Collective Control and Environmental Stabilities

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530)]

Greetings! I'm returning to CSGNET after quite a long absence, but I
have something to share, and I'm interested in seeing what CSGNET
subscribers have to say.

The attached pdf describes some of my current thinking about how to
apply PCT to sociology. It's a fragment of a longer paper that I'm
currently working on, which gives a PCT perspective on the theories of
Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent French sociologist. However, the piece
I'm attaching is relatively self contained.

It's a 12-page pdf. If you are interested but have difficulty opening
it, please let me know, and I can send the material to you in another
way.

Kent

Environmental Stabilization.pdf (128 KB)

···

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kent McClelland, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
1210 Park Street
Grinnell College
Grinnell, IA 50112

Phone: 641-269-3134
Fax: 641-269-4985
www.grinnell.edu

On Nov 4, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Richard Marken wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2010.11.04.1130)]

Martin Taylor (2010.11.04.15.22) --

When Nixon started the "War on Drugs" and created the DEA we
(my friends and I) all said something on the lines of "Didn't they
learn ANYTHING from prohibition?", but we thought that the
public would soon insist on relegalization and the WoD would
be short-lived. But instead of that, it has grown out of control,
to become a religion or worse.

The public learns nothing from experience and right wingers actively
ignore experience (at least the aspect of experience that matters to
me; the well being of the vast majority of our citizens; they are very
tuned in to the difficulties of being a multibillionaire;-)). This is
just the way control systems operate; people don't want to deal with
data that is inconsistent with their preconceived beliefs.

Prohibition was repealed only because most people enjoy drinking
alcohol; only a minority of those people drink just to get high.
Everyone who uses marijuana uses it _only_ to get high. I think the
repeal of prohibition had general support because it interfered with
many people's life style; not because they saw that prohibition was
the cause of a huge crime wave. Marijuana is unlikely to ever be
legalized in the US because of the fact that it is used only to get
high and right now I bet only a small minority of people are users.
The non-user population --probably 80% in the US -- could care less
about evidence that drug prohibition is a waste of their taxes.

Same is true for right wing policies, such as regressive taxation (the
Reagan/Bush tax cuts), that always increase unemployment and the
deficit. People don't look at the data; they just know what they are
told by the right wing noise machine that now controls the US media.
And right wing policy makers care only about making the rich richer
and they _know_ that making the rich richer is the best thing to do
for the economy so they are certainly not interested in data, which
has that damned liberal bias;-)

I'm afraid the US is f**ked by the complete right-wing corporate take
over of the political process and media, along with the active
cheering on of the working class Tea Party mishuganas. But there is a
small ray of hope; California might actually get it together, which
would be nice for me because, though I love Canada, I love sunny
California even more;-)

Have a nice winter;-)

Best

Rick

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[From Bill Powers (2010.11.05.0155 MDT)]

Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530) --

Your paper reminds me of things P. J. Bohannon (Northwestern U., anthropology) used to say about culture (when I knew him in the 1960s), though he never developed it or linked it to PCT to the extent you are doing. He was interested in cultural artifacts and the way they shaped the environment in which people grew up and assimilated the culture. Things like cathedrals and highways and movies and so on, only things more suited to the Kalihari desert. I think Ted Cloak also has thoughts like these.

I've only skimmed through the paper so far but your main point is clear. As people control their own perceptions they inevitably stabilize their immediate environments against disturbances, a result that is the source of both cooperative efforts and conflicts. Other people experience the side-effects of what you're stabilizing.

I once tried to say something similar to Lovelock (of Gaia fame). He toys with the idea that Gaia is actually a sentient control system. I tried to show him that the effect of a lot of similar organisms controlling the same thing relative to similar reference levels is to control the whole world in that respect, without any need for attributing sentience to the whole aggregate. If plants control for a certain level of oxygen in their local environments by absorbing CO2 and excreting oxygen, that would account for the atmosphere's approaching some specific level of O2. Lovelock didn't like the idea of reference levels, for some reason. Or stabilization by any means other than interacting forces simply finding their natural equilibria with each other. Yet he gets pretty mystical about Gaia.

Another thing to consider is that control system's don't just stabilize variables against disturbances. They act to maintain variables at specific levels that are different from their natural equilibrium states, so constant use of energy is required just to maintain those levels even without extraneous disturbances. Body temperature, for example, for at least part of the year.

Nice to see something about PCT on CSGnet. So many agendas!

Best,

Bill P.

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 0301 MDT]

About halfway through, you seemed to have gotten side tracked by "inequality", as if it were some variable that is controlled for that was different or more important, perhaps even a causal factor of some sort. How do you justify this? Shouldn't it have to be justified rather than just assumed?

Martin L

···

On 11/4/2010 2:29 PM, Kent McClelland wrote:

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530)]

Greetings! I'm returning to CSGNET after quite a long absence, but I have something to share, and I'm interested in seeing what CSGNET subscribers have to say.

The attached pdf describes some of my current thinking about how to apply PCT to sociology. It's a fragment of a longer paper that I'm currently working on, which gives a PCT perspective on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent French sociologist. However, the piece I'm attaching is relatively self contained.

It's a 12-page pdf. If you are interested but have difficulty opening it, please let me know, and I can send the material to you in another way.

Kent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kent McClelland, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
1210 Park Street
Grinnell College
Grinnell, IA 50112

Phone: 641-269-3134
Fax: 641-269-4985
www.grinnell.edu

On Nov 4, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Richard Marken wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2010.11.04.1130)]

Martin Taylor (2010.11.04.15.22) --

When Nixon started the "War on Drugs" and created the DEA we
(my friends and I) all said something on the lines of "Didn't they
learn ANYTHING from prohibition?", but we thought that the
public would soon insist on relegalization and the WoD would
be short-lived. But instead of that, it has grown out of control,
to become a religion or worse.

The public learns nothing from experience and right wingers actively
ignore experience (at least the aspect of experience that matters to
me; the well being of the vast majority of our citizens; they are very
tuned in to the difficulties of being a multibillionaire;-)). This is
just the way control systems operate; people don't want to deal with
data that is inconsistent with their preconceived beliefs.

Prohibition was repealed only because most people enjoy drinking
alcohol; only a minority of those people drink just to get high.
Everyone who uses marijuana uses it _only_ to get high. I think the
repeal of prohibition had general support because it interfered with
many people's life style; not because they saw that prohibition was
the cause of a huge crime wave. Marijuana is unlikely to ever be
legalized in the US because of the fact that it is used only to get
high and right now I bet only a small minority of people are users.
The non-user population --probably 80% in the US -- could care less
about evidence that drug prohibition is a waste of their taxes.

Same is true for right wing policies, such as regressive taxation (the
Reagan/Bush tax cuts), that always increase unemployment and the
deficit. People don't look at the data; they just know what they are
told by the right wing noise machine that now controls the US media.
And right wing policy makers care only about making the rich richer
and they _know_ that making the rich richer is the best thing to do
for the economy so they are certainly not interested in data, which
has that damned liberal bias;-)

I'm afraid the US is f**ked by the complete right-wing corporate take
over of the political process and media, along with the active
cheering on of the working class Tea Party mishuganas. But there is a
small ray of hope; California might actually get it together, which
would be nice for me because, though I love Canada, I love sunny
California even more;-)

Have a nice winter;-)

Best

Rick

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[Martin Taylor 2010.11.05.10.21]

Kent,

Thanks for this essay. It offers much food for thought.

