it posts).
···
On 5/9/19 9:35 AM, Martin Taylor
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:
mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net
[Martin Taylor 2019.05.08.17.22]
Yes, we use everyday language and short forms a lot. And if what I
am arguing happens to be correct, one can do no better than call a
particular kind of constellation or structure of CEVs as a “chair”
when one has a higher-level (configuration of configurations?)
perceptual function matched to that network of relationships. But when a discussion is about the perception being referenced,
it’s not such a good idea to rely them as the key to the truth. In
everyday thought, a chair is a chair is a chair. When we are
trying to sort out what in PCT creates the perception of a chair,
we have to try to be a bit more precise, and when there might be
ambiguity we should try to remember (I usually don’t) to specify
which viewpoint (Controller, Analyst, or Observer/Experimenter)
you mean the reader to take. So yes, I say that we perceive there
is a chair in the perceived environment, but I do not say that
there is a chair in Real Reality. I say that in Real Reality there
is some network of interactions among influences that causes a
pattern of effects on our sensors like the pattern that would be
produced by a chair.
On 2019/05/8 5:10 PM, Bill Leach (
via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:
wrleach@cableone.net
I’m going to jump in on this one…
Thanks. The more the merrier. I don't think
any two of the four in this message-reply sequence have quite
the same idea of the terms at issue. That doesn’t help coming to
an agreement that makes more scientific sense than proposed
alternatives.
Incidentally, do you have some reason for omitting the ID header
from your messages?
On 5/8/19 11:05 AM, Martin Taylor (
via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:
mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net
[Martin Taylor 2019.05.08.12.56]
I suppose that means you have no interest in reorganization or
evolution. At least Bill P didn’t mind talking about those
topics, which he considered to be part of PCT. If you consider
“talking about PCT” to be how to discover the controlled variable, I understand why you
aren’t interested. In that case, then of course the reality in
which we live is of no interest to you, since all control is
of perception and the “environment” described by the “models
of the physical sciences” exists only in the perceptual world,
so far as we can ever know. How those models came to describe so precisely the network of
effects among perceptions and between our actions and our
perceptions is, I think, an interesting question of PCT. But
you don’t, so there’s an end to the discussion.
Martin
[Rick Marken 2019-05-07_18:16:45]
[Eetu Pikkarainen
2019-05-02_09:13:00 UTC]
Â
 EP:...
the RREV is that something
which I would call
“picture� or “object of
perception� which makes it
possible and very probable
that creatures with
similar visual perceptual
functions and contextual
knowledge as us will see
either the wife or the
mother in law, but not a
tree, a car, an elephant
or something else.
RM: There is already a
component of the PCT model that will
do that. It’s called the “environment”
and it is external reality as
described by the models of the
physical sciences…
Â
EP:
Good, but that doesn’t fit well with
how we use the concept of environment
in our discussions.
RM: I agree. The concept of the environment in
these discussions is not the concept of the
environment in PCT. So you guys are on your own. I’m
just interested in talking about PCT.
only
My disagreement with both of you
Who both?
is in the idea that RREV or “object of
perception” is not a term to be included in the lexicon of
PCT.
Here's a point where I have a problem with
Eetu. I don’t know what an “object of perception” might be. I
have an idea what a perception is in the basic PCT theory, but
even that gets a little vague when you recognize that a “neural
current” is simply a mathematical abstraction, so a “perception”
must be distributed over several places in the brain. In the
language of Collective Control, a “perception” is necessarily
virtual. So what is an “object of perception”?
I'm not really sure what you mean by the whole sentence. Would I
be correct i assuming I could substitute “is in my idea” for “is
in the idea” without changing the meaning of the sentence?
 However, the discussion of the
subject of reorganization is of interest to me. Using the
term RREV (or object of perception) in such discussions
would not bother me as long as the term actually improves
the ability to carry out the discussion.
