. A physicist may look at a table and see a collection of atoms that in fact are mostly empty space. A chemist may look at a table and be able to tell you its chemical composition. But for ordinary people in the course of their ordinary lives, what matters is that a table serves as an impenetrable solid object that can be used for controlling a variety of perceptions, like holding plates and silverware so one can have supper, or holding a computer in a convenient location to type on it.
All of the research in my own field of sociology refers in some way to empirical reality. If not, nobody would recognize it as credible research (whether or not it qualifies in other people’s opinion as a “real science�). Any science, I would argue, must be based on descriptions of empirical reality, phenomena that other scientists can perceive and verify. Even psychologists, I imagine, must focus on empirical reality, if they want other psychologists to accept their work.
Figuring out the perceptions that people are trying to control is all well and good, but for our descriptions of those perceptions to be meaningful to other people the way we talk about them must be couched in the language of empirical reality, the aspects of the physical environment that others can perceive. The topic of Real Reality might be better left to the philosophers, in my view. For a theory to be accepted as scientific, it has to be able to say something about empirical reality, and if we want to talk about PCT to scientists, we must be ready to talk in those terms.
Kent

[Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]>>
RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.

I don't know if you have access to it yet, but I think Kent McClelland's chapter in LCS IV offers sufficient explanation. Anything I can add is gravy. Kent doesn't use the term (at least not in a version I have seen), but he does point out how the stabilities produced by control are used for completely different purposes in control by others. These stabilities are in Real Reality. They are not CEVs randomly defined by arbitrary Perceptual Functions in different people.

Here's some gravy. All interaction among control systems in different hierarchies happens only through influences that propagate through Real Reality. All interactions between output and perception happen only through influences that propagate through Real Reality. This also is true of the interactions within the hierarchy that are built by reorganization, such as the relationship between control of the location of a chair and control of the location of a chair leg. Is that enough?

If not, maybe my answer to Eetu below will supplement my previous attempts to explain how the concept of the RREV explains the need for a hierarchy, and the development of CEVs whose control is effective and efficient. It doesn't deal with social interactions at all.

and

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]

Rick, Martin, sorry to jump in, hopefully Martin will offer a better answer, but I want to personally stress two points:

1. RREV is a so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself. The duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain some data, for example the phenomenon that two observers get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions are caused by same RREV. (Note that (a) can be explained with (b).)
2. Perhaps you do not accept that data could be explained with something from which you cannot get data. Then you can replace the word “explain� with the word “understand�. This is why I believe that it could be easier to carry your project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research by utilizing this understanding tool. At least I personally find it difficult to get interested in data which had no connection to some structures in the real world.

Eetu

···

from my point of view as a sociologist, Real Reality matters less than Empirical Reality: the aspects of physical reality that have sufficient invariance to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers. These regions of stability result from both of natural and of artificially constructed invariances, and from my point of view they form the subject matter of all the sciences and social sciences.

On Apr 17, 2019, at 9:08 AM, Martin Taylor <<mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> wrote:

So far as I am concerned, the more people jump in, the more useful is the discussion. I wish that ten or twenty lurkers would do the same.

Here's an analogy that may bring back memories to the older CSGnet readers. Once upon a time, there were lots of radio stations operating on frequencies in different "bands". There was a long wave band with stations such as Droitwich (UK) and Hilversum (NL). They and quite a few others were intended for broadcasts with a global range. There were medium wave stations, lots of them, intended for everyday home listening, and there were short-wave stations, many operated by amateurs called "hams". To listen to one of these stations, you selected a "band" (expensive radios had five or six) and then turned a knob to move a pointer to a place on a dial labelled with a number representing frequency and/or a station name. The pointer changed the setting of a "variable condenser" that altered the frequency to which the receiver was tuned.

Anywhere you set the pointer you would hear sounds, often fragments of speech or music, but more probably just crackly noise. If you set the pointer near to a frequency on which some station was transmitting, you would hear something coherent such as someone talking or music playing. That was what you wanted, but unless you set the pointer just right, the speech or music would be distorted. You fiddled with the pointer until what you heard was clear and true, but this was possible only for stations close to you or transmitting with high power. Usually you heard background noise along with the undistorted signal when you found the best setting for the pointer.

Now think of the air full of the electromagnetic waves from the different transmitters as being the part of Real Reality you could access by changing the choice of band and the position of the pointer on the dial. The tuner itself played the part of a Perceptual Function, and you were reorganizing it by changing the band and the pointer position so that the sound you heard would come from the station you wanted. No matter what these settings might be, the Perceptual function would define a part of Real Reality and let you hear what was being transmitted in that part. It defined a CEV, which mostly was not useful in "maintaining survival" (allowing you to hear something that gave you pleasure or that interested you). But Real Reality determined the "value" of the perception/CEV.

By changing the band settings and turning the knob, you changed the parameters of the Perceptual Function (tuner), and sometimes what came out was indeed pleasant or informative. You might mark the dial so you could come back to the same setting later, thus defining a perceptual function that might on another occasion provide a useful CEV that corresponded closely to an RREV (material deliberately transmitted by a radio station). By fiddling with the band choice and the pointer position on the dial, you might find several different parameter settings for perceptual functions that tended to provide useful CEVs, perhaps some often helped you with cooking recipes, some often let you listen to foreign propaganda, some allowed you to hear classical music most of the time, and so forth.

Always you could create new perceptual functions by setting the band and pointer at random. Most of the time the resulting CEV would produce crackle and noise, but sometimes it might produce a distorted version of what was being transmitted by a station you never knew to exist. When that happened, you might want to hear this new station better, to see whether what it transmitted "helped your survival" (gave you pleasure or was interesting to you). If it did, you might mark the setting on your dial, stabilizing this new perceptual function. If it didn't you wouldn't bother and you would probably never hear that station again once you changed the settings away from those that produced a CEV that matched that RREV.

In this parable, the band and the pointer setting are two low-level variables you could change. You could freely set them independently, but only if the pair matched a pair of values used by a transmitter would you hear anything that might help your survival. It would be no good setting the dial pointer correctly for a station you wanted to hear if you had set a different band, nor to set the band correctly if the pointer was not in the correct place for the station you wanted. The RREV was a variable at a higher level of the hierarchy, and to hear what the station transmitted, you had to define a higher-level CEV that had the same pair of values for both lower-level variables.

If you like to look at it that way, the CEV defined a function CEV = F(band, pointer) that had a value near zero for most value pairs, but non-zero for occasional ones (near zero for distant low-power stations, far from zero for nearby high-power ones). The value didn't tell you anything about what was being transmitted. It just indicated how clearly what was being transmitted through that RREV could be heard. It was up to you, the listener, to determine whether more reorganization (re-setting the tuner parameters) was required.

In this parable, clarity takes the place of control error, a radio station transmitter takes the place of your output, and you, the radio listener, take the place of the reorganizing system that acts to rearrange the hierarchy so that the CEVs of the various Perceptual Functions approach matches to RREVs that are influenced by particular kinds of output. Outputting something that affects odour perception is not much help in adjusting a visual property (wrong radio band).