One thought it has fed in me is that what is stabilized by a network of interacting control processes is not only the variables in the environment that correspond to controlled perceptual variables in individuals, but also a whole network of environmental affordances available for people to use in controlling their own perceptual variables. For example, a paved road provides a way for someone to get from A to B that is not available through the untamed forest.

A stabilzed environmental affordance provides an opportunity for an environmental feedback path that would not have existed in the absence of the social network. It is an added degree of freedom available to the person for whom it might be useful. So the social stabilization of environmental variables can not only decrease the available degrees of freedom (as you emphasize) for those people who would like those variables to have different values, but can increase the degrees of freedom for those able to use the stable environmental affordances in their own reorganization processes. These degrees of freedom are at different points in the control loops, but since your essay emphasises limitation of the degrees of freedom in the environment, I think the two factors are commensurate.

It is unclear to me whether the reduction in degrees of freedom created by the stabilization of controlled variables is outweighed by the increase in degrees of freedom created by the creation of stable environmental affordances available for reorganization, but I think it is a consideration that you might be concerned with in your essay.

Thanks again for the stimulating discussion.

Martin

···

On 2010/11/4 4:29 PM, Kent McClelland wrote:

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530)]

Greetings! I'm returning to CSGNET after quite a long absence, but I have something to share, and I'm interested in seeing what CSGNET subscribers have to say.

The attached pdf describes some of my current thinking about how to apply PCT to sociology. It's a fragment of a longer paper that I'm currently working on, which gives a PCT perspective on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent French sociologist. However, the piece I'm attaching is relatively self contained.

It's a 12-page pdf. If you are interested but have difficulty opening it, please let me know, and I can send the material to you in another way.

Kent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kent McClelland, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
1210 Park Street
Grinnell College
Grinnell, IA 50112

Phone: 641-269-3134
Fax: 641-269-4985
www.grinnell.edu

On Nov 4, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Richard Marken wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2010.11.04.1130)]

Martin Taylor (2010.11.04.15.22) --

When Nixon started the "War on Drugs" and created the DEA we
(my friends and I) all said something on the lines of "Didn't they
learn ANYTHING from prohibition?", but we thought that the
public would soon insist on relegalization and the WoD would
be short-lived. But instead of that, it has grown out of control,
to become a religion or worse.

The public learns nothing from experience and right wingers actively
ignore experience (at least the aspect of experience that matters to
me; the well being of the vast majority of our citizens; they are very
tuned in to the difficulties of being a multibillionaire;-)). This is
just the way control systems operate; people don't want to deal with
data that is inconsistent with their preconceived beliefs.

Prohibition was repealed only because most people enjoy drinking
alcohol; only a minority of those people drink just to get high.
Everyone who uses marijuana uses it _only_ to get high. I think the
repeal of prohibition had general support because it interfered with
many people's life style; not because they saw that prohibition was
the cause of a huge crime wave. Marijuana is unlikely to ever be
legalized in the US because of the fact that it is used only to get
high and right now I bet only a small minority of people are users.
The non-user population --probably 80% in the US -- could care less
about evidence that drug prohibition is a waste of their taxes.

Same is true for right wing policies, such as regressive taxation (the
Reagan/Bush tax cuts), that always increase unemployment and the
deficit. People don't look at the data; they just know what they are
told by the right wing noise machine that now controls the US media.
And right wing policy makers care only about making the rich richer
and they _know_ that making the rich richer is the best thing to do
for the economy so they are certainly not interested in data, which
has that damned liberal bias;-)

I'm afraid the US is f**ked by the complete right-wing corporate take
over of the political process and media, along with the active
cheering on of the working class Tea Party mishuganas. But there is a
small ray of hope; California might actually get it together, which
would be nice for me because, though I love Canada, I love sunny
California even more;-)

Have a nice winter;-)

Best

Rick

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.10:00 CDT)]

[From Bill Powers (2010.11.05.0155 MDT)]

Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530) --

Your paper reminds me of things P. J. Bohannon (Northwestern U., anthropology) used to say about culture (when I knew him in the 1960s), though he never developed it or linked it to PCT to the extent you are doing. He was interested in cultural artifacts and the way they shaped the environment in which people grew up and assimilated the culture. Things like cathedrals and highways and movies and so on, only things more suited to the Kalihari desert. I think Ted Cloak also has thoughts like these.

I've only skimmed through the paper so far but your main point is clear. As people control their own perceptions they inevitably stabilize their immediate environments against disturbances, a result that is the source of both cooperative efforts and conflicts. Other people experience the side-effects of what you're stabilizing.

Thanks, Bill, for your comments. Yes, you have my point exactly. I think my emphasis in this essay on the material effects of control is an important point for sociologists to grasp, because most current sociological theorizing seems to be floating on the level of social causes and their social effects without ever grounding the discussion by explaining how these social things relate to the physical world.

We come in contact with each other as social beings only through the effects our actions and other people's actions have on the physical world. Everything social is mediated by the physical world, so social and cultural analysis, in my opinion, needs to keep a constant focus on how our attempts to control our own perceptions affect the physical environment that we share.

Another thing to consider is that control system's don't just stabilize variables against disturbances. They act to maintain variables at specific levels that are different from their natural equilibrium states, so constant use of energy is required just to maintain those levels even without extraneous disturbances. Body temperature, for example, for at least part of the year.

Yes, definitely. In one of the later parts of my essay, I touch on this idea by putting it in terms of the second law of thermodynamics, as I understand it, that creation of order in one location comes at the cost of an increase in disorder elsewhere. I don't know whether I've got my physics exactly right, and I'm certainly no physicist, but the fact that there is an energy cost to maintaining social order is an important point for sociologists to keep in mind.

Again, thanks for your comments!

Kent

[From Kenny Kitzke (2010.11.05)]

Welcome back Kent. I have missed you on CSGNET. If I am correct, you attended the Conference in Manchester? I regretted not attending this year, and even more so when I perceived that you did.

My focus on PCT, and HPCT, for the past 15 years has been on its applications to behavior of human beings rather than the intricacies of the theory or its applications to the behavior of bacteria, birds, etc.

With this personal focus, I have been awed by your efforts to apply PCT to collective social behavior. I am awed because I can’t imagine any more difficult application than to explain or influence social behavior in communities ranging from towns to nations.

My own efforts have been aimed at trying to understand and influence the behavior of people who are part of a much smaller group/community: a husband and wife, a family, a team, an organization, a business, etc. I have found this difficult, but have gained enough unique insights to help me facilitate superior achievement of shared group goals especially in for-profit businesses.