Where I'm going with that is... when
conducting a thought experiment discussion, if the RREV
specific to the discussion is well defined (or developed to
be well defined) and then used as a footnote on the rest of
the postings the term could then be useful. I’m thinking
however, that what is termed to be a part of the RREV
(below) is too inclusive for it to be useful in that manner.
"Too inclusive" makes no sense to me. Is the word "perception"
too inclusive to be useful in PCT discussion? The inclusivity of
“RREV” is exactly the same: Perception → CEV, a projection
of the perception in the Perceived Environment, RREV →
perception, the output (distributed or otherwise) of whatever
coherent structure of influences in Real Reality gives rise to
the sensory data that are eventually transformed into the
perception. The coherent structure itself corresponds either to
the perceptual function or to the perceived entity of which some
property is the CEV. Whichever you take it to be, neither is the
RREV. I think they are functionally the same, but that opinion
could change very easily.
NOPE! As I try to see a way that the
term would be useful, I fail to find it so. Even in what I
thought the original sense of the term was I can’t make it
improve discussion of even a thought experiment. Thats not
to say that I’m not missing something here but I sure don’t
see any hint of what that might be.
Maybe if we keep looking a what we can and
cannot know about Real Reality and how that is transformed into
the complicated environment we perceive consciously and
non-consciously, suitable words may come to mind. For me, so
far, I find the idea to be useful that something we
perceive is
likely but not guaranteed to correspond to
something in Real Reality.
With a definition of "think of the RREV
as a container that has everything other than the control
loop inside the organism" means that RREV IS what we
call the environment in PCT.
Where did that definition come from? I don't
remember saying or seeing it before. Did I actually say it? If I
did, it has very little relationship to how I have ever thought
about the RREV since I introduced the term (as a Real-World
variable related to the perception/CEV. If I said it, I must
have had a “brain fart” – not too unlikely at my age:-) Sorry
to mislead you.
Incidentally, I looked for " think of the RREV as a container" in the
CSGnet messages since Jan 1, but did not find it anywhere
except in the message to which I am replying. Maybe that was a
paraphrase of something I said that was equally misleading. It
doesn’t matter, though, because I strongly disavow it now and
retrospectively in respect of this whole thread.
 When we discuss a behavior in PCT
terms, we say the “chair” and NOT the “chair in the
environment” or worse, the “observer’s perception of a chair
in the environment.”
I do think that currently all
discussion of how reorganization works is only conjecture at
best.
Yes, but discussion of what reorganization
does is not conjecture, or a least need not be. As Rick points
out, it is possible to do simulation experiments on
reorganization, and thirty years on from the paper he cites, the
experiments could be done with hundreds or thousands, perhaps
even millions, of perceptual functions in a “white box”
environment with many structures of a wide variety of
complexity, rather than in an environment that contains a
single-peaked fitness landscape.
Discussions of reorganization do lead
to recognition of things that the reorganization must be
able to accomplish. Which itself is part of the reason why
I think that for those that are around long enough, the
reorganizing system will prove to be vastly more complex
than all of the rest of PCT. The “mechanics” of the system
might also be almost brutally simple because chemical
signaling or photo-chemical signaling could be a part of it,
but how it actually functions, in detail, is likely scary in
its complexity.
Probably true, but I guess it depends on the
level of detail. For example, at one level of detail it is
possible to note that many synapses follow the rule of “If I
pass on a notice that my upstream nerve fired shortly before the
downstream one did, I get stronger, but if the timing is
reversed or I didn’t get an upstream firing notice I will get
weaker.” At a more detailed level one would have to talk about
which kinds of synapse does what, and at an even finer level one
would talk about how different synaptic messenger molecules are
used and regenerated. At a lower level of detail one might just
say “e-coli” and say that the problem is solved. But the same is
true of the hierarchy itself, so it’s not an issue in principle.