I don't know whether this parable might help anyone else to understand why the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand both the reason why perceptual control is probably arranged hierarchically, as PCT asserts, and why reorganization to function effectively in the actual Real Reality is likely to result in perceptions/CEVs that approximate actual RREVs in the ways they change as the control outputs change. It helps me. That's all I can say.

Martin

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_13:44:27]

[From Kent McClelland 2019.04.16.14:05]

KM: From my point of view as a sociologist, what matters is not real reality, but empirical reality: the aspects of physical reality that have sufficient â€?Invarianceâ€? to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers.Â

RM: I think your “empirical reality” is essentially the same as “perception” in PCT. “Empirical reality” is the same as “perception” inasmuch as both are aspects of physical reality. But the qualification that empirical reality has to have “sufficient “invariance” to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers” puzzles me. First, it’s puzzling because perceptions in PCT are VARIABLES; the “invariance” of perceptions occurs when a perceptual variable is controlled at a fixed reference. And second, it’s puzzling because in PCT multiple observers are assumed to perceive the same perceptual variable when they all have the same perceptual function that constructs that perceptual variable. Those perceptual variables will be the same only if they are based on the same aspect of reality. But that aspect of reality doesn’t have to be invariant and it won’t be perceived the same unless the same perceptual function exists in all observers.

RM: So I don’t understand your use of the term “invariance” to describe something that is required of an aspect of physical reality for multiple observers to perceive the same thing. I’m familiar with the term “invariance” to refer to invariant relationships between physical variables that can be used as inputs to perceptual functions to produce perceptual variables that correspond to a particular aspect of physical reality. An example is called “size-distance invariance”. This refers to the fact that when an object of constant size varies in distance from you, the product retinal size X physical distance is approximately constant. So you will perceive the object being of constant size despite variations in its distance from you (which changes its retinal size) if your perception of the size of the object is produced by a perceptual function that computes size perception = retinal size X physical distance.Â

RM: Of course, the perceptual function can’t use physical distance itself as input; distance is a perception derived from binocular disparity (at physical distances up to ~6 ft) and monocular cues. So the “invariance” computation is actually size perception = retinal size X perceived distance. A lot of illusions are based on the fact that we apparently perceive size in this way. The illusions turn on getting a perception of distance that is not proportional to the actual distance. The Ames room illusion, where a person appears to change size as they walk from one side of the room to another, is a consequence of constructing a perception of size based on an inaccurate perception of distance. Same for the moon illusion (moon looks larger at the horizon than when it is high in the sky, apparently because the moon appears closer at the horizon) and many others.Â

KM: What matters for social behavior, I think, is the fact that, when people attempt to control their own perceptions, their actions have effects on the physical environment that other people can perceive.

RM: This is also what matters for individual behavior.Â

Â

KM: These perceptible changes in the physical
environment, made for the purpose of controlling a person’s own perceptions, are the basis for our social interaction with others. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment, we would be socially isolated (not to mention the fact
that it would be impossible for us to control our own perceptions).

RM: It’s worse than that. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment, we could not control our perceptions (which are a function of that physical environment) and we, therefore, could not exist, individually or socially.Â

KM: In my view, the physical variables important for understanding human behavior are generally not the variables of physics and chemistry. A physicist may look at a table and see a collection of atoms that in fact are mostly empty space. A chemist
may look at a table and be able to tell you its chemical composition. But for ordinary people in the course of their ordinary lives, what matters is that a table serves as an impenetrable solid object that can be used for controlling a variety of perceptions,
like holding plates and silverware so one can have supper or holding a computer in a convenient location to type on it.Â

RM: Tables only exist as perceptions. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no tables in physical reality. A table is the state of a collection of lower level perceptual variable (shapes, pressures when touched, relationships, etc) that are themselves ultimately a function of the sensory effects of physical variables.Â

KM: All of the research in my field of sociology refers in some way to empirical reality. If not, nobody would recognize it as credible research. Any science, I would argue, must be based on descriptions of empirical reality, phenomena that other
scientists can perceive and verify. Even psychologists, I imagine, must focus on empirical reality, if they want other psychologists to accept their work.Â

RM: I think what all scientists “focus on” are their perceptions; that’s all any of us can focus on. All we have are our perceptions. Physical reality (other than being a crutch;-) is a theory. I’m pretty sure what you call “empirical reality” is what is called perception in PCT. Tables are perceptions; cultures are perceptions; society is a perception; people are perceptions. It’s all perception. But scientists have come up with some extraordinarily good theories of the nature of the physical reality; the reality that is the basis of our perceptions as well as a constraint on how we can affect those perceptions. All of my work studying control has been about determining the perceptions organisms control and how they control them. You do have to know something about the theories of physical reality in order to do this kind of research. But the variables that I have identified as being controlled variables are perceptual variables, usually defined in terms of other perceptual variables (such as the height and width of a rectangle) but sometimes in terms of physical variables (such as the two dimensional retinal position of the object when computing vertical and horizontal optical velocity in object interception models).Â

KM: Figuring out the perceptions that people are trying to control is all well and good, but for our descriptions of those perceptions to be meaningful to other people the way we talk about them must be couched in the language of empirical reality, the aspects of the physical environment that others can perceive.

RM: I think you are making the mistake of taking perceptions (such as the perception of a table) as the reality that is the basis of perception. If empirical reality is the aspects of the environment that others can perceive, then empirical reality IS perception.Â

KM: All this talk about real reality is best left to the philosophers, in my view. Anybody who wants to be recognized as a scientist has to be able to say something about empirical reality.

RM: I agree, if “empirical reality” refers to perceptual variables and the “scientists” you refer to are students of the controlling done by living organisms. Being able to “say something” about empirical reality – the perceptions that we control – was what PCT research was supposed to be about, way before PCT was called PCT. At the end of the first paper on what has come to be called PCT – the 1960 Powers, Clark and McFarland Perceptual & Motor Skills monograph – Powers described what he saw as the way the not yet named PCT science should progress. It could be done using the test for the significant variable (as it was called at that point) but it could also be done by introspective analysis of one’s own perceptual experience. Here’s what Bill had to say:

RM: I think the search for self-evident categories of one’s own perceptual experience via introspection would be a great way to do PCT research for those who like to do their research in arm chairs. But what you have to understand in order to do this kind of research is that “just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no tables in reality”; it’s all perception – even the rules of baseball.Â

Best

Rick

···

Kent

Â

On Apr 16, 2019, at 10:54 AM, Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized. If this isn’t the case
– if your concept of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.Â

MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may sometimes have a supporting goal of “d* oing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized*”. But that is certainly not my main goal of research based on PCT,Â

RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.Â

Best

Rick

Â

any more than getting the steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to examine the interactions among the control systems of the experimenter
and the subject in a TCV, or at the other end of the scale of importance, to study collective control by politically related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work to enhance the effective
operation of an organism and its descendants in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the control loops involved in a simple barter imply that a stable economy requires
steady inflation, and to examine the initial development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots of possible goals of PCT-based research thatÂ
The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal, however, because you might like to explain to your students why the hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the fundamental
“why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find the variable (which of many?) someone is controlling in a particular situation. If that is all you
want to do, the concept of the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.

RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”.

Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact,
I never actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller
requires, in order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.

This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer “knows” they should be controlling.

I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should” comes
into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple explanation.

Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying.

Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to
have little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops involved in situations like teaching.

…

RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to consider it an
unnecessary obstruction to the development of PCT science.

I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research, and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from
the CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of cultures that can lead to war.

Martin

–Â
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.17.16.55]

[Kent McClelland 2019.04.17.15:40]
Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49
Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18

Kent, are you making some important distinction between "Empirical Reality" and the perceptible effects of things that happen in Real Reality?

Martin

Since my name has come up in this thread, let me add some thoughts about how I see the issues under discussion.
In Behavior: The Control of Perception, Bill Powers makes the point that our inborn perceptual equipment capitalizes on “invariancesâ€? in the physical environment in reorganizing to form controllable perceptions at different perceptual levels.Â
For instance, on p. 202 of the chapter on “Learning� in the 1973 edition , Bill says, with regard to a principle of organization of the brain suggested by John Platt,
[By the way, I just found out that the entire text of Bill’s 1973 book is available in the Internet Archive library at <https://archive.org/details/BehaviorTheControlOfPerception&gt;https://archive.org/details/BehaviorTheControlOfPerception\]
BP: "This principle can be generalized in such a way that invariances can be discovered without relying on any prior geometric concepts, or indeed on any a priori concept at all except the principle itself. If a perception or group of perceptions can be found that is invariant with respect to some behavioral (control) action, that perception or set of perceptions can form the basis for a new perceptual category. We do not know if straight lines are ‘really' straight, but we can discover that the act of scanning the eye along them leaves them unchanged, and that can be our fundamental definition of straightness. …
BP: "If we suppose that the brain is initially structured to favorite nine types of perceptual transformation (which defines nine classes of invariance), the search for invariances is less taxing than it would be if perceptual levels were formed from a random network.�
Some of the invariances that we encounter in our physical environments, as we build up our hierarchies of controllable perceptions, are physical in origin: the fact that straight lines are straight, that gravity always pulls our bodies in one direction, that the relationship between the Earth and the Sun results in daily periods of alternating light and darkness, etc. etc.Â
But many of the invariances we meet in our physical environments are humanly constructed: the fact that our daily lives take place in an environment of buildings, tools, clothing, roads, vehicles, mechanical devices of all kinds, etc., etc.--all the myriad products of our economic infrastructure. Our hierarchies of perceptions as we grow up come to incorporate these manufactured physical invariances just as much as they do “naturalâ€? invariances of the Earth on which we live.Â
This world of artificial invariances has been constructed by the collective actions of billions of humans over the centuries each trying to control his or her own perceptions. And it takes continual collective action for us to keep this physical environment of our lives in place. The world witnessed this week a dramatic fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. This building has stood there for at least 850 years because of the work that people have done over the centuries to build it in the first place and then rebuild it and maintain it in the face of fires, vandalism, ordinary wear and tear, and the many other disturbances inflicted upon it. Again, after this fire, many people will have to work for years to repair and rebuild the structure, if it is to continue as a stable part of our human environment.Â
The manufactured invariances in our living environments are not just physical, however. At the Notre Dame Cathedral, the patterns of the religious rituals, the style of vestments of the priests, the language used by priests in services, the sacred texts, and the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church itself have all continued in a more or less stable form over the centuries since the cathedral was first built. The reasons for all these other kinds of stability have, again, been the collective work done by generations of people who have found that maintaining these patterns helps them to control their own individual perceptions.Â
From my point of view as a sociologist, Real Reality matters less than Empirical Reality: the aspects of physical reality that have sufficient invariance to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers. These regions of stability result from both of natural and of artificially constructed invariances, and from my point of view they form the subject matter of all the sciences and social sciences.
As someone interested in studying social behavior, I think that what really matters for my discipline is the fact that, when people attempt to control their own perceptions, their actions have effects on the physical environment that other people can perceive. These perceptible changes in the physical environment, made for the purpose of controlling a person’s own perceptions, are the basis for our social interaction with others. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment, we would be socially isolated (not to mention the fact that it would be impossible for us to control our own perceptions).
In my view, the physical variables most important for understanding human behavior are generally not the variables of physics and chemistry that Rick Marken likes to talk about. A physicist may look at a table and see a collection of atoms that in fact are mostly empty space. A chemist may look at a table and be able to tell you its chemical composition. But for ordinary people in the course of their ordinary lives, what matters is that a table serves as an impenetrable solid object that can be used for controlling a variety of perceptions, like holding plates and silverware so one can have supper, or holding a computer in a convenient location to type on it.Â
All of the research in my own field of sociology refers in some way to empirical reality. If not, nobody would recognize it as credible research (whether or not it qualifies in other people’s opinion as a “real scienceâ€?). Any science, I would argue, must be based on descriptions of empirical reality, phenomena that other scientists can perceive and verify. Even psychologists, I imagine, must focus on empirical reality, if they want other psychologists to accept their work.Â
Figuring out the perceptions that people are trying to control is all well and good, but for our descriptions of those perceptions to be meaningful to other people the way we talk about them must be couched in the language of empirical reality, the aspects of the physical environment that others can perceive. The topic of Real Reality might be better left to the philosophers, in my view. For a theory to be accepted as scientific, it has to be able to say something about empirical reality, and if we want to talk about PCT to scientists, we must be ready to talk in those terms.
Kent

[Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]>>>
RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.Â

I don't know if you have access to it yet, but I think Kent McClelland's chapter in LCS IV offers sufficient explanation. Anything I can add is gravy. Kent doesn't use the term (at least not in a version I have seen), but he does point out how the stabilities produced by control are used for completely different purposes in control by others. These stabilities are in Real Reality. They are not CEVs randomly defined by arbitrary Perceptual Functions in different people.

Here's some gravy. All interaction among control systems in different hierarchies happens only through influences that propagate through Real Reality. All interactions between output and perception happen only through influences that propagate through Real Reality. This also is true of the interactions within the hierarchy that are built by reorganization, such as the relationship between control of the location of a chair and control of the location of a chair leg. Is that enough?

If not, maybe my answer to Eetu below will supplement my previous attempts to explain how the concept of the RREV explains the need for a hierarchy, and the development of CEVs whose control is effective and efficient. It doesn't deal with social interactions at all.

and

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]

Â
Rick, Martin, sorry to jump in, hopefully Martin will offer a better answer, but I want to personally stress two points:
Â
1. RREV is a so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself. The duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain some data, for example the phenomenon that two observers get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions are caused by same RREV. (Note that (a) can be explained with (b).)Â
2. Perhaps you do not accept that data could be explained with something from which you cannot get data. Then you can replace the word “explain� with the word “understand�. This is why I believe that it could be easier to carry your project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research by utilizing this understanding tool. At least I personally find it difficult to get interested in data which had no connection to some structures in the real world.
Â
Eetu
Â

···

On Apr 17, 2019, at 9:08 AM, Martin Taylor <<mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> wrote:

So far as I am concerned, the more people jump in, the more useful is the discussion. I wish that ten or twenty lurkers would do the same.