What I appreciate most about your study and work about collective control by individuals (whether applied to whole societies like a nation, or a biological family) is how, even when some stability of shared environmental variables is achieved, it does not mean the stability produces satisfaction. In fact, the individual actions of the relevant group members to achieve some stability in their shared environment is still fraught with continual disturbances, conflicts and errors within and between members even while collaborative actions can achieve some amount of shared satisfactio/pleasure for some amount of time by continued and creative (not always random) actions by group members.

While PCT/HPCT provides the best available explanation of human behavior, it fails to provide sufficient understanding of human nature whereby humans can live in peace sans conflict and even violence. Such is the state of human nature it seems to me.

Please keep sharing your discoveries as what you learn or demonstrate on collective control of shared and perceived social/environmental variables. I have this hope that what might work for societies would help its elements like families, organizations, etc., and perhaps a bottoms-up adventure where if families can achieve

more stable and satisfactory environments, it could be extended to towns, states and even nations.

Good to have you back at CSGNET.

Kenny

A LawstSheep

In a message dated 11/4/2010 4:39:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, mcclel@GRINNELL.EDU writes:

···

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530)]

Greetings! I’m returning to CSGNET after quite a long absence, but I
have something to share, and I’m interested in seeing what CSGNET
subscribers have to say.

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1015) CDT]

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 0301 MDT]

About halfway through, you seemed to have gotten side tracked by "inequality", as if it were some variable that is controlled for that was different or more important, perhaps even a causal factor of some sort. How do you justify this? Shouldn't it have to be justified rather than just assumed?

Thank you for reading and commenting on my essay, Martin. My emphasis on social inequality in the essay may seem like a sidetrack to you, but it's not a sidetrack for the audience of sociologists that I'm eventually hoping to reach with this essay. Understanding the roots and workings of social inequality has been central to the sociological enterprise throughout much of the discipline's history.

In the essay, I'm not claiming that inequality is a causal factor for anything, simply that it is an outcome of certain kinds of social arrangements (supported by collective control processes). I was trying to point out the fact that some environmental stabilizations increase the degrees of freedom for controlling certain perceptions (perhaps for everybody sharing that environment), but at the same time decrease the degrees of freedom for controlling other perceptions. If the impact of those decreased degrees of freedom falls unevenly on the population affected, that is, if some people more than others find that the degrees of freedom for perceptions they want to control have been curtailed by these stabilized environmental arrangements, then inequality has occurred, by definition.

I don't think that inequality is a variable that most people control for, just an unintended outcome of controlling for other things, although people who seek power or revenge may be controlling for taking other people down a notch. Once unequal arrangements are in place, however, lots of people control for protecting and extending their own advantages. (Tax cuts for the rich, for instance?)

Furthermore, I don't see inequality as a causal factor making people behave in a certain way, but rather as an environmental given, to which people must adapt their behavior in trying to control their own perceptions. I do think it's safe to predict that people who find their degrees of freedom constricted in a given environment are more likely to begin reorganizing their perceptions than people who find that the environment supports them in what they want to do. Whether and how any reorganization will take place depends on the individual's own perceptual hierarchy, and because reorganization is a random process the outcome can't be predicted in advance.

If you personally don't see social inequality as an important thing to be thinking and talking about, I would guess that it might be because you operate in an environment that puts you on the advantaged end of most of the social inequalities built into that environment. Would you happen to be white, male, relatively well off, live in a nice house, have challenging and prestigious work, etc.? Maybe I'm entirely wrong about that, but it's worth thinking about.

My best,

Kent

[From Bill Powers (2010.11.05.0815 MDT)]
Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530) –
Kent, since you’ve been away from CSGnet, it has been turned in a new
direction by a few participants who have no visible understanding of PCT
except for a few words. They know who they are, and I invite them to
start up their own direct email conversation rather than cluttering up
our bandwidth. But I doubt that they will. They think they are impressing
us with their superior analytical abilities, or their obvious political
expertise. This leaves us with only a few choices. The simplest is just
to ignore them, something I and others have not been able to do
completely, but which I intend to do henceforth. The delete key will take
care of that. Another choice, which most participants know I have
strongly resisted from the inception of CSGnet and its predecessor, is to
monitor the list and simply remove those whom the rest of us can’t stand.
I still resist that because not being able to stand someone makes me feel
that I have failed to be tolerant enough and that I might miss seeing a
change of heart or some epiphany that results in someone’s getting the
point at last. The final choice is to leave CSGnet and start up another
forum or create an ad-hoc forum using CCs. That seems like being kicked
out of my own house by an insufferable uninvited guest, again not much of
a choice. And the next house may attract more squatters so I’d just have
to move again.
For me the easiest way out is simply to delete communications coming from
the parties who are using our facilities to follow their own agendas for
purposes having nothing to do with PCT. We do that anyway with spam,
usually without even needing to read it – why not do it with
intellectual spam? There is some risk in this of ignoring someone who is
trying hard to learn but having a little difficulty, or someone who
has some valid critiques of current PCT, but after reading enough posts
it should become evident what the situation is.
There is also a risk of miscommunication. I don’t reply to every possible
post, simply because I haven’t got 72 hours a day to devote to that. So I
may appear to ignore someone when in fact I’m satisfied with what others
are saying in reply and have nothing new to offer, or simply when I’ve
run out of steam for a while or, like now, am busy with another project.
But statistics will tell the story: if you find yourself getting replies
from the same few people all the time and nothing but silence from the
rest who are talking to each other, that is a pretty strong
hint.

Best,

Bill P.

[From Dick Robertson.2010.11.05.1100CDT]

Kent,

Congratulations on a masterful piece of work. I think it is especially timely just at this time of the near completion of the PCT paradigm/manifesto.

Best,

Dick R.

Hi Kent,

This partial paragraph of yours caught my attention:

"Yes, definitely. In one of the later parts of my essay, I touch on
this idea by putting it in terms of the second law of thermodynamics,
as I understand it, that creation of order in one location comes at
the cost of an increase in disorder elsewhere...."

My understanding of the three laws of thermodynamics is that they are simply manifestations of three-valued logic:

First law of thermodynamics (conservation or +1)
Third law of thermodynamics (the null point or 0)
Second law of thermodynamics (chaos or -1)

The interactions among these 3 laws should result in a dynamic equilibrium (Zeroth law), which is far from the truth according my experience as an evaluator of social behavior.

This observation also perhaps relates to Gavin's notion of imperative logic, which I admittedly need to study more closely.

Chad

"Physics is experience, arranged in economical order." - Ernst Mach

Chad Green, PMP
Program Analyst
Loudoun County Public Schools
21000 Education Court
Ashburn, VA 20148
Voice: 571-252-1486
Fax: 571-252-1633

Kent McClelland <mcclel@GRINNELL.EDU> 11/5/2010 11:13 AM >>>

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.10:00 CDT)]

[From Bill Powers (2010.11.05.0155 MDT)]

Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530) --

Your paper reminds me of things P. J. Bohannon (Northwestern U.,
anthropology) used to say about culture (when I knew him in the
1960s), though he never developed it or linked it to PCT to the
extent you are doing. He was interested in cultural artifacts and
the way they shaped the environment in which people grew up and
assimilated the culture. Things like cathedrals and highways and
movies and so on, only things more suited to the Kalihari desert. I
think Ted Cloak also has thoughts like these.

