Conscious and non-conscious control -- an easy demo

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of perceptions that are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at least on CSG-L and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively reorganized into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing any direct evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of the kind that "we aren't conscious of x when we control y, but common sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even though we aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling x non-consciously.

I recently had an experience that could be replicated by anyone who is not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the experience). For reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of cereal using the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very difficult, because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be with respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which surprised me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the spoon was in the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my right hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the left hand. The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon, transporting it to my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult, needing conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be conscious of wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously) had observed to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions must be being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon right-handedly.

I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing to be conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to control is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo, it does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are normally controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the other kind of evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing that kind of proof.

Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily perform some manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be conscious of some things of which you were never conscious when using the usual hand. I'd be interested in knowing how unusual my own experience was.

Martin

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin 20190707.12:59 ET]

I enjoy identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning processes, etc.

Our familiar discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought Dag’s attention to the short-term controlling that he was doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the gas gauge and the distance to the next exit.

···

/B

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 PM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of perceptions that

are clearly conscious. According to Bill P’s writings, at least on CSG-L

and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively reorganized

into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don’t remember seeing any direct

evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of

the kind that "we aren’t conscious of x when we control y, but common

sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even though we

aren’t conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling x

non-consciously.

I recently had an experience that could be replicated by anyone who is

not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the experience). For

reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of cereal using

the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very difficult,

because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be with

respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which surprised

me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the spoon was in

the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my right

hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the left hand.

The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon, transporting it to

my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult, needing

conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be conscious of

wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously) had observed

to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions must be

being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon right-handedly.

I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing to be

conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to control

is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo, it does not

prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are normally

controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the other kind of

evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing that kind

of proof.

Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily perform some

manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be conscious

of some things of which you were never conscious when using the usual

hand. I’d be interested in knowing how unusual my own experience was.

Martin

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

      [Bruce Nevin

20190707.12:59 ET]

      I enjoy

identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window
into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning
processes, etc.

      Our familiar

discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control
without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought
Dag’s attention to the short-term controlling that he was
doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while
he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the
gas gauge and the distance to the next exit.

It's not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control.

The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to
realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians,
Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting
the original message was surprise at such things not automatically
creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding a spoon to
take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able
consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the
spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed
themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example

of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to
link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding
reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a spoon
left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do
other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and
sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which
I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something and
consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There's nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather

than reading about it helps me to understand the essential
difference between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading
any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the
exercise and reading.)

Martin

···

/B

      On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 > PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu          > > wrote:

      [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

      A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of

perceptions that

      are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at

least on CSG-L

      and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively

reorganized

      into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing

any direct

      evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems

to be of

      the kind that "we aren't conscious of x when we control y, but

common

      sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even

though we

      aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling

x

      non-consciously.



      I recently had an experience that could be replicated by

anyone who is

      not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the

experience). For

      reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of

cereal using

      the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very

difficult,

      because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be

with

      respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which

surprised

      me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the

spoon was in

      the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my

right

      hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the

left hand.

      The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon,

transporting it to

      my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult,

needing

      conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be

conscious of

      wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously)

had observed

      to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions

must be

      being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon

right-handedly.

      I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing

to be

      conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to

control

      is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo,

it does not

      prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are

normally

      controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the

other kind of

      evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing

that kind

      of proof.



      Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily

perform some

      manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be

conscious

      of some things of which you were never conscious when using

the usual

      hand. I'd be interested in knowing how unusual my own

experience was.

      Martin

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]

[Resending–I replied only to Martin and meant the list.]

Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Hear! Hear! Confront phenomena.

It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to … anyone before Powers.

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. This has confused discussions of how to demonstrate control at a Program level, and the distinction between Program perceptions and Sequence perceptions.

···

/Bruce

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

      [Bruce Nevin

20190707.12:59 ET]

      I enjoy

identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window
into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning
processes, etc.

      Our familiar

discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control
without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought
Dag’s attention to the short-term controlling that he was
doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while
he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the
gas gauge and the distance to the next exit.

It's not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control.

The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to
realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians,
Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting
the original message was surprise at such things not automatically
creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding a spoon to
take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able
consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the
spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed
themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example

of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to
link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding
reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a spoon
left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do
other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and
sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which
I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something and
consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There's nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather

than reading about it helps me to understand the essential
difference between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading
any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the
exercise and reading.)

Martin

/B

      On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 > > PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu          > > > wrote:

      [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

      A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of

perceptions that

      are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at

least on CSG-L

      and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively

reorganized

      into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing

any direct

      evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems

to be of

      the kind that "we aren't conscious of x when we control y, but

common

      sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even

though we

      aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling

x

      non-consciously.



      I recently had an experience that could be replicated by

anyone who is

      not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the

experience). For

      reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of

cereal using

      the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very

difficult,

      because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be

with

      respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which

surprised

      me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the

spoon was in

      the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my

right

      hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the

left hand.

      The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon,

transporting it to

      my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult,

needing

      conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be

conscious of

      wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously)

had observed

      to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions

must be

      being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon

right-handedly.

      I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing

to be

      conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to

control

      is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo,

it does not

      prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are

normally

      controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the

other kind of

      evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing

that kind

      of proof.



      Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily

perform some

      manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be

conscious

      of some things of which you were never conscious when using

the usual

      hand. I'd be interested in knowing how unusual my own

experience was.

      Martin

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET–

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing.

Martin has taken exception to this, and now John Kirkland also (both privately). I need to express this more clearly.

I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

What I mean is that when our attention is on a controlled perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level above that perception, at the level that is doing the controlling. As we observe the controlled perception at the level below we do not observe perception(s) that receive the controlled perceptual input from that level below. We do not observe our point of view, we observe from our point of view.