Here's an analogy that may bring back memories to the older CSGnet readers. Once upon a time, there were lots of radio stations operating on frequencies in different "bands". There was a long wave band with stations such as Droitwich (UK) and Hilversum (NL). They and quite a few others were intended for broadcasts with a global range. There were medium wave stations, lots of them, intended for everyday home listening, and there were short-wave stations, many operated by amateurs called "hams". To listen to one of these stations, you selected a "band" (expensive radios had five or six) and then turned a knob to move a pointer to a place on a dial labelled with a number representing frequency and/or a station name. The pointer changed the setting of a "variable condenser" that altered the frequency to which the receiver was tuned.

Anywhere you set the pointer you would hear sounds, often fragments of speech or music, but more probably just crackly noise. If you set the pointer near to a frequency on which some station was transmitting, you would hear something coherent such as someone talking or music playing. That was what you wanted, but unless you set the pointer just right, the speech or music would be distorted. You fiddled with the pointer until what you heard was clear and true, but this was possible only for stations close to you or transmitting with high power. Usually you heard background noise along with the undistorted signal when you found the best setting for the pointer.

Now think of the air full of the electromagnetic waves from the different transmitters as being the part of Real Reality you could access by changing the choice of band and the position of the pointer on the dial. The tuner itself played the part of a Perceptual Function, and you were reorganizing it by changing the band and the pointer position so that the sound you heard would come from the station you wanted. No matter what these settings might be, the Perceptual function would define a part of Real Reality and let you hear what was being transmitted in that part. It defined a CEV, which mostly was not useful in "maintaining survival" (allowing you to hear something that gave you pleasure or that interested you). But Real Reality determined the "value" of the perception/CEV.Â

By changing the band settings and turning the knob, you changed the parameters of the Perceptual Function (tuner), and sometimes what came out was indeed pleasant or informative. You might mark the dial so you could come back to the same setting later, thus defining a perceptual function that might on another occasion provide a useful CEV that corresponded closely to an RREV (material deliberately transmitted by a radio station). By fiddling with the band choice and the pointer position on the dial, you might find several different parameter settings for perceptual functions that tended to provide useful CEVs, perhaps some often helped you with cooking recipes, some often let you listen to foreign propaganda, some allowed you to hear classical music most of the time, and so forth.Â

Always you could create new perceptual functions by setting the band and pointer at random. Most of the time the resulting CEV would produce crackle and noise, but sometimes it might produce a distorted version of what was being transmitted by a station you never knew to exist. When that happened, you might want to hear this new station better, to see whether what it transmitted "helped your survival" (gave you pleasure or was interesting to you). If it did, you might mark the setting on your dial, stabilizing this new perceptual function. If it didn't you wouldn't bother and you would probably never hear that station again once you changed the settings away from those that produced a CEV that matched that RREV.

In this parable, the band and the pointer setting are two low-level variables you could change. You could freely set them independently, but only if the pair matched a pair of values used by a transmitter would you hear anything that might help your survival. It would be no good setting the dial pointer correctly for a station you wanted to hear if you had set a different band, nor to set the band correctly if the pointer was not in the correct place for the station you wanted. The RREV was a variable at a higher level of the hierarchy, and to hear what the station transmitted, you had to define a higher-level CEV that had the same pair of values for both lower-level variables.Â

If you like to look at it that way, the CEV defined a function CEV = F(band, pointer) that had a value near zero for most value pairs, but non-zero for occasional ones (near zero for distant low-power stations, far from zero for nearby high-power ones). The value didn't tell you anything about what was being transmitted. It just indicated how clearly what was being transmitted through that RREV could be heard. It was up to you, the listener, to determine whether more reorganization (re-setting the tuner parameters) was required.

In this parable, clarity takes the place of control error, a radio station transmitter takes the place of your output, and you, the radio listener, take the place of the reorganizing system that acts to rearrange the hierarchy so that the CEVs of the various Perceptual Functions approach matches to RREVs that are influenced by particular kinds of output. Outputting something that affects odour perception is not much help in adjusting a visual property (wrong radio band).

I don't know whether this parable might help anyone else to understand why the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand both the reason why perceptual control is probably arranged hierarchically, as PCT asserts, and why reorganization to function effectively in the actual Real Reality is likely to result in perceptions/CEVs that approximate actual RREVs in the ways they change as the control outputs change. It helps me. That's all I can say.

Martin

Â

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_14:36:15]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]

Â

Rick, Martin, sorry to jump in, hopefully Martin will offer a better answer, but I want to personally stress two points:

Â

1. EP: RREV is a so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself. The
   duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain some data, for example the phenomenon that two observers get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions are caused by same RREV. (Note
   that (a) can be explained with (b).)

RM: But the concept of an RREV seems inconsistent with two easily made observations. One is that the same reality can result in two different perceptions. Here’s the famous wife-mother-in-law illusion where the same physical reality produces two different perceptions – in the same person or in two different people. So is the RREV the wife or the mother in law?

 Another, even worse, problem is the fact that different realities can result in the same perception. This happens in color perception where the same color can be produced by different combinations of wavelengths; add in context effects and the number of different realities that will produce the same color is very large. So which is the actual RREV that corresponds to the color perception?Â

RM: I think it’s the perceptual function – not an RREV – that is responsible for the stuff we perceive. As I said to Kent, I think the RREV is a concept that comes from confusing a perception (such as a table) with the physical reality that is the basis of that perception. Â

2. EP: Perhaps you do not accept that data could be explained with something from which you cannot get data.

RM:Â No, what I require of a concept like RREV is a demonstration of how it explains the data. This could be done by showing how the RREV functions in a working model that accounts for the data. I have done plenty of modeling of control data and I have done it all quite successfully without using the concept of RREV. So did Bill Powers. As I said, it seems to me that the concept of an RREV is both unnecessary and an impediment to progress in PCT science. But if someone can show me how the concept of RREV explains some control data that can’t be explained without it I’ll certainly reconsider and incorporate it into my work.Â

EP: …At least I personally find it difficult to get interested in data which had no connection to some structures in the real world.
Â

RM: I think that all data is presumed to be “connected” to some aspect of the real world; whether it’s connected to structures (like molecules) or something else has to be inferred from the data and knowledge of how it was collected.

BestÂ

Rick

···

Eetu

Â

From: Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 6:55 PM
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: CEV and RREV (was Re: Doing Research on Purpose…)

Â

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]

Â

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is
organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists
how to do PCT research.Â

MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may sometimes
have a supporting goal of “doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized”. But that is certainly not my main goal of research based on PCT,

Â

RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains
it.Â

Â

Best

Â

Rick

Â

any more than getting the steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to examine the interactions among the control systems
of the experimenter and the subject in a TCV, or at the other end of the scale of importance, to study collective control by politically related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work
to enhance the effective operation of an organism and its descendants in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the control loops involved in a simple barter imply that
a stable economy requires steady inflation, and to examine the initial development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots of possible goals of PCT-based research that
The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal, however, because you might like to explain to your students why the hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the fundamental
“why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find the variable (which of many?) someone is controlling in a particular situation. If that is all you want to do, the concept of the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.

Â

RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”.

Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact,
I never actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller
requires, in order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.

This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer
“knows” they should be controlling.

I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should” comes
into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple explanation.

Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying.

Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to
have little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops involved in situations like teaching.

…

Â

RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid
I will continue to consider it an unnecessary obstruction to the development of PCT science.