I've only skimmed through the paper so far but your main point is
clear. As people control their own perceptions they inevitably
stabilize their immediate environments against disturbances, a
result that is the source of both cooperative efforts and conflicts.
Other people experience the side-effects of what you're stabilizing.

Thanks, Bill, for your comments. Yes, you have my point exactly. I
think my emphasis in this essay on the material effects of control is
an important point for sociologists to grasp, because most current
sociological theorizing seems to be floating on the level of social
causes and their social effects without ever grounding the discussion
by explaining how these social things relate to the physical world.

We come in contact with each other as social beings only through the
effects our actions and other people's actions have on the physical
world. Everything social is mediated by the physical world, so social
and cultural analysis, in my opinion, needs to keep a constant focus
on how our attempts to control our own perceptions affect the physical
environment that we share.

Another thing to consider is that control system's don't just
stabilize variables against disturbances. They act to maintain
variables at specific levels that are different from their natural
equilibrium states, so constant use of energy is required just to
maintain those levels even without extraneous disturbances. Body
temperature, for example, for at least part of the year.

Yes, definitely. In one of the later parts of my essay, I touch on
this idea by putting it in terms of the second law of thermodynamics,
as I understand it, that creation of order in one location comes at
the cost of an increase in disorder elsewhere. I don't know whether
I've got my physics exactly right, and I'm certainly no physicist, but
the fact that there is an energy cost to maintaining social order is
an important point for sociologists to keep in mind.

Again, thanks for your comments!

Kent

[From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130 CDT]

Good to hear from you, Martin. I always find your point of view interesting.

[Martin Taylor 2010.11.05.10.21]

One thought it has fed in me is that what is stabilized by a network of interacting control processes is not only the variables in the environment that correspond to controlled perceptual variables in individuals, but also a whole network of environmental affordances available for people to use in controlling their own perceptual variables. For example, a paved road provides a way for someone to get from A to B that is not available through the untamed forest.

Yes, that is an important point, although I'm not sure that "affordances" is quite the right way to describe it. One of the letters from Bill Powers to Phil Runkel in the DIALOGUES book that Dag Forssell is putting out has an interesting discussion of affordances and the pitfalls of conceptualizing the environment in that way. In my view, the word affordances suggests that an environmental stability has one and only one use built into it, and, as you say above, such stabilities can be used in lots of ways for people to control their own various perceptions.

A stabilzed environmental affordance provides an opportunity for an environmental feedback path that would not have existed in the absence of the social network. It is an added degree of freedom available to the person for whom it might be useful. So the social stabilization of environmental variables can not only decrease the available degrees of freedom (as you emphasize) for those people who would like those variables to have different values, but can increase the degrees of freedom for those able to use the stable environmental affordances in their own reorganization processes. These degrees of freedom are at different points in the control loops, but since your essay emphasises limitation of the degrees of freedom in the environment, I think the two factors are commensurate.

I agree entirely. I thought I was making it clear in my essay that I see a payoff in terms of enhanced degrees of freedom to do certain things deriving from every stability that is collectively maintained. Perhaps it's just my sociological pessimism to put the emphasis on the other side of the coin. When I revise this piece, I'll try harder to emphasize the positive as well as the negative.

It is unclear to me whether the reduction in degrees of freedom created by the stabilization of controlled variables is outweighed by the increase in degrees of freedom created by the creation of stable environmental affordances available for reorganization, but I think it is a consideration that you might be concerned with in your essay.

I would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations of the environment associated with modern civilization have increased the degrees of freedom available to everyone on the planet. Obviously, the planet is supporting many more people doing more things than was true a couple of hundred years ago. How long the developed world can keep everything stable enough to continue on this track and avoid the energy-cost downside is anybody's guess. And the benefits of these enhanced degrees of freedom have been very unevenly distributed across the world's population, with some "third-world" population groups experiencing a net downside, as their former environments and ways of life are completely disrupted.

···

Thanks again for the stimulating discussion.

Martin

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1345 CDT)]

[From Kenny Kitzke (2010.11.05)]

Welcome back Kent. I have missed you on CSGNET. If I am correct, you attended the Conference in Manchester? I regretted not attending this year, and even more so when I perceived that you did.

Yes, I went to the Manchester conference and really enjoyed it.

My focus on PCT, and HPCT, for the past 15 years has been on its applications to behavior of human beings rather than the intricacies of the theory or its applications to the behavior of bacteria, birds, etc.

With this personal focus, I have been awed by your efforts to apply PCT to collective social behavior. I am awed because I can't imagine any more difficult application than to explain or influence social behavior in communities ranging from towns to nations.

Thank you for your kind words. It's true that trying to figure out how the social world works is extremely challenging. As a college student I picked sociology and then continued with sociology in graduate school, because it seemed like one of the most challenging fields I could tackle, and I liked the intellectual challenge. I'm glad that PCT came along and that I found out about it, because it's helped me feel like I'm capable of making at least a little bit of progress.

My own efforts have been aimed at trying to understand and influence the behavior of people who are part of a much smaller group/community: a husband and wife, a family, a team, an organization, a business, etc. I have found this difficult, but have gained enough unique insights to help me facilitate superior achievement of shared group goals especially in for-profit businesses.

Hang in there, Kenny! That sounds like important work to be doing.

What I appreciate most about your study and work about collective control by individuals (whether applied to whole societies like a nation, or a biological family) is how, even when some stability of shared environmental variables is achieved, it does not mean the stability produces satisfaction. In fact, the individual actions of the relevant group members to achieve some stability in their shared environment is still fraught with continual disturbances, conflicts and errors within and between members even while collaborative actions can achieve some amount of shared satisfactio/pleasure for some amount of time by continued and creative (not always random) actions by group members.

Yes, that's a nice summary of the way it works.

While PCT/HPCT provides the best available explanation of human behavior, it fails to provide sufficient understanding of human nature whereby humans can live in peace sans conflict and even violence. Such is the state of human nature it seems to me.

The basic principles of an ethical system for promoting peace from the PCT point of view are pretty simple:

Treat other people like perceptual control systems (by respecting their autonomy) and don't try to control or manipulate their behavior.
Look for agreement on higher-level goals that you share with the others you meet.
Be aware of your own perceptual hierarchy's natural tendency to get caught in conflict spirals and make it a high-level goal to try to avoid that.
Remember that we all share a common environment, and that if you use up too many degrees of freedom in that environment, you create conflict.
Remember that life is all about correcting errors, and be easy on yourself (and others) when mistakes are made.
Remember that world looks different out of every set of eyes, and that nobody's perceptions are THE TRUTH.

The hard part is figuring out how to help other people understand and apply those principles.

All the best,

Kent

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 1420]

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1015) CDT]

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 0301 MDT]

About halfway through, you seemed to have gotten side tracked by "inequality", as if it were some variable that is controlled for that was different or more important, perhaps even a causal factor of some sort. How do you justify this? Shouldn't it have to be justified rather than just assumed?