While working on my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about the urgency of the work out of the section addressing the “broader significance” of the work and promote it to be a new Section 1, before the section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling a perception of the comments of reviewers about “urgency” when they turned down my last try at this, and perceptions of the architecture of the piece, in particular a perception of the scope to which the topic applies. I am not paying attention to the complex of motivations that led me into this work, as they have evolved over the past 50 years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with this at all. As I control perceptions to the end that all the now subsequent sections and subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer aware of those perceptions of the organization of the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the renumbering.

Bill used to chide people for perceiving from his proposed Category level while supposing that their discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy. That seems to be related.

renumber all the subsequent sections and s

···

/Bruce

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 2:27 PM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]

[Resending–I replied only to Martin and meant the list.]

Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Hear! Hear! Confront phenomena.

It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to … anyone before Powers.

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. This has confused discussions of how to demonstrate control at a Program level, and the distinction between Program perceptions and Sequence perceptions.

/Bruce

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

      [Bruce Nevin

20190707.12:59 ET]

      I enjoy

identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window
into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning
processes, etc.

      Our familiar

discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control
without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought
Dag’s attention to the short-term controlling that he was
doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while
he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the
gas gauge and the distance to the next exit.

It's not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control.

The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to
realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians,
Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting
the original message was surprise at such things not automatically
creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding a spoon to
take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able
consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the
spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed
themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example

of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to
link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding
reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a spoon
left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do
other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and
sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which
I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something and
consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There's nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather

than reading about it helps me to understand the essential
difference between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading
any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the
exercise and reading.)

Martin

/B

      On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 > > > PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu          > > > > wrote:

      [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

      A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of

perceptions that

      are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at

least on CSG-L

      and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively

reorganized

      into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing

any direct

      evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems

to be of

      the kind that "we aren't conscious of x when we control y, but

common

      sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even

though we

      aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling

x

      non-consciously.



      I recently had an experience that could be replicated by

anyone who is

      not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the

experience). For

      reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of

cereal using

      the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very

difficult,

      because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be

with

      respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which

surprised

      me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the

spoon was in

      the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my

right

      hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the

left hand.

      The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon,

transporting it to

      my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult,

needing

      conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be

conscious of

      wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously)

had observed

      to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions

must be

      being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon

right-handedly.

      I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing

to be

      conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to

control

      is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo,

it does not

      prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are

normally

      controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the

other kind of

      evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing

that kind

      of proof.



      Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily

perform some

      manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be

conscious

      of some things of which you were never conscious when using

the usual

      hand. I'd be interested in knowing how unusual my own

experience was.

      Martin

[wmansell]

Hi Bruce, I agree, and go further. We control input so at the highest level of a hierarchical system we only control the input to that level - we can’t possibly control its reference values, never mind be conscious of what that reference value (goal) even is… once you are doing that, you’ve gone to yet another level above it of which you’re not conscious of its reference value, and the process starts again upward. That’s MOL…

[Bruce Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET–

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing.

Martin has taken exception to this, and now John Kirkland also (both privately). I need to express this more clearly.

I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

What I mean is that when our attention is on a controlled perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level above that perception, at the level that is doing the controlling. As we observe the controlled perception at the level below we do not observe perception(s) that receive the controlled perceptual input from that level below. We do not observe our point of view, we observe from our point of view.

While working on my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about the urgency of the work out of the section addressing the “broader significance” of the work and promote it to be a new Section 1, before the section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling a perception of the comments of reviewers about “urgency” when they turned down my last try at this, and perceptions of the architecture of the piece, in particular a perception of the scope to which the topic applies. I am not paying attention to the complex of motivations that led me into this work, as they have evolved over the past 50 years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with this at all. As I control perceptions to the end that all the now subsequent sections and subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer aware of those perceptions of the organization of the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the renumbering.

Bill used to chide people for perceiving from his proposed Category level while supposing that their discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy. That seems to be related.

renumber all the subsequent sections and s

/Bruce

[Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]

[Resending–I replied only to Martin and meant the list.]

Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Hear! Hear! Confront phenomena.

It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to … anyone before Powers.

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. This has confused discussions of how to demonstrate control at a Program level, and the distinction between Program perceptions and Sequence perceptions.

/Bruce

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

      [Bruce Nevin

20190707.12:59 ET]

      I enjoy

identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window
into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning
processes, etc.

      Our familiar

discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control
without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought
Dag’s attention to the short-term controlling that he was
doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while
he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the
gas gauge and the distance to the next exit.

It's not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control.

The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to
realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians,
Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting
the original message was surprise at such things not automatically
creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding a spoon to
take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able
consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the
spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed
themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example

of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to
link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding
reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a spoon
left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do
other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and
sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which
I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something and
consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There's nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather

than reading about it helps me to understand the essential
difference between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading
any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the
exercise and reading.)

Martin

/B

      [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

      A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of

perceptions that

      are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at

least on CSG-L

      and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively

reorganized

      into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing

any direct

      evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems

to be of

      the kind that "we aren't conscious of x when we control y, but

common

      sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even

though we

      aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling

x

      non-consciously.



      I recently had an experience that could be replicated by

anyone who is

      not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the

experience). For

      reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of

cereal using

      the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very

difficult,

      because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be

with

      respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which

surprised

      me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the

spoon was in

      the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my

right

      hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the

left hand.

      The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon,

transporting it to

      my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult,

needing

      conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be

conscious of

      wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously)

had observed

      to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions

must be

      being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon

right-handedly.

      I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing

to be

      conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to

control

      is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo,

it does not

      prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are

normally

      controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the

other kind of

      evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing

that kind

      of proof.



      Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily

perform some

      manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be

conscious

      of some things of which you were never conscious when using

the usual

      hand. I'd be interested in knowing how unusual my own

experience was.