What my contributions to this thread have been about is not
that, but about what reorganization is for, which I claim is
what Bill Powers said it was for – to keep the intrinsic
variables in states that keep us alive and healthy in the actual
environment in which we live. To do that, as was pretty well
agreed while Bill was alive and contributing to CSGnet,
perceptual control must usually be reasonably effective. That
requires that controlling perception by means of influences
passed through the Real Reality environment must have results
very close to what they would be if the output action influenced
structures on the Perceptual environment instead of structures
in Real Reality. I have simply been teasing out what the
reorganizing system must know about that real environment in
order for effective perceptual control to be possible, and the
consequence of that limitation on control of perception in a
living organism, as opposed to a designed mechanism.
Since I am NOT a PCT researcher and
just an interested party, I’m not bothered about discussions
of this nature. Since Rick IS a PCT researcher, running off
into speculation is not the sort of thing I would expect him
to be comfortable with.
No. Neither was Bill Powers. Bill liked
things to be proved, step by step, before attempting the next
step, piling one brick on the next. I prefer to have some vision
of what goes beyond the immediate next step, using the
foundation already built by provable steps and taking advantage
of what other science can tell us to build a scaffold or
skeleton that has a form that has some reasonable probability of
becoming testable and of gaining or losing plausibility as a
consequence of testing. That is speculation, and I think any
developing science needs it just as much as (and no more than)
the experimental proving or disproving of the speculative
hypotheses.
While I was working, I did both kinds of science (mainly in
perception and in communication such as human-computer
interaction), but as I got older I found it more interesting to
look into the foundations of the things I and others had
discovered or hypothesized, and seeing how these foundations
applied to a wider range of things that had seemed to be
unrelated. The wider the range of observations of different
kinds seem to depend on the same foundations, the more secure
these foundations might be as approximations to some truth about
the way the world works. At one level, PCT seemed and seems to
me to be such a foundation.
 Applying it to the wide range of phenomena it seems to
underlie, however, is always at some extent speculative, from
speculation about what variable is being controlled in a well
defined situation – a speculation that can often be tested
using the TCV – to speculation about why people controlling for
different things can come together in mutually supportive groups
such as sports teams or political parties, and why such groups
very often face schisms, or about why the complexity of
societies seems to evolve in steps reminiscent of punctuate
evolution, but mostly evolving the same changes during each
step, as a function of the population of the society. These are
implications of PCT, vastly different from finding parameter
values in a simulation, but possibly testable if sociologists or
archaeologists wanted to make predictions about the data they
have or could get.
Yes, this way of trying to develop PCT as a foundational science
makes Rick uncomfortable, and he is not wrong in feeling so. Any
speculation or analytical development that contains
probabilistic steps ought to make one uncomfortable if one is
controlling for assured truth. But as in physical sports, part
of the beauty of reaching to the limit of your grasp is the risk
of failure coupled with the hope of success. In rock climbing,
the penalty of failure is death, but some people nevertheless
climb cliffs. In science, the penalty of failure is being proved
wrong, but the reward of success is the greater, the greater the
risk – that is, the more apparently speculative
the hypothesis.
Martin
bill
Best
Rick
Â
We
use it as an container which contains
everything else except the those parts
of the control loop which are inside
the organism. Even in a diagram of one
control unit there are multiple things
situated in the environment: at least
the output quantity, the feedback
function, the disturbances and the
input quantity. They all are in the
environment and they can be said to
form together the environment of that
control unit. It is true that “the
spatial distribution of light
intensity emitted from the screen� is
thought to be in my
environment but it is not the
environment. Similarly the RREV is in
the environment, not the
environment.
Â
RM: I think this PCT view
of the relationship between perception
and environment makes a lot more sense
than whatever the RREV view is. I’m
still not sure exactly what it that
view is because I get a lot of
contradictory descriptions of it. But
one thing I’m pretty sure is true of
the RREV is that one’s perception of
it can be correct or incorrect. It
seems to me that if the RREV is to be
a useful concept, those who invented
it should be able to tell me which of
my perceptions in the wife/mother law
illusion correctly corresponds to the
RREV? And I’d like to know how one
knows when one is perceiving an RREV
correctly or incorrectly. To answer
this one would have to know what the
RREV is that is out there; is it the
wife, the mother in law, both or
neither? Inquiring minds want to know.
Â
EP:
Errare humanum est! As a saying goes
there are many ways to be wrong but
one to be right. That wife/mother in
law “illusion� is an interesting
special case just because there seems
to be two ways to be right about it. I
really wonder whether it is a totally
strange situation to you to find that
you had perceived something wrong!Â
Once I saw person in street whom I
recognized from a long distance to be
my old friend but when I got nearer I
disappointed that he was a stranger.
Yesterday I saw a Golden Eagle from a
bird watching tower but an
ornithologist told me that it was a
White-Tailed Eagle.
I
think that in principle there are two
ways to know when one is perceiving an
RREV correctly or incorrectly: 1)
compare to other perceptions or 2) try
to control it. But we may never know
what the RREV is that is out there. We
know only the perceptions of them and
the controllability of them.
Â
RM: The PCT answer, by
the way, is that what is out there is
just a a spatial distribution of light
intensity that can provide the basis
for the perception of the wife and/or
the mother in law. Both can be be
perceived by people who have developed
the appropriate perceptual functions;
only one or the other can be perceived
by people who have developed only one
or the other of those perceptual
functions, and neither can be
perceived by people who have developed
neither perceptual function. But what
is really out there (according to the
physical models of reality) is just a
spatial pattern of light intensity.Â
Â
EP:
Yes, a spatial distribution of light
intensity that can provide the basis
for the perception but the RREV might
often be that which provides the basis
for the spatial distribution of light
intensity. If you see a friend in the
street you will not say “wow, there is
a spatial distribution of light
intensity which provides the basis for
the perception of my friend�, but you
say “How are you friend?�
Â
Eetu
Â
BestÂ
Â
Rick
Â
It could
very well be Adelbert’s
office like Martin
suggests, but I like
somewhat simpler
speculations 😉
Â
 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
Â
No one can
require that there should be
one to one correspondence
between RREVs and
perceptions. The important
point is that not any but
only some RREVs can produce
a certain perception via a
certain perceptual functions
and a certain RREV cannot be
perceived as any but only
some perceptions. A second
point is that those
wavelengths and their
combinations are also
perceptions and we should
ask what is the RREV which
produces both color
perceptions and wavelength
perceptions.
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
Â
Yes, perceptual
function is responsible to
create a perception from the
effects it gets from the
RREV. The RREV is
responsible (especially from
our point of view) to add
the effects of our output to
the other possible effects
called disturbance and then
mediate them in a coherent
way to our perceptual
functions.
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
Â
As I said, at
this certain kind of the
basic level research you can
well do without it, you just
abstract it away as a
needless self-evidence.
Still it is there and the
affirmation of it would
gather more interest to PCT
than the negation of it.
Â
Perhaps RREV
has a close relation to
feedback functions (and
disturbance functions)? This
is just an initial thought.
Anyway the functions how the
output effects are mediated
to input effects is most we
can know about RREVs, I
think.
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.
Â
Molecules are
models of RREV. We can have
models of them and these
models are based on our
experiences of controlling
our perceptions. For me,
molecules are somewhat more
credible models than
Martin’s gnome armies, but
that is maybe a question of
taste. If we accept the
there could be such
structures like molecules in
RR then we should also
accept that there can be
chemical compounds and
physical bodies and stuffs
and mixtures (like lemonade)
and further even organisms
and other people and social
structures etc. etc.
Â
We cannot know
for sure do these things
exists and if they do, do
they somehow resemble our
perceptions of them, but the
long history of evolution,
during which our perceptual
functions have been
developed to collect from
our environment such
combinations and
transformations of effects
which are somehow essential
to our living and which are
controllable, would suggest
that there must be (often)
quite close connection.
Â
Eetu
Â
BestÂ
Â
Rick
Â
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 "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
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.�
      Â
      Â
  --Antoine
de
Saint-Exupery
Â
–
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
Â
–
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
–
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