Thank you for reading and commenting on my essay, Martin. My emphasis on social inequality in the essay may seem like a sidetrack to you, but it's not a sidetrack for the audience of sociologists that I'm eventually hoping to reach with this essay. Understanding the roots and workings of social inequality has been central to the sociological enterprise throughout much of the discipline's history.

This is the receptive audience justification?

In the essay, I'm not claiming that inequality is a causal factor for anything, simply that it is an outcome of certain kinds of social arrangements (supported by collective control processes). I was trying to point out the fact that some environmental stabilizations increase the degrees of freedom for controlling certain perceptions (perhaps for everybody sharing that environment), but at the same time decrease the degrees of freedom for controlling other perceptions. If the impact of those decreased degrees of freedom falls unevenly on the population affected, that is, if some people more than others find that the degrees of freedom for perceptions they want to control have been curtailed by these stabilized environmental arrangements, then inequality has occurred, by definition.

But, your paper only tells a story, perhaps an improved story due to PCT, it doesn't discuss or develop evidence. The inequality always existed, equality would be a mathmatical rarity in a nonlinear dynamic system. Degrees of freedom are discussed abstractly without any quantification. Are you only thinking of material inequality, or are less material inequalities, like access to information, poorer quality or numbers of parents, poorer values, perhaps even spiritual inequalities, the world wonders. To what extent do the reduced degrees of freedom explain the inequalities? Are the results valid for just one country or culture, or universally? What is the result of your paper?

I don't think that inequality is a variable that most people control for, just an unintended outcome of controlling for other things, although people who seek power or revenge may be controlling for taking other people down a notch. Once unequal arrangements are in place, however, lots of people control for protecting and extending their own advantages. (Tax cuts for the rich, for instance?)

In a nonlinear world, perhaps we are all advantaged by tax cuts for the rich, and the only ones advantaged by imposing tax cuts on the rich, are the politicians exploiting class warfare rhetoric.

How many degress of freedom does a literate person with access to cable channels, libraries, internet and public schools have compared to say an illiterate in the third world, or compared to circumstances a decade ago? What is his threshold for turning to "crime"? Are sociologists really just studying the social problems or are they perturbing the problems by excusing them within a binary exploiter/victim framework rather than just explaining certain behaviors?

Furthermore, I don't see inequality as a causal factor making people behave in a certain way, but rather as an environmental given, to which people must adapt their behavior in trying to control their own perceptions. I do think it's safe to predict that people who find their degrees of freedom constricted in a given environment are more likely to begin reorganizing their perceptions than people who find that the environment supports them in what they want to do. Whether and how any reorganization will take place depends on the individual's own perceptual hierarchy, and because reorganization is a random process the outcome can't be predicted in advance.

Are peoples degrees of freedom, properly characterized as "constricted" if they are greater than ever before? Perhaps they are reorganizing, not in response to new constrictions, but in response to changing values or increased opportunities (reduced constrictions).

If you personally don't see social inequality as an important thing to be thinking and talking about, I would guess that it might be because you operate in an environment that puts you on the advantaged end of most of the social inequalities built into that environment. Would you happen to be white, male, relatively well off, live in a nice house, have challenging and prestigious work, etc.? Maybe I'm entirely wrong about that, but it's worth thinking about.

I'm unemployed going on 16 months and my ancestors hail from Africa just like all modern humans, and I claimed so on my census forms. I see material factors as only a small part of the explanation for most of what is perceived as "social problems". The material inequality is not, in and of itself a social problem.

If your emphasis is on the material, I am a little surprised that you don't focus on the economics much at all. In the western economic world a lot of the information that behavior responds to and that changes behavior comes in the form of prices, whether of goods, services or prospective wages. The perception of attractive returns, attainable with little intellectual effort, may explain the choice to engage in black market drug behavior. Prices effect both consumer and producer choices, and those choices in turn effect prices. "Collective control" might be more easily quantified and understood in economic situations, and perhaps this understanding could then inform less easily quantified social areas.

regards,
    Martin L

···

On 11/5/2010 9:49 AM, Kent McClelland wrote:

My best,

Kent

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.5.1530 CDT)]

I'm sorry to hear, Bill, that CSGnet in recent years has been colonized by people carrying on conversations that have little or nothing to do with PCT. Already when I left CSGnet, lo these many years ago, there was a higher proportion of fruitless back-and-forth and lower proportion of real PCT content than I had time to deal with then. I'm semi-retired now, so I have a little more leisure for email contacts than I used to have, but I still feel like I have a lot of serious academic work to do, and I'm not much interested in armchair philosophizing.

I'll take your cue and just hit the delete button on posts that seem to miss the point entirely. (What does "three-valued logic" have to do with PCT, I wonder, though I'm not particularly interested in sorting that one out.)

The problem with communicating PCT to a wide audience has always been that really "getting it" requires a pretty thorough reorganization of the ways one has been thinking about human behavior up to that point, and a lot of people resist putting in the intellectual or emotional work that requires. It's understandable enough, but definitely an obstacle to sharing the perspective.

Be well,

Kent

···

On Nov 5, 2010, at 10:51 AM, Bill Powers wrote:

[From Bill Powers (2010.11.05.0815 MDT)]

Kent McClelland (2010.11.04.1530) --

Kent, since you've been away from CSGnet, it has been turned in a new direction by a few participants who have no visible understanding of PCT except for a few words. They know who they are, and I invite them to start up their own direct email conversation rather than cluttering up our bandwidth. But I doubt that they will. They think they are impressing us with their superior analytical abilities, or their obvious political expertise. This leaves us with only a few choices. The simplest is just to ignore them, something I and others have not been able to do completely, but which I intend to do henceforth. The delete key will take care of that. Another choice, which most participants know I have strongly resisted from the inception of CSGnet and its predecessor, is to monitor the list and simply remove those whom the rest of us can't stand. I still resist that because not being able to stand someone makes me feel that I have failed to be tolerant enough and that I might miss seeing a change of heart or some epiphany that results in someone's getting the point at last. The final choice is to leave CSGnet and start up another forum or create an ad-hoc forum using CCs. That seems like being kicked out of my own house by an insufferable uninvited guest, again not much of a choice. And the next house may attract more squatters so I'd just have to move again.

For me the easiest way out is simply to delete communications coming from the parties who are using our facilities to follow their own agendas for purposes having nothing to do with PCT. We do that anyway with spam, usually without even needing to read it -- why not do it with intellectual spam? There is some risk in this of ignoring someone who is trying hard to learn but having a little difficulty, or someone who has some valid critiques of current PCT, but after reading enough posts it should become evident what the situation is.

There is also a risk of miscommunication. I don't reply to every possible post, simply because I haven't got 72 hours a day to devote to that. So I may appear to ignore someone when in fact I'm satisfied with what others are saying in reply and have nothing new to offer, or simply when I've run out of steam for a while or, like now, am busy with another project. But statistics will tell the story: if you find yourself getting replies from the same few people all the time and nothing but silence from the rest who are talking to each other, that is a pretty strong hint.

Best,

Bill P.

Kent, I could not agree with you more with respect to your 6 principles.

If my posts to this list have not been clear, then they can be summarized as follows: If you can apperceive the source from which human truths emerge (i.e., the space between perceptions), then you can intuit these 6 principles and live by them quite naturally.