      Martin

···

On 10 Jul 2019, at 02:19, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 2:27 PM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

      On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 > > > > > PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu          > > > > > > wrote:

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.10.13.22]

All true for control of a perception in the hierarchy, but we were

talking about conscious control, and the little demo was to
demonstrate to someone who cared to try it the difference between
control in the hierarchy and conscious control.
As Bruce clarified: “.” I translate in to my understanding of what that means: .
When we are dealing with conscious control, we can be conscious of
what we are aiming at, and I would go so far as to conjecture that
we must be. If this is true, then an aspect of conscious control is
that we do things (send reference values to control loops in the
hierarchy) non-consciously in order to bring conscious perceptions
to consciously perceived reference values by reducing consciously
perceived error values. We are conscious of how, and in what
important and unimportant ways, the perceived state of the world in
the present context differs from they way we want it. We may imagine
or plan how to reduce the important ways the error is non-zero, or
we may re-use remembered plans in the way Powers suggested creating
reference vectors in the hierarchy using associative memories.
The critical point at the start of this thread was the demonstration
that conscious and hierarchic control are distinct and different,
even though most CSGnet discussion treats them as though they were
one and the same.
Martin

···

On 2019/07/10 1:09 PM, Warren Mansell
( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

wmansell@gmail.com

        Hi Bruce, I agree, and go further. We control

input so at the highest level of a hierarchical system we
only control the input to that level

        - we can’t possibly control its reference

values, never mind be conscious of what that reference value
(goal) even is… once you are doing that, you’ve gone to
yet another level above it of which you’re not conscious of
its reference value, and the process starts again upward.
That’s MOL…

•  I do not mean control of the sort that is
  

out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances
seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along
together our attention is on our conversation and not on the
movements of our legs*

•  I do not
  

mean control in the hierarchy. For example, the content of our
conversation cannot be incorporated in the hierarchy because it
has never happened before, and therefore must be under conscious
control*

        On 10 Jul 2019, at 02:19, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com
        via csgnet Mailing List) <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu            >

wrote:

                [Bruce

Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

                      Bruce Nevin

20190708.14:25 ET–

                    Completely

out of awareness is the level from which we
control the level that we are observing.

                  Martin has taken

exception to this, and now John Kirkland also
(both privately). I need to express this more
clearly.

                  I do not mean

control of the sort that is out of awareness
because it is so well practiced that disturbances
seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we
walk along together our attention is on our
conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

                  What I mean is

that when our attention is on a controlled
perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level
above that perception, at the level that is doing
the controlling. As we observe the controlled
perception at the level below we do not observe
perception(s) that receive the controlled
perceptual input from that level below. We do not
observe our point of view, we observe from our
point of view.

                  While working on

my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about
the urgency of the work out of the section
addressing the “broader significance” of the work
and promote it to be a new Section 1, before the
section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling
a perception of the comments of reviewers about
“urgency” when they turned down my last try at
this, and perceptions of the architecture of the
piece, in particular a perception of the scope to
which the topic applies. I am not paying attention
to the complex of motivations that led me into
this work, as they have evolved over the past 50
years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with
this at all. As I control perceptions to the end
that all the now subsequent sections and
subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer
aware of those perceptions of the organization of
the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the
renumbering.

                  Bill used to

chide people for perceiving from his proposed
Category level while supposing that their
discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy.
That seems to be related.

                  renumber all

the subsequent sections and s

/Bruce

              On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at

2:27 PM Bruce Nevin <bnhpct@gmail.com >
wrote:

                          [Bruce

Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]

                          [Resending--I

replied only to Martin and meant the
list.]

                            Martin

Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

                              MMT> I suggest that

you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise
for yourself as by reading any books
or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by
both doing the exercise and reading.)

                            Hear!

Hear! Confront phenomena.

MMT> It’s
not always easy to make conscious the
perceptions we control. The lower the
level of the perception and the more
peripheral the action effect of the
control output, usually the harder it
is to realize that there is any
perception being controlled at all.
That’s probably why PCT was not
obvious to … anyone before Powers.

                            Completely

out of awareness is the level from which
we control the level that we are
observing. This has confused discussions
of how to demonstrate control at a
Program level, and the distinction
between Program perceptions and Sequence
perceptions.

/Bruce

                  On Mon, Jul 8,

2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu >
wrote:

                    [Martin Taylor

2019.07.08.08.08]

                          [Bruce

Nevin 20190707.12:59 ET]

                          I

enjoy identifying habits and changing them
like this. It’s a window into the
hierarchy, the setting of references,
learning processes, etc.

                          Our

familiar discussions of driving a car
provide ready examples of control without
awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering
wheel brought Dag’s attention to the
short-term controlling that he was doing
by means of hand pressures on the steering
wheel while he was conscious only or
primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the
indication of the gas gauge and the
distance to the next exit.

                    It's not always easy to make conscious the

perceptions we control. The lower the level of
the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the
harder it is to realize that there is any
perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient
Babylonians, Aristotle, Newton and anyone before
Powers. My reason for posting the original
message was surprise at such things not
automatically creating the appropriate finger
configuration for holding a spoon to take
something our of a bowl with my left hand, and
not being able consciously to work out that
configuration without transferring the spoon to
my right hand and examining closely where my
fingers placed themselves.

                    This is the complement of the car-driving

example. It is an example of consciously working
out what perceptions to control and how to link
them up – in other words, conscious control as
guiding reorganization. I’m beginning to be
moderately good at using a spoon left-handed
without conscious thought, and I find that I can
do other things left-handed that I usually have
done right-handed, and sometimes use my
left-hand non-consciously, after a period in
which I would notice my right-hand beginning to
do something and consciously tell myself “No.
Left hand!”.

                    There's nothing scientific about this, but

actually doing it rather than reading about it
helps me to understand the essential difference
between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader,
might learn as much about PCT by trying some
such exercise for yourself as by reading any
books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both
doing the exercise and reading.)

                    Martin

/B

                          On Thu,

Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu >
wrote:

                          [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

                          A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about

control of perceptions that

                          are clearly conscious. According to Bill

P’s writings, at least on CSG-L

                          and CSGnet, this means that they have not

been effectively reorganized

                          into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I

don’t remember seeing any direct

                          evidence that any control is

non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of

                          the kind that "we aren't conscious of x

when we control y, but common

                          sense and theory both say that we must be

controlling x, even though we

                          aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we

must be controlling x

                          non-consciously.