Â

Â

I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research, and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from
the CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of cultures that can lead to war.

Martin

Â

–

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you

have nothing left to take away.�

                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_17:12:46]

[Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49]

    RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential

to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It
would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how
the PCT model explains it.

MT: Kent doesn't use the term (at least not

in a version I have seen), but he does point out how the stabilities
produced by control are used for completely different purposes in
control by others. These stabilities are in Real Reality. They are
not CEVs randomly defined by arbitrary Perceptual Functions in
different people.

RM: That’s pretty vague. How about showing me haw the RREV would fit into (and improve) the models of two person interaction described by Tom Bourbon in his chapter of the PCT volume of the American Behavioral Scientist journal. I want to see how this RREV thing fits into a real, working model.

MT: Here's some gravy. All interaction among control systems in

different hierarchies happens only through influences that propagate
through Real Reality. All interactions between output and perception
happen only through influences that propagate through Real Reality.
This also is true of the interactions within the hierarchy that are
built by reorganization, such as the relationship between control of
the location of a chair and control of the location of a chair leg.
Is that enough?

RM: But that’s what Powers model already says; there is no RREV in there, just RR (which is known as the “environment” in PCT circles).Â

MT: If not, maybe my answer to Eetu below will supplement my previous

attempts to explain how the concept of the RREV explains the need
for a hierarchy, and the development of CEVs whose control is
effective and efficient. It doesn’t deal with social interactions at
all.

RM: Now RREVs explain the need for a hierarchy? So a theoretical concept explains the need for another theoretical concept? I thought the theorist would suggest the need for a hierarchical model based on data. That’s how Bill came up with the “non-adaptive” hierarchical model of apparently adaptive behavior (LCS III Chapter 5).Â

RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative. It shows that your preferred model of perception is still based on information theory, and you are trying to graft it onto PCT: the RREV is the source message, the perceptual function is the channel and the perceptual signal is the message received. This effort began as soon as you got onto CSGNet. Bill (and I) didn’t care for it much (to say the least), which is why, after over 20 years of arguing with Bill about it, it never made it into the theory; there was just no reason to put it in (but plenty of reasons to keep it out). But if you want to keep trying, you might be able to convince me of the merits of the RREV if you can show me how it contributes to the success of a working model of control.Â

BestÂ

Rick

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[Kent]

[Kent McClelland 2019.04.18.14:44]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_13:44:27]

See comments below.

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_13:44:27]

[From Kent McClelland 2019.04.16.14:05]

KM: From my point of view as a sociologist, what matters is not real reality, but empirical reality: the aspects of physical reality that have sufficient �Invariance� to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers.

RM: I think your “empirical reality” is essentially the same as “perception” in PCT. “Empirical reality” is the same as “perception” inasmuch as both are
aspects of physical reality . But the qualification that empirical reality has to have “sufficient “invariance” to be perceived in more or less the same way by multiple observers” puzzles me. First, it’s puzzling because perceptions in PCT are
VARIABLES; the “invariance” of perceptions occurs when a perceptual variable is controlled at a fixed reference. And second, it’s puzzling because in PCT multiple observers are assumed to perceive the same perceptual variable when they all have the same perceptual
function that constructs that perceptual variable. Those perceptual variables will be the same only if they are based on the same aspect of reality. But that aspect of reality doesn’t have to be invariant and it won’t be perceived the same unless the same
perceptual function exists in all observers.

KM: Yes, when I refer to “empirical reality� I’m talking about perceptions, but only a subset of those perceptions: perceptions that have sufficient reliability that they stay relatively constant over time for a given observer and can also be confirmed by multiple
observers, allowing for differences in observers’ perspectives, and assuming that the observers have similar perceptual functions. Perceptions with this degree of reliability, I imagine, are the basis for what you refer to as “data."

KM: We know two things about perceptions:

(1) Perceptions offer an incomplete rendering of whatever Real Reality is. They give us, dare I say it, some information about the unknowable Real Reality, but the news we get about Real Reality from perceptions is heavily edited by the limitations of
our own perceptual apparatus, the limitations of our perceptual hierarchies, and the limitations of having a point of view located in a single spot in spacetime. Nevertheless whatever we get from perceptions has been sufficient for us to carry on with our
lives (so far, at least) and has been sufficient for our species to exist on this planet for some time (although who knows how much longer).

(2) Perceptions vary from person to person. The limitations just referred to in our individual perceptual apparatus, perceptual hierarchies, and spacetime location means that different people perceive different things, even when they are in close physical
proximity to each other. Nevertheless some kinds of perceptions have enough sameness, constancy, stability, invariance—calll it what you will—that we take them as empiirical reality, things that we can agree with other observers to be accurate, reliable. or
factual.

KM: So how can people’s perceptions, with all their variability, have sufficient reliability that they can be checked over time and by multiple observers, with the result that all observers accept them as empirical reality, as data worthy of attention?
My hypothesis, correct me if I am wrong, is that some aspects of Real Reality, whatever that might be, have the quality of invariance, independent of any given observer. Those (relatively) invariant aspects of Real Reality are less subject to random disturbances
than the rest of Real Reality, and so humans have been more easily able to organize and reorganize their perceptions to detect those aspects of Real Reality than other aspects. That’s my interpretation of what Powers was talking about in B:CP, when he repeatedly
used the word ‘invariance.’ How do you interpret what he meant?

KM: I’ll just see if we’re on the same page here before I try to respond to anything else you’ve said below.

My best,

Kent

···

On Apr 17, 2019, at 3:44 PM, Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

RM: So I don’t understand your use of the term “invariance” to describe something that is required of an aspect of physical reality for multiple observers to perceive the same thing. I’m familiar with the term “invariance” to refer to invariantrelationships between physical variables that can be used as inputs to perceptual functions to produce perceptual variables that correspond to a particular aspect of physical reality. An example is called “size-distance invariance”. This refers to the
fact that when an object of constant size varies in distance from you, the product retinal size X physical distance is approximately constant. So you will perceive the object being of constant size despite variations in its distance from you (which changes
its retinal size) if your perception of the size of the object is produced by a perceptual function that computes size perception = retinal size X physical distance.

RM: Of course, the perceptual function can’t use physical distance itself as input; distance is a perception derived from binocular disparity (at physical distances up to ~6 ft) and monocular cues. So the “invariance” computation is actually size
perception = retinal size X perceived distance. A lot of illusions are based on the fact that we apparently perceive size in this way. The illusions turn on getting a perception of distance that is not proportional to the actual distance. The Ames room illusion,
where a person appears to change size as they walk from one side of the room to another, is a consequence of constructing a perception of size based on an inaccurate perception of distance. Same for the moon illusion (moon looks larger at the horizon than
when it is high in the sky, apparently because the moon appears closer at the horizon) and many others.

KM: What matters for social behavior, I think, is the fact that, when people attempt to control their own perceptions, their actions have effects on the physical environment that other people can perceive.

RM: This is also what matters for individual behavior.

KM: These perceptible changes in the physical environment, made for the purpose of controlling a person’s own perceptions, are the basis for our social interaction with others. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment,
we would be socially isolated (not to mention the fact that it would be impossible for us to control our own perceptions).