BTW, the statement above is not a truth, but rather a description of the process of intuitionistic logic.

Chad

Chad Green, PMP
Program Analyst
Loudoun County Public Schools
21000 Education Court
Ashburn, VA 20148
Voice: 571-252-1486
Fax: 571-252-1633

Kent McClelland <mcclel@GRINNELL.EDU> 11/5/2010 3:05 PM >>>

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1345 CDT)]

[From Kenny Kitzke (2010.11.05)]

Welcome back Kent. I have missed you on CSGNET. If I am correct,
you attended the Conference in Manchester? I regretted not
attending this year, and even more so when I perceived that you did.

Yes, I went to the Manchester conference and really enjoyed it.

My focus on PCT, and HPCT, for the past 15 years has been on its
applications to behavior of human beings rather than the intricacies
of the theory or its applications to the behavior of bacteria,
birds, etc.

With this personal focus, I have been awed by your efforts to apply
PCT to collective social behavior. I am awed because I can't
imagine any more difficult application than to explain or influence
social behavior in communities ranging from towns to nations.

Thank you for your kind words. It's true that trying to figure out how
the social world works is extremely challenging. As a college student
I picked sociology and then continued with sociology in graduate
school, because it seemed like one of the most challenging fields I
could tackle, and I liked the intellectual challenge. I'm glad that
PCT came along and that I found out about it, because it's helped me
feel like I'm capable of making at least a little bit of progress.

My own efforts have been aimed at trying to understand and influence
the behavior of people who are part of a much smaller group/
community: a husband and wife, a family, a team, an organization, a
business, etc. I have found this difficult, but have gained enough
unique insights to help me facilitate superior achievement of shared
group goals especially in for-profit businesses.

Hang in there, Kenny! That sounds like important work to be doing.

What I appreciate most about your study and work about collective
control by individuals (whether applied to whole societies like a
nation, or a biological family) is how, even when some stability of
shared environmental variables is achieved, it does not mean the
stability produces satisfaction. In fact, the individual actions of
the relevant group members to achieve some stability in their shared
environment is still fraught with continual disturbances, conflicts
and errors within and between members even while collaborative
actions can achieve some amount of shared satisfactio/pleasure for
some amount of time by continued and creative (not always random)
actions by group members.

Yes, that's a nice summary of the way it works.

While PCT/HPCT provides the best available explanation of human
behavior, it fails to provide sufficient understanding of human
nature whereby humans can live in peace sans conflict and even
violence. Such is the state of human nature it seems to me.

The basic principles of an ethical system for promoting peace from the
PCT point of view are pretty simple:

Treat other people like perceptual control systems (by respecting
their autonomy) and don't try to control or manipulate their behavior.
Look for agreement on higher-level goals that you share with the
others you meet.
Be aware of your own perceptual hierarchy's natural tendency to get
caught in conflict spirals and make it a high-level goal to try to
avoid that.
Remember that we all share a common environment, and that if you use
up too many degrees of freedom in that environment, you create conflict.
Remember that life is all about correcting errors, and be easy on
yourself (and others) when mistakes are made.
Remember that world looks different out of every set of eyes, and that
nobody's perceptions are THE TRUTH.

The hard part is figuring out how to help other people understand and
apply those principles.

All the best,

Kent

[From Kent McClelland 2010.11.05.1615 CDT]

Hi Dick,

Thank you so much for your kind words. Tell me more about the paradigm/manifesto project. Is there a way I could help?

Kent

···

On Nov 5, 2010, at 11:05 AM, Robertson Richard wrote:

[From Dick Robertson.2010.11.05.1100CDT]

Kent,

Congratulations on a masterful piece of work. I think it is especially timely just at this time of the near completion of the PCT paradigm/manifesto.

Best,

Dick R.

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.5.1630 CDT)

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 1420]

It seems I was making unwarranted assumptions about where you're coming from, Martin. My apologies!

It also seems like you're interested in getting into a political discussion with me, and I don't share your interest in that, so I'll pass on that one.

Please remember that the essay I posted on the net yesterday was a first draft of what I hope will eventually be a longer and more finished piece of writing. I'll try to include much more specific evidence for my arguments in later drafts. What I was hoping for from CSGnet subscribers was simply a reaction to the core idea of the piece and feedback that would help me to correct my course if it seemed to be seriously in error.

By the way, I see some of the "less material inequalities" that you talk about as having an important material component. What are "access to information" or "poorer quality and numbers of parents" if not material facts (as well as value judgments)? Also, the equation of the material with merely the economic seems a little too simple to me.

Kent

···

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1015) CDT]

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 0301 MDT]

About halfway through, you seemed to have gotten side tracked by "inequality", as if it were some variable that is controlled for that was different or more important, perhaps even a causal factor of some sort. How do you justify this? Shouldn't it have to be justified rather than just assumed?

Thank you for reading and commenting on my essay, Martin. My emphasis on social inequality in the essay may seem like a sidetrack to you, but it's not a sidetrack for the audience of sociologists that I'm eventually hoping to reach with this essay. Understanding the roots and workings of social inequality has been central to the sociological enterprise throughout much of the discipline's history.

This is the receptive audience justification?

In the essay, I'm not claiming that inequality is a causal factor for anything, simply that it is an outcome of certain kinds of social arrangements (supported by collective control processes). I was trying to point out the fact that some environmental stabilizations increase the degrees of freedom for controlling certain perceptions (perhaps for everybody sharing that environment), but at the same time decrease the degrees of freedom for controlling other perceptions. If the impact of those decreased degrees of freedom falls unevenly on the population affected, that is, if some people more than others find that the degrees of freedom for perceptions they want to control have been curtailed by these stabilized environmental arrangements, then inequality has occurred, by definition.

But, your paper only tells a story, perhaps an improved story due to PCT, it doesn't discuss or develop evidence. The inequality always existed, equality would be a mathmatical rarity in a nonlinear dynamic system. Degrees of freedom are discussed abstractly without any quantification. Are you only thinking of material inequality, or are less material inequalities, like access to information, poorer quality or numbers of parents, poorer values, perhaps even spiritual inequalities, the world wonders. To what extent do the reduced degrees of freedom explain the inequalities? Are the results valid for just one country or culture, or universally? What is the result of your paper?

I don't think that inequality is a variable that most people control for, just an unintended outcome of controlling for other things, although people who seek power or revenge may be controlling for taking other people down a notch. Once unequal arrangements are in place, however, lots of people control for protecting and extending their own advantages. (Tax cuts for the rich, for instance?)

In a nonlinear world, perhaps we are all advantaged by tax cuts for the rich, and the only ones advantaged by imposing tax cuts on the rich, are the politicians exploiting class warfare rhetoric.

How many degress of freedom does a literate person with access to cable channels, libraries, internet and public schools have compared to say an illiterate in the third world, or compared to circumstances a decade ago? What is his threshold for turning to "crime"? Are sociologists really just studying the social problems or are they perturbing the problems by excusing them within a binary exploiter/victim framework rather than just explaining certain behaviors?