                          I recently had an experience that could be

replicated by anyone who is

                          not ambidextrous (the situation, not

necessarily the experience). For

                          reasons that are not relevant, I decided

to eat a bowl of cereal using

                          the spoon in my left hand (I am

right-handed). It was very difficult,

                          because I had to consciously think where

the fingers should be with

                          respect to the spoon at different parts of

the motion, which surprised

                          me. I could not remember how they were

normally, when the spoon was in

                          the right hand. To get it right, I had to

take the spoon in my right

                          hand and look before trying to replicate

the hold using the left hand.

                          The entire process of getting cereal into

the spoon, transporting it to

                          my mouth and transferring the cereal was

similarly difficult, needing

                          conscious thought like solving a novel

puzzle. I had to be conscious of

                          wrist angle and a whole lot more that I

never (consciously) had observed

                          to be involved in that simple movement.

All those perceptions must be

                          being controlled non-consciously he I use

a spoon right-handedly.

                          I know this is anecdotal, and even the

experience of needing to be

                          conscious of controlling what I never

thought about needing to control

                          is replicated by by others who might

choose to try the demo, it does not

                          prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some

perceptions are normally

                          controlled non-consciously, I think that

together with the other kind of

                          evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty

close to providing that kind

                          of proof.



                          Give it a go, switch the hand with which

you ordinarily perform some

                          manoeuvre and see if you find you are

surprised to need to be conscious

                          of some things of which you were never

conscious when using the usual

                          hand. I'd be interested in knowing how

unusual my own experience was.

                          Martin

[MalcolmOcean]

Another similar experiment to try is to navigate a space—say from your bedroom to the bathroom—with your eyes closeosed. (Assuming you’re sighted in the first place)

This one highlights some different factors, one of them being that despite having walked a path thousands of times, you can’t necessarily do it without the input variables you’re used to controlling. But sometimes you can! (Or I can, at least) And that’s also interesting. That implies, of course, that you’ve got a proprioceptive/spatial model in your head that you’re controlling your passage through, similar to how with your eyes closed you can still move your finger to be an inch from your nose.

···

–

Malcolm Ocean

Make consistent progress towards your goals every day:Â Â Complice

Read my latest blog post:Â Reviewing the choices I made in 2018

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin 20190714.16;42 ET]

Control without awareness is not the same as control without visual perceptual input from the environment.Â

I think it is commonplace to control perceptions, aspects of which are derived from memory and perceived in imagination. Being deprived of vision is a striking case because of our dependence on visual input.

···

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 11:39 AM Malcolm Ocean csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

Another similar experiment to try is to navigate a space—say from your bedroomm to the bathroom—with your eyes closed. (Assuming you’re sighteed in the first place)

This one highlights some different factors, one of them being that despite having walked a path thousands of times, you can’t necessarily do it without the input variables you’re used to controlling. But sometimes you can! (Or I can, at least) And that’s also interesting. That implies, of course, that you’ve got a proprioceptive/spatial model in your head that you’re controlling your passage through, similar to how with your eyes closed you can still move your finger to be an inch from your nose.

–

Malcolm Ocean

Make consistent progress towards your goals every day:Â Â Complice

Read my latest blog post:Â Reviewing the choices I made in 2018

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 at 13:37, Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.10.13.22]

  On 2019/07/10 1:09 PM, Warren Mansell > > (wmansell@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

        Hi Bruce, I agree, and go further. We control

input so at the highest level of a hierarchical system we
only control the input to that level

All true for control of a perception in the hierarchy, but we were

talking about conscious control, and the little demo was to
demonstrate to someone who cared to try it the difference between
control in the hierarchy and conscious control.

        - we can’t possibly control its reference

values, never mind be conscious of what that reference value
(goal) even is… once you are doing that, you’ve gone to
yet another level above it of which you’re not conscious of
its reference value, and the process starts again upward.
That’s MOL…

As Bruce clarified: "*      I do not mean control of the sort that is

out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances
seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along
together our attention is on our conversation and not on the
movements of our legs*."

I translate in to my understanding of what that means: *      I do not

mean control in the hierarchy. For example, the content of our
conversation cannot be incorporated in the hierarchy because it
has never happened before, and therefore must be under conscious
control*.

When we are dealing with conscious control, we can be conscious of

what we are aiming at, and I would go so far as to conjecture that
we must be. If this is true, then an aspect of conscious control is
that we do things (send reference values to control loops in the
hierarchy) non-consciously in order to bring conscious perceptions
to consciously perceived reference values by reducing consciously
perceived error values. We are conscious of how, and in what
important and unimportant ways, the perceived state of the world in
the present context differs from they way we want it. We may imagine
or plan how to reduce the important ways the error is non-zero, or
we may re-use remembered plans in the way Powers suggested creating
reference vectors in the hierarchy using associative memories.

The critical point at the start of this thread was the demonstration

that conscious and hierarchic control are distinct and different,
even though most CSGnet discussion treats them as though they were
one and the same.

Martin

        On 10 Jul 2019, at 02:19, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com > > > >             via csgnet Mailing List) <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu            > > > > > wrote:

                [Bruce

Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

                      Bruce Nevin

20190708.14:25 ET–

                    Completely

out of awareness is the level from which we
control the level that we are observing. Â

                  Martin has taken

exception to this, and now John Kirkland also
(both privately). I need to express this more
clearly.

                  I do not mean

control of the sort that is out of awareness
because it is so well practiced that disturbances
seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we
walk along together our attention is on our
conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

                  What I mean is

that when our attention is on a controlled
perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level
above that perception, at the level that is doing
the controlling. As we observe the controlled
perception at the level below we do not observe
perception(s) that receive the controlled
perceptual input from that level below. We do not
observe our point of view, we observe from our
point of view.