RM: It’s worse than that. If nothing we did had any perceptible impact on the physical environment, we could not control our perceptions (which are a function of that physical environment) and we, therefore, could not exist, individually or socially.

KM: In my view, the physical variables important for understanding human behavior are generally not the variables of physics and chemistry. A physicist may look at a table and see a collection of atoms that in fact are mostly empty space. A chemist
may look at a table and be able to tell you its chemical composition. But for ordinary people in the course of their ordinary lives, what matters is that a table serves as an impenetrable solid object that can be used for controlling a variety of perceptions,
like holding plates and silverware so one can have supper or holding a computer in a convenient location to type on it.

RM: Tables only exist as perceptions. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no tables in physical reality. A table is the state of a collection of lower level perceptual variable (shapes, pressures when touched, relationships, etc)
that are themselves ultimately a function of the sensory effects of physical variables.

KM: All of the research in my field of sociology refers in some way to empirical reality. If not, nobody would recognize it as credible research. Any science, I would argue, must be based on descriptions of empirical reality, phenomena that other
scientists can perceive and verify. Even psychologists, I imagine, must focus on empirical reality, if they want other psychologists to accept their work.

RM: I think what all scientists “focus on” are their perceptions; that’s all any of us can focus on. All we have are our perceptions. Physical reality (other than being a crutch;-) is a theory. I’m pretty sure what you call “empirical reality”
is what is called perception in PCT. Tables are perceptions; cultures are perceptions; society is a perception; people are perceptions. It’s all perception. But scientists have come up with some extraordinarily good theories of the nature of the physical reality;
the reality that is the basis of our perceptions as well as a constraint on how we can affect those perceptions. All of my work studying control has been about determining the perceptions organisms control and how they control them. You do have to know something
about the theories of physical reality in order to do this kind of research. But the variables that I have identified as being controlled variables are perceptual variables, usually defined in terms of other perceptual variables (such as the height and width
of a rectangle) but sometimes in terms of physical variables (such as the two dimensional retinal position of the object when computing vertical and horizontal optical velocity in object interception models).

KM: Figuring out the perceptions that people are trying to control is all well and good, but for our descriptions of those perceptions to be meaningful to other people the way we talk about them must be couched in the language of empirical reality,
the aspects of the physical environment that others can perceive.

RM: I think you are making the mistake of taking perceptions (such as the perception of a table) as the reality that is the basis of perception. If empirical reality is the aspects of the environment that others can perceive, then empirical reality
IS perception.

KM: All this talk about real reality is best left to the philosophers, in my view. Anybody who wants to be recognized as a scientist has to be able to say something about empirical reality.

RM: I agree, if “empirical reality” refers to perceptual variables and the “scientists” you refer to are students of the controlling done by living organisms. Being able to “say something” about empirical reality – the perceptions that we control
– was what PCT research was supposed to be about, way before PCT was called PCT. At the end of the first paper on what has come to be called PCT – the 1960 Powers, Clark and McFarland Perceptual & Motor Skills monograph – Powers described what he saw as
the way the not yet named PCT science should progress. It could be done using the test for the significant variable (as it was called at that point) but it could also be done by introspective analysis of one’s own perceptual experience. Here’s what Bill had
to say:

RM: I think the search for self-evident categories of one’s own perceptual experience via introspection would be a great way to do PCT research for those who like to do their research in arm chairs. But what you have to understand in order to
do this kind of research is that “just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no tables in reality”; it’s all perception – even the rules of baseball.

Best

Rick

Kent

On Apr 16, 2019, at 10:54 AM, Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]

RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized. If this isn’t the case
– if your concept of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.

MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may sometimes have a supporting goal of “d* oing
research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized*”. But that is certainly not my main goal of research based on PCT,

RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.

Best

Rick

any more than getting the steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to examine the interactions among the control systems of the experimenter
and the subject in a TCV, or at the other end of the scale of importance, to study collective control by politically related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work to enhance the effective
operation of an organism and its descendants in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the control loops involved in a simple barter imply that a stable economy requires
steady inflation, and to examine the initial development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots of possible goals of PCT-based research that
The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal, however, because you might like to explain to your students why the hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the fundamental
“why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find the variable
(which of many?) someone is controlling in a particular situation. If that is all you want to do, the concept of the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.

RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”.

Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact,
I never actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller
requires, in order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.

This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer “knows” they should be controlling.

I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should” comes
into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple explanation.

Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying.

Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to
have little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops involved in situations like teaching.

…

RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to consider it an
unnecessary obstruction to the development of PCT science.

I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research, and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from
the CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of cultures that can lead to war.

Martin

–
Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.18.16.38]

That is, indeed, the way most science progresses.

That’s also a way science progresses. Science is much more solid if
you have both. It’s all feedback. Data suggests theory suggests the
search for more data, from as many angles as possible. The way I
look at it, Science is one form of Social Reorganization, building
new Perceptual Functions as we learn to control more and more of the
Real reality in which we live. Where (if you can forgive the expression) the do you
get that from the parable I wrote? I find it very hard to imagine
any plausible way of re-interpreting what I wrote is a way that
would allow you to come up with that gem of a mis-statement. To Eetu…
That’s equally weird, since I did explain in one or other of the
messages in this thread how the concept of the RREV makes this so
much easier to understand. And the comment is inconsistent with
At least we agree on something.
That is in fact the basis for recognizing the fundamental importance
of the RREV concept. Real Reality produces what it produces, we know
not how. What we know is that when we produce output, happens, not , much of the time. Along with that,
lots of other stuff is happening in Real Reality, some of which
influences our sensors. A Perceptual Function filters all that
“blooming, buzzing, confusion” (Dewey?) and produces something we
call a perception when we treat it as a variable such as a neural
firing rate, or as a CEV when we treat it as something the perceiver
sees as being in the environment. Whenever the spatio-temporal
pattern of its inputs matches what the Perceptual Function filters,
the perception occurs. One way of looking at it is to realize that
the Perceptual Function gets reorganized into the pattern it has
because Real Reality consistently provides the patterns it does when
we do what we do. The Perceptual Function that is so reorganized
defines what we perceive as being in the environment. It’s rather the opposite. The RREV is a concept that comes from
distinguishing a perception (such as a table) from the physical
reality that is the basis of that perception. We have no idea how RR produces the effects on the sensors that
various levels of Perceptual Function eventually turn into a table
perception. Maybe they are physical, whatever in RR that may mean,
maybe they are produced by my bureaucracy of gnomes. But produce the
consistent effect of “perceived table” they do.
Think about it. Is what you say here actually correct? I think not.
You may not have used the terminology “RREV”, but you always used
the concept, whether you knew it or not.
All the simulations and modelling I have seen include a portion of
the control loop between the output and the input. The output
influences Real Reality in some way, and Real Reality influences the
input in some way. Somewhere in that part of the feedback loop the
influence of the output is added to the opposing influence of the
output, and the difference is some value that, by way of the sensory
system and a hierarchy (usually one-level deep) of Perceptual
functions produces a value of another variable we call a
“perception” or a CEV, the CEV being the perception projected into a
perceived environment. What is that variable in Real Reality that is
influenced by both the Disturbance and the Output? It is the RREV,
whether you use that label, a different label, or no label at all.
It’s in your simulated Real Reality.
Martin

···

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_17:12:46]

[Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49]

              RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is

essential to your research on how multiple control
loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a
discussion of actual data and how the PCT model
explains it.