Furthermore, I don't see inequality as a causal factor making people behave in a certain way, but rather as an environmental given, to which people must adapt their behavior in trying to control their own perceptions. I do think it's safe to predict that people who find their degrees of freedom constricted in a given environment are more likely to begin reorganizing their perceptions than people who find that the environment supports them in what they want to do. Whether and how any reorganization will take place depends on the individual's own perceptual hierarchy, and because reorganization is a random process the outcome can't be predicted in advance.

Are peoples degrees of freedom, properly characterized as "constricted" if they are greater than ever before? Perhaps they are reorganizing, not in response to new constrictions, but in response to changing values or increased opportunities (reduced constrictions).

If you personally don't see social inequality as an important thing to be thinking and talking about, I would guess that it might be because you operate in an environment that puts you on the advantaged end of most of the social inequalities built into that environment. Would you happen to be white, male, relatively well off, live in a nice house, have challenging and prestigious work, etc.? Maybe I'm entirely wrong about that, but it's worth thinking about.

I'm unemployed going on 16 months and my ancestors hail from Africa just like all modern humans, and I claimed so on my census forms. I see material factors as only a small part of the explanation for most of what is perceived as "social problems". The material inequality is not, in and of itself a social problem.

If your emphasis is on the material, I am a little surprised that you don't focus on the economics much at all. In the western economic world a lot of the information that behavior responds to and that changes behavior comes in the form of prices, whether of goods, services or prospective wages. The perception of attractive returns, attainable with little intellectual effort, may explain the choice to engage in black market drug behavior. Prices effect both consumer and producer choices, and those choices in turn effect prices. "Collective control" might be more easily quantified and understood in economic situations, and perhaps this understanding could then inform less easily quantified social areas.

regards,
  Martin L

My best,

Kent

[Martin Taylor 2010.11.05.17.22]

[From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130 CDT]

Good to hear from you, Martin. I always find your point of view interesting.

"May you live in interesting times" is a curse, isn't it? I hope you don't mean that!

[Martin Taylor 2010.11.05.10.21]

One thought it has fed in me is that what is stabilized by a network of interacting control processes is not only the variables in the environment that correspond to controlled perceptual variables in individuals, but also a whole network of environmental affordances available for people to use in controlling their own perceptual variables. For example, a paved road provides a way for someone to get from A to B that is not available through the untamed forest.

Yes, that is an important point, although I'm not sure that "affordances" is quite the right way to describe it. One of the letters from Bill Powers to Phil Runkel in the DIALOGUES book that Dag Forssell is putting out has an interesting discussion of affordances and the pitfalls of conceptualizing the environment in that way. In my view, the word affordances suggests that an environmental stability has one and only one use built into it, and, as you say above, such stabilities can be used in lots of ways for people to control their own various perceptions.

"I have to use words when I talk to you". Who said that? T.S.Eliot? I don't remember.

Yes. We have to use words, and they don't always mean the same to the listener/reader as to the talker/writer. "Perception" is one of those words. To one who is familiar with PCT it means something quite different from what it does to a member of the general public. I think "Affordance" is another. I derive it not from Gibson, but from "afford", which is probably what Gibson did when he coined the term. However, to avoid confusion with Gibson, I usually say "enviromental affordance" to mean an option that the environment affords you. You can choose to use it or not, but if it isn't there you can't use it.

You can't easily walk across a rushing brook without getting wet, but if you perceive a sturdy plank lying on the bank, you can lay it across the brook and cross dry. When the plank is across the stream, it is an environmental affordance, one that can be perceived -- or not, if you are wearing high heels and imagine yourself falling off the plank if you try to walk across it. Environmental affordance, like everything else, is a controllable perception. You control it by picking the plank from where it rests on your bank of the stream, where it is not an environmental affordance for crossing the stream, and placing it across the stream, where it is one.

Socially, a friend standing near a window when you are sitting down is an environmental affordance for controlling the open-close state of the window. Sociologically, the network of perceptual control systems that by their mutual disturbances create, say, the transportation network, is an environmental affordance for the control of many different perceptions relating to getting things and people _there_ that are now _here_. The stabilized networks that you describe allow the creation of myriads of environmental affordances that may affect how people reorganize.

Picking up the language and culture of one's parents and neighbours is possible only because of the slowly drifting stability induced by networks of interacting control systems of which you speak (you were in Durango 93, I think, when I spoke about that). How one's contacts speak, and what they speak about, are not in themselves environmental affordances, but the fact that one's contacts often help one to control one's perceptions, but only when one uses their language and talks about their topics, shows that the language and culture are parts of a whole mess of environmental affordances.

Can you think of a better word to use?

I thought I was making it clear in my essay that I see a payoff in terms of enhanced degrees of freedom to do certain things deriving from every stability that is collectively maintained. Perhaps it's just my sociological pessimism to put the emphasis on the other side of the coin. When I revise this piece, I'll try harder to emphasize the positive as well as the negative.

I'm sorry. I did read through the whole piece, but only once, and it was the restrictions based on stabilization of perceptual variables at unwanted values that came across most strongly.

I would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations of the environment associated with modern civilization have increased the degrees of freedom available to everyone on the planet.

Yes. Most of us can perceive more different things and control them than could our ancestors, and have more different ways to control those perceptions. But I would tend to doubt "everybody". I'm not sure it applies to someone whose recent ancestors might have been able to sustain their family by farming their own plot but who instead must work a monoculture for money so that some corporation can sell the product in another country. Maybe that's what you refer to when you say...

And the benefits of these enhanced degrees of freedom have been very unevenly distributed across the world's population, with some "third-world" population groups experiencing a net downside, as their former environments and ways of life are completely disrupted.

Think of a better word for an environmental affordance, and I'll try to use it.

Martin

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 1649]

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.5.1630 CDT)

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 1420]

It seems I was making unwarranted assumptions about where you're coming from, Martin. My apologies!

It also seems like you're interested in getting into a political discussion with me, and I don't share your interest in that, so I'll pass on that one.

You've chosen an inherently political field, if, as you say, inequality is assumed to be a problem.

Please remember that the essay I posted on the net yesterday was a first draft of what I hope will eventually be a longer and more finished piece of writing. I'll try to include much more specific evidence for my arguments in later drafts. What I was hoping for from CSGnet subscribers was simply a reaction to the core idea of the piece and feedback that would help me to correct my course if it seemed to be seriously in error.

I assumed your ultimate goal would be to bring some rigor to sociology by accomplishing a reduction of sociology to PCT, much as in the fields of science, biology is being reduced to chemistry and chemistry to physics. A successful reduction, with explanatory and predictive power, would provide some confirmation of the value of PCT and hopefully lead to advancements in sociology.

By the way, I see some of the "less material inequalities" that you talk about as having an important material component. What are "access to information" or "poorer quality and numbers of parents" if not material facts (as well as value judgments)? Also, the equation of the material with merely the economic seems a little too simple to me.

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. A reduction of a field of study to PCT concerned with material inequality, its implications and hypotheses of social problems would seem necessarily to also have to achieve a reduction of economics to PCT. Perhaps your goal is less ambitious, mere explanatory stories, as in critical theory, and not a rigorous reduction. I still think it would be helpful to make the values and standards assumed explicit.