                  While working on

my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about
the urgency of the work out of the section
addressing the “broader significance” of the work
and promote it to be a new Section 1, before the
section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling
a perception of the comments of reviewers about
“urgency” when they turned down my last try at
this, and perceptions of the architecture of the
piece, in particular a perception of the scope to
which the topic applies. I am not paying attention
to the complex of motivations that led me into
this work, as they have evolved over the past 50
years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with
this at all. As I control perceptions to the end
that all the now subsequent sections and
subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer
aware of those perceptions of the organization of
the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the
renumbering.

                  Bill used to

chide people for perceiving from his proposed
Category level while supposing that their
discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy.
That seems to be related.

                  Â renumber all

the subsequent sections and s Â

/Bruce

              On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at > > > > > 2:27 PM Bruce Nevin <bnhpct@gmail.com                  > > > > > > wrote:

                          [Bruce

Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]Â Â

                          [Resending--I

replied only to Martin and meant the
list.]

                            Martin

Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

                              > I suggest that

you, Dear Reader, might learn as much
about PCT by trying some such exercise
for yourself as by reading any books
or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by
both doing the exercise and reading.)

                            Hear!

Hear! Confront phenomena.

 It’s
not always easy to make conscious the
perceptions we control. The lower the
level of the perception and the more
peripheral the action effect of the
control output, usually the harder it
is to realize that there is any
perception being controlled at all.
That’s probably why PCT was not
obvious to … anyone before Powers.Â

                            Completely

out of awareness is the level from which
we control the level that we are
observing. This has confused discussions
of how to demonstrate control at a
Program level, and the distinction
between Program perceptions and Sequence
perceptions.

/Bruce

                  On Mon, Jul 8, > > > > > > 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu                      > > > > > > > wrote:

                    [Martin Taylor

2019.07.08.08.08]

                          [Bruce

Nevin 20190707.12:59 ET]

                          I

enjoy identifying habits and changing them
like this. It’s a window into the
hierarchy, the setting of references,
learning processes, etc.

                          Our

familiar discussions of driving a car
provide ready examples of control without
awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering
wheel brought Dag’s attention to the
short-term controlling that he was doing
by means of hand pressures on the steering
wheel while he was conscious only or
primarily of their conversation and
perhaps of longer-term variables like the
indication of the gas gauge and the
distance to the next exit.

                    It's not always easy to make conscious the

perceptions we control. The lower the level of
the perception and the more peripheral the
action effect of the control output, usually the
harder it is to realize that there is any
perception being controlled at all. That’s
probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient
Babylonians, Aristotle, Newton and anyone before
Powers. My reason for posting the original
message was surprise at such things not
automatically creating the appropriate finger
configuration for holding a spoon to take
something our of a bowl with my left hand, and
not being able consciously to work out that
configuration without transferring the spoon to
my right hand and examining closely where my
fingers placed themselves.

                    This is the complement of the car-driving

example. It is an example of consciously working
out what perceptions to control and how to link
them up – in other words, conscious control as
guiding reorganization. I’m beginning to be
moderately good at using a spoon left-handed
without conscious thought, and I find that I can
do other things left-handed that I usually have
done right-handed, and sometimes use my
left-hand non-consciously, after a period in
which I would notice my right-hand beginning to
do something and consciously tell myself “No.
Left hand!”.

                    There's nothing scientific about this, but

actually doing it rather than reading about it
helps me to understand the essential difference
between control in the hierarchy and control in
consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader,
might learn as much about PCT by trying some
such exercise for yourself as by reading any
books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both
doing the exercise and reading.)

                    Martin

                    Â 

/B

                          On Thu, > > > > > > > > Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 PM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu                              > > > > > > > > > wrote:

                          [Martin

Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

                          A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about

control of perceptions that

                          are clearly conscious. According to Bill

P’s writings, at least on CSG-L

                          and CSGnet, this means that they have not

been effectively reorganized

                          into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I

don’t remember seeing any direct

                          evidence that any control is

non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of

                          the kind that "we aren't conscious of x

when we control y, but common

                          sense and theory both say that we must be

controlling x, even though we

                          aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we

must be controlling x

                          non-consciously.



                          I recently had an experience that could be

replicated by anyone who is

                          not ambidextrous (the situation, not

necessarily the experience). For

                          reasons that are not relevant, I decided

to eat a bowl of cereal using

                          the spoon in my left hand (I am

right-handed). It was very difficult,

                          because I had to consciously think where

the fingers should be with

                          respect to the spoon at different parts of

the motion, which surprised

                          me. I could not remember how they were

normally, when the spoon was in

                          the right hand. To get it right, I had to

take the spoon in my right

                          hand and look before trying to replicate

the hold using the left hand.

                          The entire process of getting cereal into

the spoon, transporting it to

                          my mouth and transferring the cereal was

similarly difficult, needing

                          conscious thought like solving a novel

puzzle. I had to be conscious of

                          wrist angle and a whole lot more that I

never (consciously) had observed

                          to be involved in that simple movement.

All those perceptions must be

                          being controlled non-consciously he I use

a spoon right-handedly.

                          I know this is anecdotal, and even the

experience of needing to be

                          conscious of controlling what I never

thought about needing to control

                          is replicated by by others who might

choose to try the demo, it does not

                          prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some

perceptions are normally

                          controlled non-consciously, I think that

together with the other kind of

                          evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty

close to providing that kind

                          of proof.



                          Give it a go, switch the hand with which

you ordinarily perform some

                          manoeuvre and see if you find you are

surprised to need to be conscious

                          of some things of which you were never

conscious when using the usual

                          hand. I'd be interested in knowing how

unusual my own experience was.

                          Martin

[EetuP]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-07-15_17:55:40 UTC]

I think the point is that if you suddenly lose the visual perceptual input from the environment when you are used to get it then the control will change difficult and then you start
to control consciously. Again when you get used to control your way without visual perceptual input from the environment, then it vanishes again away from your consciousness.

Eetu

···

[Bruce Nevin 20190714.16;42 ET]

Control without awareness is not the same as control without visual perceptual input from the environment.