          MT: Kent doesn't use the term (at least not in a version I

have seen), but he does point out how the stabilities
produced by control are used for completely different
purposes in control by others. These stabilities are in
Real Reality. They are not CEVs randomly defined by
arbitrary Perceptual Functions in different people.

…
RM: Now RREVs explain the need for a hierarchy? So a
theoretical concept explains the need for another
theoretical concept?

        I thought the theorist would suggest the need for a

hierarchical model based on data.

        That's how Bill came up with the "non-adaptive"

hierarchical model of apparently adaptive behavior (LCS III
Chapter 5).

        RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative. It

shows that your preferred model of perception is still based
on information theory, and you are trying to graft it onto
PCT: the RREV is the source message,

hell

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_14:36:15]

  RM: But the concept of an RREV seems inconsistent with two easily

made observations. One is that the same reality can result in two
different perceptions.

  RM: I think it's the perceptual function --

not an RREV – that is responsible for the stuff we perceive.

thisthatthe other

  RREV is a concept that comes from confusing

a perception (such as a table) with the physical reality that is
the basis of that perception

  what I require of a concept like RREV is a

demonstration of how it explains the data. This could be done by
showing how the RREV functions in a working model that accounts
for the data. I have done plenty of modeling of control data and I
have done it all quite successfully without using the concept of
RREV.

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-19_17:31:52]

[Kent McClelland 2019.04.18.14:44]

RM:Â I think your “empirical reality” is essentially the same as “perception” in PCT.

KM: Yes, when I refer to “empirical realityâ€? I’m talking about perceptions, but only a subset of those perceptions: perceptions that have sufficient reliability that they stay relatively constant over time for a given observer and can also be confirmed by multiple
observers, allowing for differences in observers’ perspectives, and assuming that the observers have similar perceptual functions. Perceptions with this degree of reliability, I imagine,  are the basis for what you refer to as “data."Â

RM: I’m afraid I just don’t see how this fits in with the PCT model of perception. In PCT perceptions are VARIABLE aspects of the environment, like pitch. I don’t see any evidence that pitch has to remain relatively constant over time for the perception of pitch to be confirmed by multiple observers. But maybe I’m not understanding your point.Â

KM: We know two things about perceptions:Â

(1) Perceptions offer an incomplete rendering of whatever Real Reality is…Â

RM: I don’t know how we could know that. In order to know that a perception is an incomplete rendering someone would have to be able to perceive the complete rendering. But you claim that perceptions are incomplete renderings, so how would anyone know that they are not perceiving the complete rendering? The incomplete rendering is all anyone has.Â

RM: In PCT perceptual variables are assumed to be FUNCTIONS of sensed effects of physical variables or of lower level perceptual variables. There is no notion of “correctness” of perception in PCT (just as there is no crying in baseball; I love that line!). Presumably our perceptual functions have evolved to construct the perceptual variables (perceive the aspects of the environment) we need to be able to control in order to survive (and thrive). According to the current version of PCT, there are 10 or so different types of perceptual variable that we have to be able to control in order to survive and thrive: intensities, sensations, configurations, transitions, sequences, relatioships…etc.Â

Â

(2) Perceptions vary from person to person…

 RM: I presume you mean perceptions of the exact same physical reality. Yes, this is certainly true to some extent; babies perceive it differently than adults because they have not yet developed adult perceptual capabilities, adults perceive it differently if the have certain sensory defects (color blindness, dyslexia). But by and large I think people are capable of perceiving the same physical reality in the same way.Â

KM: So how can people’s perceptions, with all their variability, have sufficient reliability that they can be checked over time and by multiple observers, with the result that all observers accept them as empirical reality, as data worthy of attention?

 RM: I think PCT would say that it is because all people experience the world in terms of the same ten or so different types of perceptual variables.

KM: My hypothesis, correct me if I am wrong, is that some aspects of Real Reality, whatever that might be, have the quality of invariance, independent of any given observer.

RM: I don’t understand the hypothesis. Perhaps if you could frame this as a testable hypothesis I could tell you whether the hypothesis is right (unlikely to be rejected)Â or wrong (likely to be rejected).Â

Â

KM: Those (relatively) invariant aspects of Real Reality are less subject to random disturbances
than the rest of Real Reality, and so humans have been more easily able to organize and reorganize their perceptions to detect those aspects of Real Reality than other aspects. That’s my interpretation of what Powers was talking about in B:CP, when he repeatedly
used the word ‘invariance.’ How do you interpret what he meant?Â

 RM: I think Powers was talking about a possible perceptual learning process based on the reorganizing system “noticing” that certain types of perceptual functions produce perceptions that are invariant with respect to control actions. The term “invariance” refers to the behavior of the perceptual signal – the output of the perceptual function – given “arbitrarily” introduced actions; it does not refer to some invariant property of the environment. This can be seen from the fact that, in the example of straightness, Bill says “We don’t know if the lines are “really” straight”.Â

RM: This “invariance detection” process could be the basis for developing perceptions “size constancy” – what I discussed earlier as the perception of the size of object remaining “invariant” at different distances from you. Like the perception of “straightness”, the reorganization system could develop perceptual function that perceives “size” by noticing that the perception of the size of an object remains invariant as you move closer to and farther from the object if the perceptual function that produces a perception of size is computed as: perceived size = retinal size X perceived distance.

KM: I’ll just see if we’re on the same page here before I try to respond to anything else you’ve said below.

RM: I think we can drop it. I think you are committed to a model of perception that, from my perspective anyway, is nothing like the model of perception in PCT. So far, the PCT model of perception has allowed me to develop models that fit all kinds of data remarkably well. Unless you can show me that your model of perception will allow me to produce models that do even better I think it’s best if you (and Martin) go your way and I’ll go mine, on this topic anyway.

Best

Rick

Â

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-19_17:38:46]

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.18.16.38

        RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative. It

shows that your preferred model of perception is still based
on information theory, and you are trying to graft it onto
PCT: the RREV is the source message,

MT: Where (if you can forgive the expression) the hell do you
get that from the parable I wrote? I find it very hard to imagine
any plausible way of re-interpreting what I wrote is a way that
would allow you to come up with that gem of a mis-statement.Â

RM: Seemed like it to me but, as I just told Kent, I really don’t understand your model of perception but it doesn’t seem to be anything like the PCT model. And I’m certainly not going to convince you abandon it, whatever it is, so let’s give this topic a rest and maybe talk about how we got into PCT and what we expect of it.

BestÂ

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[bleach]

Rick,

Quote from below:

        RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative. It

shows that your preferred model of perception is still based
on information theory, and you are trying to graft it onto
PCT: the RREV is the source message,

Where (if you can forgive the expression) the hell do you
get that from the parable I wrote? I find it very hard to imagine
any plausible way of re-interpreting what I wrote is a way that
would allow you to come up with that gem of a mis-statement.
Even I have to agree with Martin on this
one!

bill

···

On 4/18/19 3:48 PM, Martin Taylor
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net

[Martin Taylor 2019.04.18.16.38]

  That is, indeed, the way most science progresses.