As to the quality of parents, it might be possible to quantify this objectively by material degrees of freedom standards. Even just the number of parents staying in the home to invest in the children has been found to be relevant in studies. Applying the standards of evolutionary fitness, such as offspring surviving to reproductive age, might reach quite different conclusions from those focused on material inequality. Hopefully, progress in sociology is not prevented by political correctness from considering all possibly relevant factors. I'm more used to the physical sciences.

Martin L

···

On 11/5/2010 3:34 PM, Kent McClelland wrote:

Kent

[From Kent McClelland (2010.11.05.1015) CDT]

[Martin Lewitt Nov 5, 2010 0301 MDT]

About halfway through, you seemed to have gotten side tracked by "inequality", as if it were some variable that is controlled for that was different or more important, perhaps even a causal factor of some sort. How do you justify this? Shouldn't it have to be justified rather than just assumed?

Thank you for reading and commenting on my essay, Martin. My emphasis on social inequality in the essay may seem like a sidetrack to you, but it's not a sidetrack for the audience of sociologists that I'm eventually hoping to reach with this essay. Understanding the roots and workings of social inequality has been central to the sociological enterprise throughout much of the discipline's history.

This is the receptive audience justification?

In the essay, I'm not claiming that inequality is a causal factor for anything, simply that it is an outcome of certain kinds of social arrangements (supported by collective control processes). I was trying to point out the fact that some environmental stabilizations increase the degrees of freedom for controlling certain perceptions (perhaps for everybody sharing that environment), but at the same time decrease the degrees of freedom for controlling other perceptions. If the impact of those decreased degrees of freedom falls unevenly on the population affected, that is, if some people more than others find that the degrees of freedom for perceptions they want to control have been curtailed by these stabilized environmental arrangements, then inequality has occurred, by definition.

But, your paper only tells a story, perhaps an improved story due to PCT, it doesn't discuss or develop evidence. The inequality always existed, equality would be a mathmatical rarity in a nonlinear dynamic system. Degrees of freedom are discussed abstractly without any quantification. Are you only thinking of material inequality, or are less material inequalities, like access to information, poorer quality or numbers of parents, poorer values, perhaps even spiritual inequalities, the world wonders. To what extent do the reduced degrees of freedom explain the inequalities? Are the results valid for just one country or culture, or universally? What is the result of your paper?

I don't think that inequality is a variable that most people control for, just an unintended outcome of controlling for other things, although people who seek power or revenge may be controlling for taking other people down a notch. Once unequal arrangements are in place, however, lots of people control for protecting and extending their own advantages. (Tax cuts for the rich, for instance?)

In a nonlinear world, perhaps we are all advantaged by tax cuts for the rich, and the only ones advantaged by imposing tax cuts on the rich, are the politicians exploiting class warfare rhetoric.

How many degress of freedom does a literate person with access to cable channels, libraries, internet and public schools have compared to say an illiterate in the third world, or compared to circumstances a decade ago? What is his threshold for turning to "crime"? Are sociologists really just studying the social problems or are they perturbing the problems by excusing them within a binary exploiter/victim framework rather than just explaining certain behaviors?

Furthermore, I don't see inequality as a causal factor making people behave in a certain way, but rather as an environmental given, to which people must adapt their behavior in trying to control their own perceptions. I do think it's safe to predict that people who find their degrees of freedom constricted in a given environment are more likely to begin reorganizing their perceptions than people who find that the environment supports them in what they want to do. Whether and how any reorganization will take place depends on the individual's own perceptual hierarchy, and because reorganization is a random process the outcome can't be predicted in advance.

Are peoples degrees of freedom, properly characterized as "constricted" if they are greater than ever before? Perhaps they are reorganizing, not in response to new constrictions, but in response to changing values or increased opportunities (reduced constrictions).

If you personally don't see social inequality as an important thing to be thinking and talking about, I would guess that it might be because you operate in an environment that puts you on the advantaged end of most of the social inequalities built into that environment. Would you happen to be white, male, relatively well off, live in a nice house, have challenging and prestigious work, etc.? Maybe I'm entirely wrong about that, but it's worth thinking about.

I'm unemployed going on 16 months and my ancestors hail from Africa just like all modern humans, and I claimed so on my census forms. I see material factors as only a small part of the explanation for most of what is perceived as "social problems". The material inequality is not, in and of itself a social problem.

If your emphasis is on the material, I am a little surprised that you don't focus on the economics much at all. In the western economic world a lot of the information that behavior responds to and that changes behavior comes in the form of prices, whether of goods, services or prospective wages. The perception of attractive returns, attainable with little intellectual effort, may explain the choice to engage in black market drug behavior. Prices effect both consumer and producer choices, and those choices in turn effect prices. "Collective control" might be more easily quantified and understood in economic situations, and perhaps this understanding could then inform less easily quantified social areas.

regards,
  Martin L

My best,

Kent

[From Rick Marken (2010.11.05.1915)]

Martin Lewitt (Nov 5, 2010 1649)–

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.

To you, perhaps, but not to me. I see economics as a study of the collective control of perception by humans. The scarceness of resources is just one (and no longer the most important) cause of disturbances to control of the perceptual variables that people control.

To Kent McClelland:

It’s great to have you back, Kent. I have a lot I would like to say about your essay but I don’t have much time at the moment. And I must confess that I didn’t read the whole essay closely. But I do have a couple questions:

  1. You say: "However, when the actors involved in the joint control of an environmental variable use different reference points in attempting to control the variable, their actions will come into conflict, because the outcome of this “collective control process,” as it has been called (McClelland 2006), will stabilize the controlled variable at a “virtual reference level”. Is the “environmental variable” controlled by the individuals the same as the “controlled variable” for which there is a virtual reference level? I think it must be but maybe you could clear that up.

  2. It seems like your essay is focused on the “side effects” of collective control, where collective control always involves control of a controlled variable that is a function of the same physical (environmental) variables. Another example of collective control that has interesting side effects but seems a bit different than that discussed in you paper is the kind seen in Bill’s “Crowd” demo (which I know you are familiar with). In that case all the actors are controlling the same perceptions (proximity, destination, etc), but the physical variables involved are usually different (because they are in different locations) so there is little or no conflict; but you do get organized side effects (like the circle formed around the guru). But these results are not like the virtual reference states you discuss in the paper (at least to the point I got) because it can be demonstrated that they are not controlled.

And there is another kind of collective control that I don’t believe was discussed in your paper but is probably the most effective in terms of producing controlled results: cooperation. I was at a concert today and was fascinated by the beautiful controlled result (The Firebird Suite) that was produced by all those skillful individual controllers (the musicians) cooperating with each other to produce that result. This didn’t happen by accident or by each musician controlling for The Firebird Suite on his or her own. Each individual musician had to also coordinate the sounds (and silences) they were producing with those being made by all the others (and with the movements of the conductor). This is the kind of collective control that produces the reference states for the perceptual variables that make up a civilization.

So what do you think; is it worth distinguishing these three different kinds of collective control (if you think they are different)?

Best regards

Rick

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Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com