I think it is commonplace to control perceptions, aspects of which are derived from memory and perceived in imagination. Being deprived of vision is a
striking case because of our dependence on visual input.

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 11:39 AM Malcolm Ocean csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

Another similar experiment to try is to navigate a space—say from your bedrroom to the bathroom—with your eyes closed. (Assuming you’re sighted in the first place)

This one highlights some different factors, one of them being that despite having walked a path thousands of times, you can’t necessarily do it without the input variables you’re used to controlling. But sometimes
you can! (Or I can, at least) And that’s also interesting. That implies, of course, that you’ve got a proprioceptive/spatial model in your head that you’re controlling your passage through, similar to how with your eyes closed you can still move your finger
to be an inch from your nose.

–

Malcolm Ocean

Make consistent progress towards your goals every day: Complice

Read my latest blog post: Reviewing
the choices I made in 2018

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 at 13:37, Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.10.13.22]

On 2019/07/10 1:09 PM, Warren Mansell (wmansell@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

Hi Bruce, I agree, and go further. We control input so at the highest level of a hierarchical system we only control the input to that level

All true for control of a perception in the hierarchy, but we were talking about conscious control, and the little demo was to demonstrate to someone who cared to try it the difference between control in the hierarchy and conscious control.

• we can’t possibly control its reference values, never mind be conscious of what that reference value (goal) even is… once you are doing that, you’ve gone to yet another level above it of which you’re not conscious
  of its reference value, and the process starts again upward. That’s MOL…

As Bruce clarified: “* I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements
of our legs*.”
I translate in to my understanding of what that means: * I do not mean control in the hierarchy. For example, the content of our conversation cannot be incorporated in the hierarchy because it has never happened before, and therefore must be under conscious
control*.

When we are dealing with conscious control, we can be conscious of what we are aiming at, and I would go so far as to conjecture that we must be. If this is true, then an aspect of conscious control is that we do things (send reference values to control loops
in the hierarchy) non-consciously in order to bring conscious perceptions to consciously perceived reference values by reducing consciously perceived error values. We are conscious of how, and in what important and unimportant ways, the perceived state of
the world in the present context differs from they way we want it. We may imagine or plan how to reduce the important ways the error is non-zero, or we may re-use remembered plans in the way Powers suggested creating reference vectors in the hierarchy using
associative memories.

The critical point at the start of this thread was the demonstration that conscious and hierarchic control are distinct and different, even though most CSGnet discussion treats them as though they were one and the same.

Martin

On 10 Jul 2019, at 02:19, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Bruce Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET–

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing.

Martin has taken exception to this, and now John Kirkland also (both privately). I need to express this more clearly.

I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along
together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

What I mean is that when our attention is on a controlled perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level above that perception, at the level that is doing the controlling.
As we observe the controlled perception at the level below we do not observe perception(s) that receive the controlled perceptual input from that level below. We do not observe our point of view, we observe from our point of view.

While working on my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about the urgency of the work out of the section addressing the “broader significance” of the work and promote
it to be a new Section 1, before the section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling a perception of the comments of reviewers about “urgency” when they turned down my last try at this, and perceptions of the architecture of the piece, in particular a perception
of the scope to which the topic applies. I am not paying attention to the complex of motivations that led me into this work, as they have evolved over the past 50 years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with this at all. As I control perceptions to the
end that all the now subsequent sections and subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer aware of those perceptions of the organization of the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the renumbering.

Bill used to chide people for perceiving from his proposed Category level while supposing that their discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy. That seems to be related.

renumber all the subsequent sections and s

/Bruce

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 2:27 PM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]

[Resending–I replied only to Martin and meant the list.]

Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

MMT> I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages
(and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Hear! Hear! Confront phenomena.

MMT> It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect
of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to … anyone before Powers.

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. This has confused discussions of how to demonstrate
control at a Program level, and the distinction between Program perceptions and Sequence perceptions.

/Bruce

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

[Bruce Nevin 20190707.12:59 ET]

I enjoy identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning processes, etc.

Our familiar discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought Dag’s attention
to the short-term controlling that he was doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the gas gauge and the distance to the
next exit.

It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all.
That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians, Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting the original message was surprise at such things not automatically creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding
a spoon to take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a
spoon left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something
and consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There’s nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather than reading about it helps me to understand the essential difference between control in the hierarchy and control in consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about
PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Martin

/B

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 PM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of perceptions that
are clearly conscious. According to Bill P’s writings, at least on CSG-L
and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively reorganized
into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don’t remember seeing any direct
evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of
the kind that "we aren’t conscious of x when we control y, but common
sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even though we
aren’t conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling x
non-consciously.

I recently had an experience that could be replicated by anyone who is
not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the experience). For
reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of cereal using
the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very difficult,
because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be with
respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which surprised
me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the spoon was in
the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my right
hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the left hand.
The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon, transporting it to
my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult, needing
conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be conscious of
wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously) had observed
to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions must be
being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon right-handedly.

I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing to be
conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to control
is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo, it does not
prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are normally
controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the other kind of
evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing that kind
of proof.

Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily perform some
manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be conscious
of some things of which you were never conscious when using the usual
hand. I’d be interested in knowing how unusual my own experience was.

Martin

[bnhpct]

Ah, yes, OK, I see the point. Thanks.

···

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 2:01 PM Eetu Pikkarainen csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-07-15_17:55:40 UTC]

Â

I think the point is that if you suddenly lose the visual perceptual input from the environment when you are used to get it then the control will change difficult and then you start
to control consciously. Again when you get used to control your way without visual perceptual input from the environment, then it vanishes again away from your consciousness.

Â

Eetu

Â

[Bruce Nevin 20190714.16;42 ET]

Â

Control without awareness is not the same as control without visual perceptual input from the environment.Â

Â

I think it is commonplace to control perceptions, aspects of which are derived from memory and perceived in imagination. Being deprived of vision is a
striking case because of our dependence on visual input.