That’s also a way science progresses. Science is much more solid
if you have both. It’s all feedback. Data suggests theory suggests
the search for more data, from as many angles as possible. The way
I look at it, Science is one form of Social Reorganization,
building new Perceptual Functions as we learn to control more and
more of the Real reality in which we live. Where (if you can forgive the expression) the do you
get that from the parable I wrote? I find it very hard to imagine
any plausible way of re-interpreting what I wrote is a way that
would allow you to come up with that gem of a mis-statement. To Eetu…
That’s equally weird, since I did explain in one or other of the
messages in this thread how the concept of the RREV makes this so
much easier to understand. And the comment is inconsistent with
At least we agree on something.
That is in fact the basis for recognizing the fundamental
importance of the RREV concept. Real Reality produces what it
produces, we know not how. What we know is that when we produce output, happens, not , much of the
time. Along with that, lots of other stuff is happening in Real
Reality, some of which influences our sensors. A Perceptual
Function filters all that “blooming, buzzing, confusion” (Dewey?)
and produces something we call a perception when we treat it as a
variable such as a neural firing rate, or as a CEV when we treat
it as something the perceiver sees as being in the environment.
Whenever the spatio-temporal pattern of its inputs matches what
the Perceptual Function filters, the perception occurs. One way of
looking at it is to realize that the Perceptual Function gets
reorganized into the pattern it has because Real Reality
consistently provides the patterns it does when we do what we do.
The Perceptual Function that is so reorganized defines what we
perceive as being in the environment. It’s rather the opposite. The RREV is a concept that comes from
distinguishing a perception (such as a table) from the physical
reality that is the basis of that perception. We have no idea how RR produces the effects on the sensors that
various levels of Perceptual Function eventually turn into a table
perception. Maybe they are physical, whatever in RR that may mean,
maybe they are produced by my bureaucracy of gnomes. But produce
the consistent effect of “perceived table” they do.
Think about it. Is what you say here actually correct? I think
not. You may not have used the terminology “RREV”, but you always
used the concept, whether you knew it or not.
All the simulations and modelling I have seen include a portion of
the control loop between the output and the input. The output
influences Real Reality in some way, and Real Reality influences
the input in some way. Somewhere in that part of the feedback loop
the influence of the output is added to the opposing influence of
the output, and the difference is some value that, by way of the
sensory system and a hierarchy (usually one-level deep) of
Perceptual functions produces a value of another variable we call
a “perception” or a CEV, the CEV being the perception projected
into a perceived environment. What is that variable in Real
Reality that is influenced by both the Disturbance and the Output?
It is the RREV, whether you use that label, a different label, or
no label at all. It’s in your simulated Real Reality.
Martin

PS. In case you haven’t figured the parable out yet, here’s a
cheat sheet. The components of each RREV in the parable is the band and
frequency on which an actual radio station has a licence to
transmit (or on which it illegally transmits). The RREV is one
property of the complex entity we call the radio station. We can
never know most of the other properties of the station, but if we
could build sensors for them we would find that most of them hang
together in a stable configuration, just as do the band and
frequency on which the station transmits. In the parable, the unknown Real Reality to which our sensors are
exposed is the flood of natural and artificially generated
electromagnetic radiation that permeates the Universe, of which,
without technological tools called “tuners” we can perceive very
little outside the visible band from red to indigo. Each
Perceptual Function in the parable is a setting of a tuner dial to
some band and some frequency, which can be done perfectly freely.
Almost all of these settings, chosen randomly, result in a
perception (tuner output) that is not pleasurable to the listener
(corresponding to being ineffective in keeping the intrinsic
variable in good condition). A very few band/frequency pairings
are close enough to the band/frequency pair of a station (an RREV)
that the output offers some pleasure (benefit to the intrinsic
variables). Retuning (reorganization) is likely to improve the match between
the tuner (Perceptual Function) and the station (RREV), and the
more precise tuning improves the likelihood of pleasure in
listening (the usefulness of controlling the perception in
sustaining the viability of the intrinsic variables). These
settings, and only these settings get marked on the tuner dial
(survive as Perceptual Functions). Other settings that produce
whistles, crackles, and pops among other static, are not marked on
the dial, and don’t survive to be used later.

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_17:12:46]

[Martin Taylor 2019,04,17,08.49]

                RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV

is essential to your research on how multiple
control loops interact. It would be nice to get back
to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model
explains it.

            MT: Kent doesn't use the term (at least not in a version

I have seen), but he does point out how the stabilities
produced by control are used for completely different
purposes in control by others. These stabilities are in
Real Reality. They are not CEVs randomly defined by
arbitrary Perceptual Functions in different people.

…
RM: Now RREVs explain the need for a hierarchy? So a
theoretical concept explains the need for another
theoretical concept?

          I thought the theorist would suggest the need for a

hierarchical model based on data.

          That's how Bill came up with the "non-adaptive"

hierarchical model of apparently adaptive behavior (LCS
III Chapter 5).

          RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative.

It shows that your preferred model of perception is still
based on information theory, and you are trying to graft
it onto PCT: the RREV is the source message,

hell

[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_14:36:15]

    RM: But the concept of an RREV seems inconsistent with two

easily made observations. One is that the same reality can
result in two different perceptions.

    RM: I think it's the perceptual function

– not an RREV – that is responsible for the stuff we perceive.

thisthatthe other

    RREV is a concept that comes from

confusing a perception (such as a table) with the physical
reality that is the basis of that perception

    what I require of a concept like RREV is a

demonstration of how it explains the data. This could be done by
showing how the RREV functions in a working model that accounts
for the data. I have done plenty of modeling of control data and
I have done it all quite successfully without using the concept
of RREV.

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-04-20_18:46:25]

Rick,

Quote from below:

        RM: Oh, and the parable is, indeed, very informative. It

shows that your preferred model of perception is still based
on information theory, and you are trying to graft it onto
PCT: the RREV is the source message,

MT: Where (if you can forgive the expression) the hell do you
get that from the parable I wrote? I find it very hard to imagine
any plausible way of re-interpreting what I wrote is a way that
would allow you to come up with that gem of a mis-statement.
BL: Even I have to agree with Martin on this
one!

RM: OK, let me see how the hell I could have come up with that idea;-)

RM: I guess I got it from the idea that all the frequencies are CEV but only the broadcast frequencies are RREVs. So I guess I thought of the RREVs as the messages (information source), the tuner (the perceptual functions) as the channel and the RREVs to which the perceptual functions are tuned are transmitted messages.

RM: But I see that I didn’t read your parable carefully. I think all the frequencies are analogous to all the CEVs that exist in real reality; the broadcast frequencies are the RREVs which are analogous to the subset of the CEVs that are “good” to control because they are, in some sense, adaptive. The development of perceptual functions that perceive RREVs rather than any old CEV is analogous to tuning to a broadcast frequency; in the parable you know you’ve perceiving a frequency that corresponds to an RREV because you hear talk or music; I presume this way of finding teh RREV frequency is analogous to being able to successfully control the perception that corresponds to the RREV or allows you to successfully control some other perception by controlling the perception that corresponds to the RREV.Â

RM: Is that a better interpretation of your parable, Martin?

Â

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery