[From Bill Powers (930331.0900 MST)]
Greg Williams (930331) --
Perhaps there is a simple question I should have asked
originally, if I failed to do so: what kind of "understanding"
would be satisfactory to you?
A kind which is not based solely on my introspective assessment
that you have "correctly" identified the appropriate subset of
my motivations....If I were really motivated to perceive X,
then if you applied disturbances in an attempt to make me NOT
perceive X, I would attempt to correct for those disturbances,
and such attempted corrections would constitute evidence for my
REAL motivations, independent of what I THINK my motivations
are.
That is what I have been doing. However, since we are limited to
verbal communication, there is no external counterpart of your
controlled variables except as I can understand it by guessing at
the meanings of your words, and the circumstances under which you
make an effort to convey those meanings.
When I gave you the list of questions and the answers I predicted
that you would and would not give, I was testing the hypothesis
that you would find a way to show that all of my guesses were
wrong. Under the hypothesis that the goal was to avoid being
understood, or to show that the Test is difficult to use in the
field, to have answered the questions in the same way you had
answered other questions (as in my positive predictions) would
have caused an error relative to the goal of showing that
understanding is not possible by this method. You are smart
enough to realize what I was getting at, but of course I had not
said why I was making these predictions.
This does not prove my hypothesis correct, but it is an
encouraging hint. You appear to be perceiving that the Test is
very difficult to carry out in the field. I presume that you are
motivated to perceive this X, as no definitive conclusion has yet
been reached on this subject. On that hypothesis, I would predict
that everything I to do alter that perception will be met by some
move that will counteract my attempt, and support the idea that
the Test is very difficult to use in the field.
One sign of this, as I interpret the proceedings, is that when I
ask a very simple question like "Do you still intend to maintain
this challenge," your answer has uniformly dodged the request to
state your intention; after all, to do so correctly would be to
show that the Test can succeed, and in a simple way at that. You
say things like "Well, it may or may not have been my intention
when the challenge was issued, and it makes sense to suppose that
I still have that intention, but I have no awareness of my
structure of motivations, so I can only guess as to whether the
intention still exists, or is the same as it was, or will be the
same the next time you ask."
By giving this sort of answer, instead of just thinking a moment
and saying "Yes, the challenge is still on as far as I'm
concerned," you exhibit a lot of carefully-thought-out reasoning
leading to a response that shows that the Test is very difficult
to apply in the field. All the extra complication in your answer,
the invocation of things that might be, or are beyond your
knowledge, or are uncertain, shows that a lot of effort is going
on in order to preserve some particular perception. You don't
spontaneously say such things about your own statements under
ordinary circumstances, so Im not just sampling a sort of
behavior that goes on all the time anyway, at least not on this
subject. This pattern of answering doesn't happen when I ask you
if you want something, casually, in other conversations. You
don't expect me to react to your request about posting BURN and
UNBURN by saying "Gee, I'm not in contact with my motivations, so
I can't say whether I'll end up posting them or not, and even if
I might (conceivably, hypothetically) have some such intention
right now, I can't predict whether I will still have it ten
minutes from now." I just say "OK." (By the way, I find that I
already have all your materials, including the script, tucked
away in a long-forgotten directory, so you don't need to mail the
disk).
So it's evident to me that when I pose questions in this context,
you're answering in an unusual way, and doing so only when I ask
the sort of question I am asking. When I get too cocky, as by
saying you're an easy case, you soon remind us all that it really
does seem hard to apply the Test, judging from the progress we
have made during this challenge. This is, of course, your
judgment of the progress, which still meets your reference level
for it.
I should point out that "facts" and "impressions" are very likely
reference signals. When I turn the key in the ignition, the car
starts. That's just a fact. If someone asks me how to start the
car, I tell them to turn the key. But when the car DOESN'T start,
it becomes immediately clear that this fact is a reference
signal.
You may have the opinion that the Test is hard to apply in the
field, and think that this is nothing more than a reasonable
conclusion. But when something happens that tends to show that
the Test can work in a rather simple and immediate way, that is
an error, calling for immediate efforts to find a different
interpretation. When something that has already been accepted as
a fact begins to look nonfactual, a corrective effort is called
for.
PCT claims that all people have reference signals and
perceptions. My interpretations of it suggest that by various
means they can become aware of them if they want to. But when one
becomes aware of such things, they don't carry the label "this is
a reference signal" or "this is a perception." They are just old
familiar aspects of experience with no names as such. In seeing
how PCT applies to oneself, the main hurdle to get over is to
identify the terms of PCT with these nameless experiences that
thread through everything. This is not a matter of finding some
objective experimental proof; it's a matter of recognizing
something that is already there and that can be observed quite
easily -- but can't be made sense of so easily, without some
organizing theory.
The point of my asking you about your subjective impressions has
not been to prove that the Test is working. The Test works
without knowing the subjective appearance of controlled variables
or reference levels. It doesn't work infallibly, and without
continued investigation it can yield only approximations to the
real situation, but it does yield strong evidence relating to
hypotheses, and can also yield strong evidence against them. We
haven't carried this far enough for me to be utterly confident
that I have identified any of your controlled variables, but a
reasonably close approach has been made.
No, the point has been that in order to meet this challenge, I
must get you to say that a correct identification has been made,
near enough. And in order to do that, you must become aware of
your own reference signals AS REFERENCE SIGNALS, and of your own
controlled perceptions AS PERCEPTIONS. You must make the
identification yourself. When you do, the outcome will be self-
evident to you.
My eye is on your King.
ยทยทยท
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Best,
Bill P.