Â

Â

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 11:39 AM Malcolm Ocean csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

Another similar experiment to try is to navigate a space—say from your bedroom to the bathhroom—with your eyes closed. (Assuming you’re sighted in the firrst place)

Â

This one highlights some different factors, one of them being that despite having walked a path thousands of times, you can’t necessarily do it without the input variables you’re used to controlling. But sometimes
you can! (Or I can, at least) And that’s also interesting. That implies, of course, that you’ve got a proprioceptive/spatial model in your head that you’re controlling your passage through, similar to how with your eyes closed you can still move your finger
to be an inch from your nose.

Â

Â

–

Malcolm Ocean

Make consistent progress towards your goals every day:Â Â Complice

Read my latest blog post:Â Reviewing
the choices I made in 2018

Â

Â

On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 at 13:37, Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.10.13.22]

On 2019/07/10 1:09 PM, Warren Mansell (wmansell@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

Â

Hi Bruce, I agree, and go further. We control input so at the highest level of a hierarchical system we only control the input to that level

All true for control of a perception in the hierarchy, but we were talking about conscious control, and the little demo was to demonstrate to someone who cared to try it the difference between control in the hierarchy and conscious control.

• we can’t possibly control its reference values, never mind be conscious of what that reference value (goal) even is… once you are doing that, you’ve gone to yet another level above it of which you’re not conscious
  of its reference value, and the process starts again upward. That’s MOL…

As Bruce clarified: “* I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements
of our legs*.”
I translate in to my understanding of what that means: * I do not mean control in the hierarchy. For example, the content of our conversation cannot be incorporated in the hierarchy because it has never happened before, and therefore must be under conscious
control*.

When we are dealing with conscious control, we can be conscious of what we are aiming at, and I would go so far as to conjecture that we must be. If this is true, then an aspect of conscious control is that we do things (send reference values to control loops
in the hierarchy) non-consciously in order to bring conscious perceptions to consciously perceived reference values by reducing consciously perceived error values. We are conscious of how, and in what important and unimportant ways, the perceived state of
the world in the present context differs from they way we want it. We may imagine or plan how to reduce the important ways the error is non-zero, or we may re-use remembered plans in the way Powers suggested creating reference vectors in the hierarchy using
associative memories.

The critical point at the start of this thread was the demonstration that conscious and hierarchic control are distinct and different, even though most CSGnet discussion treats them as though they were one and the same.

Martin

On 10 Jul 2019, at 02:19, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Bruce Nevin 20190709.21:19 ET]

Â

Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET–

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. Â

Â

Martin has taken exception to this, and now John Kirkland also (both privately). I need to express this more clearly.

Â

I do not mean control of the sort that is out of awareness because it is so well practiced that disturbances seldom cause appreciable error. For example, as we walk along
together our attention is on our conversation and not on the movements of our legs.

Â

What I mean is that when our attention is on a controlled perception our attention is ‘seated’ at the level above that perception, at the level that is doing the controlling.
As we observe the controlled perception at the level below we do not observe perception(s) that receive the controlled perceptual input from that level below. We do not observe our point of view, we observe from our point of view.

Â

While working on my DEL proposal, when I move the subsection about the urgency of the work out of the section addressing the “broader significance” of the work and promote
it to be a new Section 1, before the section on “intellectual merit”, I am controlling a perception of the comments of reviewers about “urgency” when they turned down my last try at this, and perceptions of the architecture of the piece, in particular a perception
of the scope to which the topic applies. I am not paying attention to the complex of motivations that led me into this work, as they have evolved over the past 50 years or so, without which I wouldn’t bother with this at all. As I control perceptions to the
end that all the now subsequent sections and subsection are properly renumbered I am no longer aware of those perceptions of the organization of the proposal, for the sake of which I am doing the renumbering.

Â

Bill used to chide people for perceiving from his proposed Category level while supposing that their discussion was focused lower in the hierarchy. That seems to be related.

 renumber all the subsequent sections and s Â

Â

/Bruce

Â

Â

Â

Â

Â

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 2:27 PM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[Bruce Nevin 20190708.14:25 ET]Â Â

Â

[Resending–I replied only to Martin and meant the list.]

Â

Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08–

Â

I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages
(and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Â

Hear! Hear! Confront phenomena.

Â

 It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect
of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all. That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to … anyone before Powers.Â

Â

Completely out of awareness is the level from which we control the level that we are observing. This has confused discussions of how to demonstrate
control at a Program level, and the distinction between Program perceptions and Sequence perceptions.

Â

/Bruce

Â

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 8:25 AM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.07.08.08.08]

[Bruce Nevin 20190707.12:59 ET]

Â

I enjoy identifying habits and changing them like this. It’s a window into the hierarchy, the setting of references, learning processes, etc.

Â

Our familiar discussions of driving a car provide ready examples of control without awareness. Bill’s tug on the steering wheel brought Dag’s attention
to the short-term controlling that he was doing by means of hand pressures on the steering wheel while he was conscious only or primarily of their conversation and perhaps of longer-term variables like the indication of the gas gauge and the distance to the
next exit.

It’s not always easy to make conscious the perceptions we control. The lower the level of the perception and the more peripheral the action effect of the control output, usually the harder it is to realize that there is any perception being controlled at all.
That’s probably why PCT was not obvious to the ancient Babylonians, Aristotle, Newton and anyone before Powers. My reason for posting the original message was surprise at such things not automatically creating the appropriate finger configuration for holding
a spoon to take something our of a bowl with my left hand, and not being able consciously to work out that configuration without transferring the spoon to my right hand and examining closely where my fingers placed themselves.

This is the complement of the car-driving example. It is an example of consciously working out what perceptions to control and how to link them up – in other words, conscious control as guiding reorganization. I’m beginning to be moderately good at using a
spoon left-handed without conscious thought, and I find that I can do other things left-handed that I usually have done right-handed, and sometimes use my left-hand non-consciously, after a period in which I would notice my right-hand beginning to do something
and consciously tell myself “No. Left hand!”.

There’s nothing scientific about this, but actually doing it rather than reading about it helps me to understand the essential difference between control in the hierarchy and control in consciousness. I suggest that you, Dear Reader, might learn as much about
PCT by trying some such exercise for yourself as by reading any books or CSGnet messages (and a lot more by both doing the exercise and reading.)

Martin
Â

Â

/B

Â

Â

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 3:13 PM Martin Taylor csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of perceptions that
are clearly conscious. According to Bill P’s writings, at least on CSG-L
and CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively reorganized
into the control hierarchy. Indeed, I don’t remember seeing any direct
evidence that any control is non-conscious. The evidence seems to be of
the kind that "we aren’t conscious of x when we control y, but common
sense and theory both say that we must be controlling x, even though we
aren’t conscious of doing so. Therefore we must be controlling x
non-consciously.

I recently had an experience that could be replicated by anyone who is
not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the experience). For
reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of cereal using
the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very difficult,
because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be with
respect to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which surprised
me. I could not remember how they were normally, when the spoon was in
the right hand. To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my right
hand and look before trying to replicate the hold using the left hand.
The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon, transporting it to
my mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult, needing
conscious thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be conscious of
wrist angle and a whole lot more that I never (consciously) had observed
to be involved in that simple movement. All those perceptions must be
being controlled non-consciously he I use a spoon right-handedly.

I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing to be
conscious of controlling what I never thought about needing to control
is replicated by by others who might choose to try the demo, it does not
prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are normally
controlled non-consciously, I think that together with the other kind of
evidence mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing that kind
of proof.

Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily perform some
manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be conscious
of some things of which you were never conscious when using the usual
hand. I’d be interested in knowing how unusual my own experience was.

Martin

Â

Â

[_Boris_Hartman]

Martin,

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Taylor (mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net via csgnet Mailing List)
<csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019 9:14 PM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Conscious and non-conscious control -- an easy demo

[Martin Taylor 2019.06.13.14.51]

MT : A lot of the discussion on CSGnet is about control of perceptions that
are clearly conscious. According to Bill P's writings, at least on CSG-L and
CSGnet, this means that they have not been effectively reorganized into the
control hierarchy. Indeed, I don't remember seeing any direct evidence that
any control is non-conscious.

HB : You didn't see it becasue you didn't want to see it. So you probably
don't remember where you see it. I assume that you wanted the idea of
non-concscious perception to look like your idea. But it's not. I used it in
conversation with Rick. And I think you delibrately avoid it.

            RM earlier : This happens a lot in my sport, racquetball. The
ideal way to take a forehand shot is to do a lot of APAs that get you into
position to take it off the back wall.

           HB : earlier : The ideal way to take a "forehand shot" is with
continuous "Control of perception". We discussed that a lot of times when
you understood PCT in 2007. You don't control "forehand shot" as
           "Control of behavior" or any other shot but at best you'll be
aware of control of perception of your arm (shoulder, elbow and wrist and so
on). You'll not be aware of all movements involved in "forehand
           shot". So whether your "forehand shot" is succesfull or not,
depends from how good you "Control perception" of certain parts of the body.
Control will happen even if you are not aware of it. Control loops
           can't function without references.

           Many perceptions in your "forehand movement" are controlled
"automatically". But you can reach the most perception of the movement and
control them "consciously" through changing attention. So in
           any sport the question is which perceptions do we control to be
successsfull, not which behavior do we control for example "forehand
movement". Maybe observer will see it like that, but there will be
           always question what is "forehand" movement" and which "forehand
movement" is right. It's like punches in karate schools. Everything is about
perception and relative experiences of people. Or as Heather
           pointed out :

            HB-B eralier : .and really the only way you could get that to
work is hierarchical control with continuous feedback...

           HB earlier : And hierarchical control is only about "Control of
perception".

MT : The evidence seems to be of the kind that "we aren't conscious of x
when we control y, but common sense and theory both say that we must be
controlling x, even though we aren't conscious of doing so. Therefore we
must be controlling x non-consciously.

         HB : Analyzing any sport movement (I'm professional on that field)
we can see what you are saying is true, but you cpuld mention that I
mentioned that (as common sense) experience. Any sportsmen can
          describe you that kind of "common sense" experience. But it seems
that you delibratelly avoid mentioning my name.

MT : I recently had an experience that could be replicated by anyone who is
not ambidextrous (the situation, not necessarily the experience).

          HB : It's very odd that you had recently an experience that could
be replicated by anyone, because I was writing RECENTLY about that to Rick.
You had such an experience since you were born. But mentioning
          it in "the same time" as I did is very odd.
And how can exist the situation without experience ?

I'll not continue because you are describing self-evident experiences. The
problem I see is not mentioning where you got your idea for your
"originality".

Boris

MT : For reasons that are not relevant, I decided to eat a bowl of cereal
using the spoon in my left hand (I am right-handed). It was very difficult,
because I had to consciously think where the fingers should be with respect
to the spoon at different parts of the motion, which surprised me. I could
not remember how they were normally, when the spoon was in the right hand.
To get it right, I had to take the spoon in my right hand and look before
trying to replicate the hold using the left hand.
The entire process of getting cereal into the spoon, transporting it to my
mouth and transferring the cereal was similarly difficult, needing conscious
thought like solving a novel puzzle. I had to be conscious of wrist angle
and a whole lot more that I never (consciously) had observed to be involved
in that simple movement. All those perceptions must be being controlled
non-consciously he I use a spoon right-handedly.

I know this is anecdotal, and even the experience of needing to be conscious
of controlling what I never thought about needing to control is replicated
by by others who might choose to try the demo, it does not prove beyond a
shadow of a doubt that some perceptions are normally controlled
non-consciously, I think that together with the other kind of evidence
mentioned up top, it comes petty close to providing that kind of proof.

Give it a go, switch the hand with which you ordinarily perform some
manoeuvre and see if you find you are surprised to need to be conscious of
some things of which you were never conscious when using the usual hand. I'd
be interested in knowing how unusual my own experience was.

Martin