[From Bill Powers (980408.0255 MST)]
Bruce Nevin (980407.2208 EDT)--
The problem with these terms like attention and ignoring that I am trying
to sort out is that our ordinary meanings for them have two perspectives,
our subjective experience and our observations of actions (our own or those
of others doing what we take to be the same as what we subjectively
experience), and what I am trying to get to is their meaning within a model
of control, which is a perspective different from either of those. It is
difficult not to slip from one to another perspective, and I'm afraid I
don't always notice that I have. Your responses bring this to my attention.
(We know what that means subjectively even though we can't model it yet so
we don't really know very well at all. But that's two senses of "know".)
This is the problem. We experience; we divide experience into compartments
("experience" and "action", which are both experiences). We then try to
bring these concepts together into a model, which is another experience.
Confusing.
Bruce Gregory ((80407.1508 EST)
the more telling criticism is that consciousness cannot
be modeled and therefore is Beyond PCT (BPCT).
Bruce N.
"Cannot be modelled" is much too strong a statement. Probably: must be
modelled as something outside the control hierarchy but having influence in
it, much as we currently guess about reorganization and memory.
I agree with Bruce N. But "having influence on" seems backward to me:
consciousness seems more like receiving information _from_ something rather
than acting _on_ something. I think of awareness as a sort of tunable
receiver; tuning it brings various activities in the perceptual hierarchy
into view of the Observer. The perceptual signals that are tuned in appear
in awareness, so we can say that those signals are the content of
consciousness. But perceptual signals that are not tuned in are still
present, like all the radio stations that are broadcasting signals outside
the range of the receiver's tuning.
I had in mind observing one's performance, the perception that you are
controlling as well as the actions by which you control it. This is how we
can intuit the control hierarchy, as Bill describes doing in coming up with
his understanding of the hierarchy.
If you pursue this farther you come up against the problems of
self-reflexiveness. Can you perceive yourself perceiving an apple (etc.)? I
think not. The infinite regress never starts. The "perception of
perceiving" is always a higher level perception involving a different type
of perception. That is the basis of the Method of Levels. If you observe
what you are perceiving at one level, you become aware of perceptions
_about_ the first perceptions, but not of the same type as the first
perceptions.
... paying attention is coincident with control. Whatever
attention is, the statement is that we see an instance of it when a control
system controls a perception.
But what about control systems that are controlling perceptions of which
you are not, at the moment, aware? Right now (unless you're in bed) you are
balancing, and you have been doing so for some time. But you were not, I'll
bet, aware of controlling the perceptual variables of balance. There are
many perceptual signals at levels both higher and lower than the level at
which you're habitually aware that are under control, but they are not in
the field of consciousness. The higher systems are determining the
reference signals that set the highest goals of which you're aware, and
your conscious control actions result in varying controlled perceptions at
lower levels, also outside awareness. You can become aware of many of these
signals, but most of the time you are not aware of them even though they
are present and being controlled.
So the existence of a perceptual signal in an input channel, and the
process of controlling that signal, are not the same thing as consciousness
-- awareness of that perceptual signal.
BN
I cannot control
without attention at least by the ECS involved.
BG
Cannot control without _perception_. True. Cannot control
without attention not obvious.
BN
I agree that for this we do not need an extra term, attention; control
suffices. Trying to understand "attention" I was supposing that in the ECS
controlling its perceptual input we see the simplest instance of attention.
Attention is a phenomenon of what I can only refer to as the Observer. It
does not seem to be a phenomenon of the learned hierarchy of control
systems. It is a selective or restricted reception of information by the
Observer -- that's the nearest I can come to modeling it or relating it to
my experiences. It's unlike the relation of a perceptual input function of
one level to perceptual signals from lower levels, in that it seems
completely mobile; it can be receiving from one level in the hierarchy at
one moment, and a different level at the next. One's first thought is of a
giant switching matrix, but that would require a switch with as many poles
as there are neurons in the perceptual systems -- hardly a practical idea.
Yet the only other "practical" model would have to say that this "receiver"
exists in more than three dimensions, so that it can move its receptors
freely about inside the solid three-dimensional brain without physically
disrupting it.
How do we model "ignoring" in HPCT?
I don't know, but clearly we have a problem with this idea similar to that
of "selecting perceptions" to which to attend. We can't ignore something
unless we have first noticed it (else how would you know what you're
ignoring?). I think ignoring usually means continuing to be aware of
something but intentionally turning off all reference signals relating to
it, so no action is ever called for no matter what happens. We know the
vase is starting to fall off the mantle, but we continue administering CPR
to the victim without any thought of leaping to save the vase. We thus
ignore what is happening to the vase, although we are quite aware of it.
This is different from "ignoring" something of which one is totally unaware.
When I cannot pay attention
without control, either control of the perception or control of perceiving
that perception. Attention is the elimination of conflict between
controlling one perception and concurrently controlling another.
I don't think attention has anything to do (directly) with control.
Attention is the reception of information from perceptual channels by
something outside those channels. If any influence on the process of
control is to occur, it would have to be carried out through a different
path, going _from_ the outside something _to_ the control system. The label
for that kind of channel would be more like "volition" than "attention" (or
"awareness").
So attention may be a necessary ingredient for affecting control systems,
but the direction of effects is wrong; there must be some other process
that generates effects ON the control systems, in order to affect how they
operate.
This is the sort of thing that led me to conjecture about a connection
between awareness/volition and the reorganizing system.
Best,
Bill P.
